Croatian mathematics teachers and remote education during covid-19: What did they learn?

Abstract

The study reported in this paper aims to show how Croatian lower-secondary mathematics teachers coped with remote education during the lockdown necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The research design refers to the case study of six teachers. On five occasions, the teachers were interviewed about the organisation of their virtual classrooms, forms of assessment, and utilisation of (digital) teaching resources from the beginning of March until the end of June 2020. The study results showed that social parameters were prominent factors in the decision-making of many teachers regarding teaching remotely. For example, the teachers always put students’ needs first: They were accessible almost all day to their students, they tried not to overload students and provided daily feedback on their work. In addition, the teachers in the study raised the issue of academic dishonesty in remote education - the digital environment made cheating easier and meant that the usual assessment formats became unfeasible. Although the findings provide insight into the work of teachers during a pandemic, a larger sample would provide generalisations about the changes in workload that mathematics teachers experienced during remote education.