A study from the GemEduco and Innovamide research groups of Valencia University (UV) during the confinement reveals that both families and teachers believe in increasing collaboration and improving their training on new technologies.

The study highlights that despite the difficulties, for a vast majority of families it would be very positive, both for an improved education of their children as well as to improve the family-school collaboration, that when the situation returns to normal after the pandemic, new activities are added to the regular subjects taught over the internet. Families are willing to take part and train to better assist the learning of their children. Furthermore, teachers also view this integration as a positive. This is seen by the research team that has produced the report as a positive element that opens new paths for a new model of school and of family-school collaboration.

The study ‘La Escuela en Casa’ (School at Home) of the Measuring and Evaluation: Education for Social Cohesion group (GemEduco) and the Educational Innovation group (Innovamide) of the UV was conducted from 4 May to 21 June and includes data from 1,708 teachers, 3,758 families and a total 5,539 students from Childhood Education to the last year of Compulsory Education.

According to the research team, the group of families who took part in the study had good access to the internet and technological devices. However, 54% had technological difficulties, with 10% having a bad connection to the internet; the computers of 12% of them were unsuitable and 10% worked from home, meaning the students did not have enough access to the technological resources of their parents. The study also shows that the percentage of families that have suffered a severe or very severe gap is around 27%. In other words, more than one in four families have had especially unfavourable conditions to undertake home schooling, with the social gap being more important than the digital gap.

Teachers

In this unforeseen situation that has arisen, the teachers have put forth a great effort to provide a suitable response, and they have done so with their own means. Thus, a majority of teachers had a computer or tablet to offer teaching over the internet (83.3% of the total group of people surveyed and 85.6% in the Valencian Community) and a suitable connection to the internet (79.4% of the total group and 81% in the Valencian Community). However, the study shows that there have been many difficulties in this process. As many as 82.7% used more time teaching at home than they would in a regular working day, with over 66% of them saying that they did not have enough time to be able to work from home, among other reasons because they had to attend to their own children of school age (between 34 and 35%), to elderly or sick people that depend on them (between 13 and 14%) or to the house itself (between 68 and 71%).

Meanwhile, even in the digital age, 57% of teachers said that they had no or very limited specific training on platforms for online teaching. On the other hand, another significant group already communicated via email (42.6%), used instant messaging (26.6%) or a platform before the pandemic (32.5%) as common teaching resources.

According to the study, teachers have taken the students and their families into account when adapting teaching to the telematic medium. Thus, the criterium most used by the teachers to choose the technological resources in online teaching were the ease of access for families and students (55% in the Valencian Community), followed by their prior knowledge of ICTs (46.3%) and the recommendations of the school centre or the government (44.2%).

The study also reveals that the gaps that may have had an impact as obstacles among teachers are more linked to the reconciliation of work and family life than to the technological gap.

Furthermore, there is a piece of data that especially stands out, which is linked to the gender gap. In 85.2% of the cases, the people who shouldered the burden in the families were the mothers, who stated among the difficulties the lack of time and the need to also attend their own jobs. Reconciliation and the fair distribution of household responsibilities appear once again, according to the study, as pending issues, which have become even more evident with the confinement.

‘La Escuela en Casa’ study:

https://www.uv.es/gem/Resumen_ejecutivo.pdf