Written by: Koutsogiannis Dimitrios, Papantoniou Eleni, Zagka Eleftheria, Matos Anastasios, Nezi Maria & Polkas Lampros
Ιntroduction
During the COVID-19 pandemic period, schools were urged to shift to online learning and to the mandatory use of digital media. As a result, schools were suddenly converted into laboratories, in which a live experiment was taking place; given the extensive scientific interest over the last decade in digitalising schooling, we would like to suggest that the study of this live experiment can give us the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to this research. The first critical readings of this COVID-19 period indicate an acceleration of phenomena which have already been highlighted by the critically oriented literature (Selwyn, Maggilchrist & Williamson, 2020).
Recognising the research interest of this specific period during which schools in Greece remained closed (March 11th to June 2nd 2020) and transitioned to remote education, the Center for the Greek Language (henceforth CGL) designed and conducted an extensive research project. The aim of the research was to look into what kind of schooling emerged during the period that schools were closed. To this aim, the CGL collected data from a) the diaries of twenty K-12 educators and ten Educational Coordinators who recorded their practices, reflections and feelings once a week, b) 920 questionnaires filled in by students aged between 10 and 18, c) texts from institutional discourse (by educational policy stakeholders, teachers’ union announcements,) and d) educational publications.
The initial findings indicate that the wide use of digital media in schools constructed a complex, polycentric and multilayered (Blommaert, 2010) reality (Koutsogiannis, 2020). In order to give an indicative example of this complexity, in the present essay we aim to focus on the analysis of an interesting event which took place during the initial pandemic period: the organisation of an e-conference that was attended by 35,000 teachers (section 3).
The authors of the present essay took part in this conference: the first one as a speaker, the other four as members of the organisational committee and one as a conferrer. We all recorded notes about the conference on our diaries, elements of which are used in the analysis section (section 3), and we also used data from formal educational policy texts.
What follows is a short presentation of the theoretical framework used in our study.
Theoretical frame
Αs has already been mentioned, on April 25th and 26th 2020, an e-conference, titled ‘Distance Education and School Reality’ was held in Greece. There were some quite unique features about this conference: Three Greek Ministers of Education–two former ones and the current Minister - representing a wide spectrum of the political parties[1] in Greece as well as the Minister of Education of Cyprus, welcomed and greeted the attendees, almost 35,000 individuals, a huge number of conference participants for the Greek[2], as well as for the international educational reality. This two-day conference was held during the COVID-19 pandemic which kept Greek citizens at home for 42 days, only a few days before the relief measures were announced.
We consider this particular educational event a nexus practice (Scollon & Scollon, 2004), in which various threads are interweaved connecting large and small scales of educational activity. The analysis of this event is expected to provide answers to questions like how global issues, like the pandemic, are regionally recontextualised and why; how the realisation of such an event is the result of various strategies, in some cases contradictory to each other; how the affordances and the dynamics of the new media shaped the content and the very rationale of the conference; how the field of Distance Education emerged as a dominant issue during the pandemic.
In other words, we consider that in this particular educational event a multilayered reality (Blommaert, 2005; Koutsogiannis et al., 2015) is encapsulated, the analysis of which can reveal crucial parameters for a deeper analysis/understanding of the (Greek) educational reality (see Koutsogiannis 2020), as well as for the enrichment of the current literature on digital media in education.
Although the analysis at a nexus practice level does indicate the systemic dimension of social events, it does not provide adequate indications of the crucial role of agency; therefore we would like to use in our analysis the notion of “strategies”, as it is used in Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 2003, pp. 110-11, 214-215). Fairclough (2005, p.55) points out that in times of crisis of social systems, space is created “for strategic interventions to signify and redirect the course of events (or to protect the existing ‘fix’)” and continues:
The dialectic between structures and strategies (i.e. between structure and agency) is fundamental in this theory –structures constrain but do not determine strategies, structures are produced and reproduced through strategies, structures can be transformed through strategies. Moments of crisis open up struggles of hegemony between competing strategies.
Within this theoretical frame, we consider that the period of the pandemic created opportunities for mobility and “struggles of hegemony” in the Greek educational system. We use the concept of strategies, because it is more dynamic than the concept of agency[3], in order to attribute the intentional mobility noted to a dynamic power game for the acquisition of advantages during the period of the pandemic crisis.
The online conference as a nexus practice
Progressivism and big data as official strategies
In order to understand in depth specific aspects of this two-day conference, we have to situate it in the large scale of human activity, therefore we will need to provide some more information about the Greek educational reality.
The majority of Greek schools are state schools and the education system is strongly centralised, with the dominant teaching practice driven by a single textbook per subject; textbooks are prescribed by the state and are distributed to all students free of charge.
As far as digital media is concerned, emphasis is placed on creating infrastructure (giving priority to equipping schools with computer labs), while the techno-centric discourse is prevailing, constructing EdTech as tools that will change the educational reality. However, there has been no renewal of school infrastructure due to the recent economic crisis[4] that hit the country for a decade. The economic crisis and especially the measures imposed on Greek society by the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) led a large part of the Greek population to unemployment (28 % in 2015); as a result, a large percentage of the Greek population does not have access to basic technological infrastructure in their homes[5].
At the same time, in-service teacher training programs have placed emphasis on the creative use of digital media. However, the number of teachers who have been trained is relatively small, while the current school structure leaves no room for a creative digital pedagogy, even by the most experienced and trained teachers (Koutsogiannis et al., 2015).
In short, we could say that the pandemic found the Greek educational system characterised by a contradictory educational policy in relation to digital media: on the one hand, emphasis is placed on a book-based pedagogy and on the other, in service teacher training programs with a different direction are not facilitated by the existing educational infrastructures. The official educational policy on the issue of digital literacy is strongly associated with the teaching of informatics as a school subject, while only a few teachers make wide use of new media at schools and, in any case, such use is not favored by the design of the Greek school.
Given the above educational reality, when the schools closed, the Greek Ministry was forced to make choices that seemed to be revolutionary, in relation to the Greek educational context and tradition. Some indicative initiatives include the following ones:
Given the fact that teachers’ experience in the pedagogic use of digital media and in distance education was quite limited, coupled with the fact that it was not possible for teachers to continue with the traditional textbook-based teaching, the Greek Ministry chose an education policy which incorporates a rather pedagogically progressivist strategy. For the first time, teachers were allowed to carry out their instruction without taking into account the prescribed syllabus, a concept of major importance in the Greek education system. The relevant Circular of the Ministry of Education mentions that "the goal is not to cover the syllabus but to maintain students' contact with the learning process". The Ministry actually required teachers
a) to design activities aiming to ensure comprehension of the taught material (repetition and deepening)
b) to develop reading activities (reading a whole literary or scientific book[6]),
c) to introduce creative activities using distance learning collaborative tools (learning communities and communication skills),
d) to incorporate art related activities promoting, thus, an alternative approach to the instructional content.
In this context, teachers, for the first time and to a large extent, were given the opportunity to take initiatives in planning their own learning activities and to take responsibilities regarding the educational content and process.
As for teachers’ participation in distance teaching, there was a high level of autonomy due to the fact that it was impossible for the educational system to efficiently react in a short period of time. More specifically, although the Ministry implicitly, yet clearly, promoted the distance mode of education, teachers were not obliged to adopt it. Similarly, participation in the remote schooling was not mandatory for students either. Since there was no centrally designed plan, schools and teachers were given significant autonomy in the use of digital media. For the first time, the Ministry of Education, through the official Circulars, gave the opportunity to teachers and Schools to choose for themselves the digital tools for their courses. At the same time, in order to better support remote education, the Ministry proposed the formation of a three-member committee at each school. It was the first time that the Greek Schools were required to function in a less centralised manner, through internal planning and mutual support committees.
What emerges from the above is that a key axis of the official policy was to make the system work. Since this could not be achieved by implementing current contextual standards, decentralising and strengthening the elements of progressivism for teachers and schools, was chosen as strategy. In fact, promoting decentralisation and teachers’ initiative, were a forced, rather than a conscious choice, since it was imposed by the above described situation. It is indicative that the new law, passed after the pandemic, does not retain any of these elements but makes education more exam-oriented and centralised.
Another goal of the official educational policy that emerged over time was to demonstrate the efficacy of the system and the uninterrupted continuity of the educational procedure. To this aim, the Ministry selected a data-based strategy. A specific international platform for synchronous distance learning was promptly selected; this was "offered free of charge to the Greek Ministry’. Additionally, the use of asynchronous environments, especially “e-class” and “e-me”[7], was encouraged through Circulars, although the infrastructure of the Ministry of Education was extremely poor, thus being unable to meet the needs of so many teachers. These specific technological choices allow the collection of quantitative data, such as number of contact hours, number of classes, percentage of participating teachers and students, etc.
It becomes clear that the organisation of such a massive conference favored these official strategies, since it highlighted the high degree of teacher mobility and, therefore, the effectiveness of state initiatives. It thus came as no surprise, that the Minister of Education was the first to officially address this two-day meeting.
Different strategies, same nexus practice
In order to better explain the rationale of the two-day conference, we have tried to situate it within the context of the official policy strategies. Teachers, shortly after schools’ closure, puzzled by the new reality, began to anxiously ask for support through social media groups and university training programs that mainly focused on the basic principles of Distance Education and, thus, counted thousands of participating. This direction was promoted by the fact that there are laboratories in Greek Universities as well as the "Hellenic Open University" (EAP), which study the principles of “Open and Distance Learning”. These institutions considered this instability of the education system a great opportunity for them to start playing a role in the educational reality. So, as they already had ready-made material on the basics of the Open and Distance Learning, they began to direct teachers’ needs to their training programs. It is worth mentioning that this strategy delivered tangible results, since the Ministry of Education commissioned teacher training in a series of courses[8] in the "Hellenic Open University" (EAP) that took place when the period of the pandemic was almost over.
Such strategies can explain both the theme of the two-day conference as well as teachers’ mass participation, since “distance learning education” became the catch phrase for successful teaching. In this context, teachers perceived the two-day conference as training and in their comments to the conference organisation committee, they asked for "more similar trainings".
It has already been pointed out that the priorities of the official education policy were moving towards two directions: to the direction of granting a high degree of autonomy and initiative and to the direction of utilising quantitative data as a strategy to prove that the state policy is successful. These two strategies were also served by a third practice: solving technical problems in an educational system with serious infrastructure issues, as noted above. Given that the subject of Informatics is the only school element that promotes digital literacy in the Greek school, all Information Technology (henceforth I.T.) teachers played a central role in supporting their schools during this period.
Taking into serious consideration this context, we can understand both the initiative for the organisation of this two-day conference and, to a very large extent, its themes and content. The idea for the conference was suggested by the Educational Coordinators (S.E.E.- official educational supervisors) specialising in I.T. instruction and it was organised by the Regional Centers for Educational Planning (PE.K.E.S.). It should be mentioned here that the Regional Centers for Educational Planning had not been assigned any clear or specific role for supporting the teachers during the pandemic and the current government was actually planning to replace the institution of S.E.E. and PE.KE.S. Thus, one of the main goals of these Officials (S.E.E. and PE.KE.S) amidst the pandemic was to highlight the importance of their roles, one of which was to create a collaborative network across the country, with the aim of organising and running the two-day online conference
The crucial role of the Educational Coordinators in this conference became very obvious as they assigned themselves the role of the meeting Chairs and they often welcomed and greeted the attendees. Additionally, in the draft program, all the presentations focused on the utilisation of digital media as tools, a focus which is obviously attributed to the leading role of the I.T. Educational Coordinators. Their main gain was that the Ministry of Education postponed their replacement, at least for the time being.
In sum, this conference was the nexus practice of many competing strategies of human entities attempting to gain space in a period of instability.
Technology matters
So far, the focus has been placed on strategies whose starting point was ‘anthropos’. However, this event could not have taken place or would not be understood without taking into consideration the important role of technology. The conference was organised within a very short time of about 25 days and this was achieved because a variety of platforms as well as their combination were employed. Of course, the extremely limited time for the preparation of the event had an impact on the quality of the paper presentations, since there was not enough time for the required academic procedures to be followed.
The use of technology facilitated the dissemination of this event. Social networks and its local promotion by PE.K.E.S played a significant role in this. The organisers initially estimated that it would be attended by 2,000 people max, but multiple supporting actions led to an impressive increase of participation which rose week after week. PE.K.E.S, as an organising authority, played a crucial role in the promotion of the event in every region: before the launching of the event and for the period 20-27 April 2020, on line statistical monitoring of participants’ applications was posted on the event’s site [9]. The ever-increasing participation numbers were projected as a successful response of the educational structures to the teachers’ educational needs, as a proof of the importance of the two-day conference and its content focusing on distance learning and as a presumption of the necessity of PE.K.E.S as teacher support structures (see section 3.2.). Thus, PE.K.E.S used also a digital data-based strategy, similar to the Ministry but for totally different purpose.
At the same time, the digital media contributed to the transformation of the two-day event into a kind of popular spectacle. The conference had several characteristics of an entertainment event, reminding live broadcasts on Greek television where real-time positive or negative comments’ flow is shown for any action taken. Similarly, approving and disapproving comments were recorded on YouTube live streaming, such as: “Visionary! Congratulations!”, “Excellent !!!!!!!!!”, “I think we will hear bitter truths now!”, “You put your voice in our thoughts”.
Conclusion
The aim of this paper was to show that this two-day conference is an interesting case study, a nexus practice, in which different aspects of educational reality both at a local and at a global scale are intermingled. From this perspective, this teleconference is part of a glocal reality which resulted from a combination of global phenomena (e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic, international platforms etc.) and local educational policy and strategies. This dialectical trans-local nexus perspective (Koutsogiannis, 2015) rarely stands out in analysis related with Ed Tech, where the dominant approaches are technocentric and a-cultural.
The analysis shows the key role of strategies developed by social protagonists who -although they serve different interests- coexist and seek common goals. The emergence of the complicated role of the educational protagonists is not common in research where the prevailing perception is that digital media support the agency, a perception which rarely takes into account power, ideology, rivalry and interests.
It also emerged that technology played an important role, which confirms the recent approaches focusing on highlighting the "degraded" role of non-human parameters. The analysis shows that digital media can be considered "actors" (Latour, 2002), having a key role in shaping the two-day teleconference. But this paper underlines the fact that the role of the human and non-human actors are strongly interconnected, therefore, it is impossible to focus on the one totally independently from the other.
Finally, the important role of data is highlighted (Carrington, 2018), not as it is mainly discussed in literature, but as part of offline official and not official strategies that use digital media for data collection.
To conclude, the event of the discussed teleconference makes clear that the use of digital media in education is related to a complex, polycentric and multilayered reality. It is a totally different perspective from that developed in Ed Tech dominant discourses. This event, also, indicates that totally opposing strategies, thanks to technology, can contribute to the creation of a unique event, which is very different from the sum of its individual elements.
References
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Fairclough, N. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.
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Koutsogiannis, D. Chatzikyriakou, I., Antonopoulou, S., Adampa, V. & Pavlidou, M. (2015). Classroom discourse analysis: Language teaching in a changing world. Thessaloniki: Center for the Greek language [in Greek].
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Footnotes
[1] It is worth pointing out that this was one of the rare occasions where an educational event led to such a broad political consensus.
[2] The total number of educators in Greece includes 64,250 teachers working in the secondary sector and 65,248 ones working in the primary sector.
[3] The widely used –and therefore vague term “agency” is seldom connecting to systems and to struggles of hegemony.
[4] During the period 2008-2018, European institutions were much occupied with Greece, due to its large economic debt and the ongoing memoranda it signed with the other EU countries and the IMF.
[5] According to the Digital Transformation Observatory of the Association of Greek Industrialists (AGI, 2019), households with internet access occupy the 27th place out of the 28 EU countries, while in terms of internet exclusion, as a % of the population that has never used it, Greece ranks 26th out of 28 EU countries. One of the reasons for the low levels of digital maturity, presented throughout Greek society is, according to AGI, "the economic and social inequalities due to the deep and protracted economic crisis".
[6] Reading whole books is considered an innovative activity in the Greek school, since it is not common.
[7] E-class and E-me are local educational platforms developed through sponsoring of the Greek Ministry of Education.
[8] There are 7 free course modules, in the MOOCs type, "compiled in restricted traffic conditions and with limited available means and time" (https://learn.eap.gr/my/ ).
[9] See the statistics in the Educational Video Conference’ web page: https://pekesexae2020.pdekritis.gr/registration/