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

ABSTRACT

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought challenges to the educational system on micro, meso or macro levels. In this article, we posit that the current emergency augmented, what we call the meso space, while at the same time representing a sort of magnifying glass to observe and examine how distance education tools, practices and new forms of collaboration can emerge within the patterns of re-organising. This article focuses on the meaning of the Covid-19 emergency-related changes in the field of educational technologies from a theoretical and practical perspective. While the article mainly represents a theoretical contribution, the main conclusions are derived from, illustrated and substantiated with an ethnographic case study based on Italian teacher online communities. As a result, while this article proposes much-needed theorising in the field of educational technologies during the Covid-19 crisis, it also brings insights into the practice with EdTech tools and teacher professional development.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• educational technology
• technology-enhanced learning
• theorising
• design
• teacher professional development

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Damien Lanfrey and Donatella Solda for fruitful discussions, and Nadia Casolari for her valuable contribution to the data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://en.unesco.org/Covid-19/educationresponse

Additional information

Funding

The research has been partially supported by Erasmus+ grant 2019-1-ES01-KA203-065558 and SA Innove Foundation (Enhancement of Research and Development Capacity of Teacher Education Competence Centre Pedagogicum) grant NSVHI19074, European Commission.

Notes on contributors

Maka Eradze

Maka Eradze has obtained her PhD with specialisation in Technology-enhanced Learning from the University of Tallinn (Estonia). Currently, she is a programme manager of educational research at the University of Foggia and an honorary fellow/subject expert in educational research methods at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy).

Emanuele Bardone

Emanuele Bardone obtained his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Pavia (Italy). Currently, he is working as an associate professor of educational technology at the University of Tartu (Estonia).

Anna Dipace

Anna Dipace is a PhD in Pedagogy and an associate professor of Research Methods in Education at the University of Foggia (Italy).