Exploring Educational Practices for Non-Standard Didactic Situations in Small Schools

Handbook of Research on Establishing Digital Competencies in the Pursuit of Online Learning

Introduction

The research conducted over the years by INDIRE dwells on the term 'remoteness' to indicate the type of isolation these territories experience (Mangione & Cannella, 2021). Although the position of a school is in fact beyond the control of teachers and educational policy makers, isolation (“Remoteness”) requires a great deal of attention because it affects the perception that pupils and families have of the 'education' service and pushes teachers to review the traditional pedagogical practices. Isolation refers not only to a 'physical distance' of rural communities from urban areas, but also to a cultural 'distance', as well as to a sort of hiatus between schools and parents, pessimism about education, and the idea that the educational offering is unable to create future opportunities. Small and rural schools that experience geographical isolation, racial segregation, and limited school and community resources are asked to confront unique challenges (Johnson & Strange, 2007). In these contexts, the idea of educational fragility emerges (Du Plessis & Bailey, 2000; Ryan, 2001) along with a demand from parents for whatsoever interventions capable of supporting quality educational programmes for their children.

A variety of educational interventions based on the use of mobile laboratories (mobile vans carrying learning resources to remote areas), networked independent study paths, dedicated education hotlines, itinerant teachers, summer seminars, correspondence classes, residential summer schools, practice exchanges and online video classes stand out to reduce such a cultural and geographical isolation (Clark & Gorski, 2002). In recent years, there has been an increasing international presence of distance learning system interventions aiming to offer the community an idea of a 'fair and quality school' against conditions of fragility and risk of closure. In Australia, programmes such as School of the Air (SOTA) and School of Isolated and Distance Education (SIDE) use ICTs to do schooling in rural areas and where necessary, in the absence of tenured teachers, it is parents, particularly mothers, who act as pseudo-teachers, or, in other cases, certified educators take on a roving assignment (Tynan & O’Neill, 2007) that complements the educational programming on the net.

The international literature highlights the importance of technology for schools that are geographically isolated. Networking, connecting remotely with related school realities is an effective way, for example, to share useful teaching materials in multi-grade classrooms (Couture et al., 2013) or to enhance external differentiation strategies for class groups. In small schools, information technologies can be primary tools for enrichment, openness and extension of the classroom even in isolated situations (Alpe & Fauguet, 2008; Mangione & Cannella, 2021). Through technologies and forms of extended classroom, teachers and learners from distant schools can cooperate with each other by, for example, creating common teaching units through organisational forms of shared teaching (Alpe & Fauguet, 2008; Cannella & Mangione, 2020).

The two themes of small schools and digital technologies come together and allow non-standard situations associated with small schools to be an opportunity to force and model the school's pedagogical system (Cannella et al., 2021).