Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning: Teacher Training in ICT During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction

It is reasonable to assert that one of the primary strategies for human learning is potentially accomplished without using any technology external to the human body: observational learning, in its stripped form, demands nothing but the human sensory system and brain processing. While this learning method can be effective (Couzijn & Rijlaarsdam, 2005), it can be said that the adoption of some sort of technology to enable a teaching-learning (T-L) process is to be found in most formal learning contexts (a premise to be vastly distended when considering Wittgenstein’s (2009) perspective of language as technology). And while the concept of technology in education, as demonstrated, can refer to several dimensions of this activity, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) represent a subgroup that has been gaining momentum in the T-L dynamics, matched by their pervasiveness across several dimensions of society in developed countries. Therefore, examining the role of ICT in Education is relevant and unavoidable, a systematization that urges doing if undesirable consequences are to be avoided. As a cautionary tale, data show that - in the age of connectedness and digital nativism – IQ scores have declined in certain developed countries, an issue that some attribute to environmental factors (Dutton et al., 2016); and while discussing the validity of IQ tests is far beyond the scope of this chapter (and underlining that correlation is not causation), a disturbance in the evolution of human cognition has occurred. Moreover, addressing equity in education has been a core concern for UNESCO, as stated in the 4^th Goal of Sustainable Development (Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, 2015), and the ICTs seem to embody a paradox in this regard: in one hand they offer the possibility to carry education across geographic borders, on the other hand they pose a barrier to those unfamiliar and/or without access to ICTs. After decades of large investments in ICT to benefit education in OECD countries and its increased use in developing countries, “the impact of ICT use on student achievement remains difficult to measure and open to much reasonable debate”. (Trucano, 2005). To solve the issues associated with the adoption of ICTs in Education, efforts have been made to define the “core set of ICT in education indicators by further refining them and suggesting an expanded list of indicators or proxy measures in order to address a wider range of policy concerns” (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2009), while other have called for teacher training (The Stellenbosch Declaration. ICT in Education: Make It Work, 2005). In order to contribute to this analysis, the current study addresses the latter concern by narrowing it down to in-service and preservice ICT teacher training, providing a first-hand account of an emergency remote teaching and learning (ERTL) experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. As in Kalogiannakis’ (2010) study, this is a case of training with ICT for ICT, except that his work addresses the issue from a trainees perspective based on a questionnaire research tool, not providing in-depth details on the structure and content of the training itself. Moreover, the training experience did not occur during an emergency remote teaching situation. Nonetheless, the conclusions are still relevant in the context of this study, pointing towards teachers’ wish for “further in-training programmes concerning the pedagogical development of the ICT use in class practice”. The study also points out an overall concern with the effective use of ICT beyond the technical and operational levels, rooted in sound pedagogical theories and evidence-based research. Botturi (2019), in a more recent study, addresses teacher education on digital and media literacy (DML) using the case-study method, detailing a short-term training incitive combined with data-collection activities among trainees, using pre/post survey and follow-up interviews. The author has concluded that “a change in approach is possible even through a short course” (as was the case) and that “all interviewed teachers had brought some DML activities to their classes”. Although DML is not a synonym with ICT in Education, there is a great affinity between the two concepts, and scrutinizing the nuances may divert research from the fulcrum. As Erstad (2010) clarifies, “there are different frameworks to relate to in our understanding of digital literacy/competence which relate to different levels and issues. However, the key challenge is to go deeper into the implications of increased use of new technologies in educational practices.” Botturi’s (2019) training topic and research approach have inspired the structuring of this chapter, but do not provide a comprehensive platform for comparison as it was not based on a distant learning experience. Moreover, the author states that conclusions drawn from such small-scale study are limited to the context where the training occurred, and “the discussion on DML, DML education and TE should become more context-sensitive and investigate cultural differences and the relationship with national curricula”. The same idea is stated by Davis, Preston and Sahin (2009), who support that “studies that compare the effectiveness of different approaches to ICT teacher training are rare, because ICT-related teacher training normally varies with each context.”. The current research is based on a distant-learning initiative between Europe and Asia, constituting a specific T-L context unusual in literature.