Emergency remote teaching: difficulties from the perspective of mothers and teaches

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic caused considerable social changes in the global scenario. Education was one of the most affected fields, especially basic education that had to migrate to the remote environment without any preparation. To understand how mothers, mother-teachers, and children perceive difficulties during emergency remote education (ERE), an opinion poll was conducted with 395 Brazilian women with children of school age between June and July 2020. Participants who were likewise teachers were differentiated among the sample to point out differences experienced by each of these realities. The results indicate that remote education forced mothers to put great efforts into helping their children with school activities, causing physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion – especially among women with more than one child, who work outside their homes, or who work in teaching. The results also show that children and adolescents aged from 2 to 13 thirteen years old were forced to leave the school environment and continue classes remotely, without prior preparation. Despite the lack of culprits for such a situation, the teaching-learning process throughout 2020 has ceased to be whole to become fragmented and often distraught, with unclear consequences for the involved subjects.