Online Education during the COVID 19 lockdown and school closures in Spain. Teachers' perceptions

Abstract

This empirical study explores non-university teachers acute accent attitudes and perceptions with regard to online education and ICT use during the COVID 19 lockdown and the accompanying school closures in Spain. It is also aimed at uncovering some of the limitations of ICT that have been found in certain areas, and at detecting poten-tial differences of opinion about online education among teachers at different educational levels. An ad hoc online questionnaire was designed for the purposes of the study, and it was completed by 700 teachers from all over the country. Results show that the applied instrument is valid, reliable and capable of discriminating different views about online education in different educational stages. Findings show that teachers acute accent perceptions about online in-struction are not favourable, and that teachers in compulsory educational stages had more negative views than those involved in more vocational courses. Many participants also reported that online teaching implies a work overload and an additional economic burden to teachers. In addition, online instruction brings with it serious dif-ficulties stemming from the lack of emotional connection with students. Based on these results, it is concluded that the school closings caused by the COVID-19 lockdown required an exhausting process of adaptation on the part of teachers, who were forced to modify their educational strategies. They had to find unprecedented new ways of interacting with their students.