Browsing by Author "Mäkelä, Viola"

COVID-19 has had a large impact on education since schools around the world had to quickly move to distance learning. Consequently, this has possibly affected the equality of education. The main focus of this study is to find out how equality is constructed in Finnish teachers’ survey replies about their experiences during the state of emergency and to find out how these teachers in basic education have taken pupils from lower social classes into account according to their experiences when they have been distance teaching. This study was executed as a qualitative study. The research approach of this study was phenomenological. The study was conducted as a part of the project DISKO, digitalisation and distance education in Swedish-speaking school. The data collection was conducted through the E-lomake e-form. 17 teachers from basic education participated in the study from both Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking schools in Finland. The analysis in this study was conducted as a thematic analysis. The majority of teachers in basic education have experienced that schools have not been equal during the Corona spring of 2020. However, this study shows that there are teachers that have experienced this period as equal. The way distance education has been organised has varied between schools. Support measures have also not been organised according to guidelines. Living circumstances and digital equipment in relation to equality were also highlighted during this period. Teachers in basic education have taken pupils from lower social classes into account by lending computers and calling the pupils. Distance education has also been planned out so that pupils who do not get any support from their homes are able to do the exercises by themselves. However, it emerged that there were teachers and schools that had not taken pupils’ socioeconomic status into account. Results in this study indicate that education has not been equal for all children during the state of emergency in the spring of 2020 according to teachers’ experiences. The future holds, how severe the effects of COVID-19 have been on children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.