Theorising on covid-19 educational emergency: magnifying glasses for the field of educational technology

Re-organization of assessment during the educational emergency in primary and secondary teaching: an Italian case

“…To understand the assessment practices and the potential changes in it, we have created a survey as a part of a large scale, multi-phase, mixed methods research (Eradze et al, 2021). This survey was developed following the phase 1 ethnographic study in teacher online communities (three Facebook groups) and points of interests.…”

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the educational landscape in the short, mid and long term. The problem of the access to education has caused what we call an educational emergency (Eradze et al, 2021) which has become the first challenge, needing an immediate response. Such a response was the introduction of large-scale distance learning, or better, its temporary form -Emergency Remote Teaching (Hodges et al, 2020).…”

“…Many have investigated questions such as teachers' attitudes (Giovannella et al, 2021), change in motivation and digital skills in the context of the forced transition (Beardsley et al, 2021), while also tried to identify potential teacher professional development opportunities in them (Albó et al, 2020;Luik & Lepp, 2020). It is worth noting that the pandemic self-initiated professional learning networks through social media have been successfully used to support the teachers in the transition to ERT in different countries (i.e., (Beardsley et al, 2021;Eradze et al, 2021;Johnson, 2020;Johnson et al, 2022;Luik & Lepp, 2020). In the context of the current educational emergency, "teacher advice seeking on Twitter seemed to shift from serving immediate instructional needs to focussing on professional development and the creation of their own digital content" (Beardsley et al, 2021).…”

“…Some authors have conceptualized the COVID-19 educational crisis in three phases: disruption, transition and re-imagining, seeing opportunities of reorganization in the current emergency (Fullan et al, 2020). We consider the COVID-19 related disruptions and educational re-organisation processes worth exploring, especially in the light of the use of technologies (Eradze et al, 2021;Rapanta et al, 2021), we have examined the issue of assessment from the Italian perspective, starting from the ethnographic study of Italian teacher online communities (Eradze et al, 2021), which revealed significant assessment reorganization uncertainties and related re-organization opportunities emerging in the teacher peer-learning communities. As a result, we have created a survey to explore possible changes in the assessment practices in the context of the COVID-19 disruptions and shed light on some of the issues such as teachers' beliefs about the importance of assessment before and after the pandemic, the use of remote assessment before the pandemic, and assessment reorganization following the pandemic.…”

Teaching and learning online: lesson learnt from the pandemic

“…While some have welcomed it as an opportunity that would be leading to positive changes in the education system, others, on the contrary, have warned about the implications of the pandemic for the reinforcement of the tech giants' agenda (such as Microsoft, Google, etc.) (Eradze, Bardone & Dipace, 2021, Williamson et al, 2020.…”