When a Sudden Crisis Accelerates Changes
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused every educational system in the world to experience lockdowns, quarantines and various degrees of remote teaching and learning. In many countries, schools have moved into a mainly remote communication mode. Nearly 85% of PISA-participant countries organized online educational programs during the COVID-19 pandemic (UNESCO 2020a). On the other hand, only 36% of residents of lower-middle income countries have internet access (Vegas, 2020) and, in order to provide instructional content or educational support, many countries used both traditional media for distance teaching and learning – such as radio, TV and regular mail – combined with more modern virtual platforms to include video conferencing tools, such as Twitch, Meet, Teams, Zoom or others In April of 2020, close to 90% of high-income countries were providing remote learning opportunities, close to 60% were using online platforms, and almost 35% distributed educational videos online (TWB, 2020).
In this environment of change, forced on them at dizzying speed, schools need a great degree of confidence from families and vice-versa. The mismatch in understanding of the different communication acts that take place in schools leads to conflicts that could and should be overcome with written protocols (a Digital Decalogue) to benefit both remote teaching and learning and online relational digital interaction between teachers, families and children-students, and in a wider view, with all educational agents.
The study in this chapter pursues an awakening to the importance of developing a communications framework for digital interaction as a collaborative strategy to reach better quality of family-school relationships in post-pandemic times. In it, the authors reflect on the digital interaction skills needed to collaborate in such a project, and how effective guided negotiation can help families and schools reach virtual agreements on educational subjects, especially when emotions, vulnerability and uncertainty are amplified by a pandemic.
Therefore, the goal of this chapter is to describe the process of participation of teachers and families in the school’s digital transformation, an ongoing project in Barcelona (Catalonia), during and after the COVID-19 lockdown. It seeks to demonstrate that gamification categories can help identify different informational content, and points at some mismatches between teachers and parents when talking about and negotiating on explicit communication tools or strategies (components), implicit processes and habits when interacting in remote mode (mechanics) and meta-reflection on principles and values (dynamics) occurring in the process of communication online.