Education in times of COVID-19: remote teaching and teacher exhaustion

Abstract

In this article, we aim to analyze a discursive web established from the need to adapt face-to-face activities to remote activities in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, during the social distancing caused by COVID-19. The news section of the websites of three organizations (SINEPE/RS, SINPRO/RS and CPERS/RS), as well as news published in the online version of the newspaper Zero Hora, in the period between March 16th and May 31st, 2020 were taken as empirical material. The research was developed based on a foucaultian orientation of discourse analysis. From the empiric material, two analytical axes were built: “Remote teaching between opportunities, difficulties and inequalities” and “Teaching taken to exhaustion”. Analysis shows the strengthening of disciplinary mechanisms, the growth of inequalities, some optimism with long-term effects and the intensification of teaching work, associated with the possibility of counter-conduct.