A leap to the digital era—what are lower and upper secondary school students’ experiences of distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic in Serbia?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to thoroughly examine how students in Serbia experienced their education through distance learning during the 2020 Spring school closures due to the pandemic. Schoolchildren’s multigenre narratives about learning during school closure were elicited by online surveys; qualitative thematic and values analyses were conducted; and data was further analysed by cluster analysis, ANOVA, and t-tests. A total of 45 lower and upper secondary school students produced 106 narratives providing 429 thought units for analysis. Altogether, 6 themes and 26 value codes were identified. They demonstrate the wide range, complexity, and nuanced positioning of students’ experiences towards the new situation, their role in it, and the role of others i.e. teachers and the technology itself. The paper draws implications on the policy and educational-psychological and methodological level.