Schools and teachers throughout Germany have been organizing distance education differently, with some teachers designing lessons via video conferencing, some keeping in touch by phone, email or even by mail, some using school clouds and learning platforms, and others combining asynchronous and synchronous learning, uploading and communicating through platforms and regular video conferencing. Learning platforms did exist in various federal states before the pandemic, often based on the open-source platforms Moodle or ILIAS. Since COVID-19 however, more and more states also provide for commercial platforms, as their own platforms were facing problems with the sudden increase in users. Berlin, for example, recently acquired a license for the digital platform “itslearning” in order to enable schools to switch from the state-owned “Learning space Berlin” to the commercial platform, due to problems with the latter. The digital platforms used vary widely across the states (and also within, as Berlin is not the only state with more than one platform) as does school enrollment in learning platforms.

2 – Has the Covid-19 crisis changed the data policies in education in your country?
Asa European Union member, Germany – like Sweden – has relatively strong data privacy protection regulations. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic however, some schools startedusing platforms whose conformity with the requirements of the GDPR and thus also with the requirements of the state education authorities is not clear. This sudden relaxation of data privacy concerns has been challenged by various actors including students. Schools in some states, for instance, started to use the cloud software Microsoft 365, often against the recommendations of the state data protection officers. In October 2020, the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs approved the use of Microsoft 365 for a trial period. The aim is to get insights for a data protection-compliant solution even though several schools are already using this product.The plans to make MS 365 available for use in schools in Baden-Württemberg haveled to protest and a joint statement by students, teachers, parents, teachers’ unions and different associations. At a meeting of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs at the Chancellor’s Office on 21 September 2020, the “gradual development of an education platform by the federal government” was established. The federal states set themselves the goal to develop country-specific cloud solutions. COVID-related policies in 2020 led to agreements on supplementary financial cooperation between the federal and state governments in three areas: hardware, administration and teacher training.

3 – How have remote emergency education provisions (e.g. emergency technological infrastructures, hardware, software, home visits, other new practices) affected teachers and students from marginalized populations in your country? Which technological infrastructure do they have access to?
We are increasingly observing that it is precisely those schools, where the parents can co-finance the necessary hardware that are geared towards the use of more technology. We consider this development problematic because it remains limited to schools that can assume a certain socioeconomic income among parents. High schools and many private schools use digital devices ahead of other types of schools. A survey of 22,000 parents in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia suggests that the school types with the greatest educational challenges are at the greatest disadvantage when it comes to technical equipment for homeschooling: While around 60 percent of “Gymnasium”(more elite, university preparation high schools) students in this federal state are provided with digital devices such as tablets, only 30 percent of students at other types of school have access to them. Since the survey took place online, it can be assumed that families without digital equipment are underrepresented. According to the KIM study, 97 percent of children in Germany have a cell phone or smartphone in the home, but not all of them have sufficient data volume or Wi-Fi at home. There are many students who can currently only do their learning tasks on their parents’ smartphone. Thus emergency remote education exacerbates already existing educational inequalities.

Some schools lend out laptops, for example, but there are also charity projects that distribute laptops as donations. There have often been complaints that state money for digital devices has not been spent so far, but perhaps that is a good thing. Before COVID 19, for example, the purchase of 3D printers at schools was discussed, but now it is clearer to many what the money is really needed for. A new emergency program with 500 million euros for mobile devices at schools is an important step. However, a teachers’ union has criticized that inequality is not taken into consideration when distributing these funds to schools. And not only hardware should be funded. The social component is also important: For many things, you don’t need complicated hardware or even the latest, but above all good ideas. Good ideas, in turn, require time and personnel, for example to develop low-barrier services for affected children in youth centers or now also during emergency care.

4 – Would you speak of a “pandemics pedagogy” (Williamson et al, 2020) in your country? If there is one, which features does it have?
Thinking of pedagogic practices that have emerged or intensified since the pandemic, three aspects come to mind. First, many more teachers have now experimented with digital educational media. This will shape everyday life. Second, it has become clear to many for which tasks digital technologies are well suited and for which they are less well suited. In Germany, the focus has always been on “digitization”, which has steered the discussion in the wrong direction. In the narrower sense, it means converting analog things into the digital – in other words, the digital textbook instead of the printed one, or the smartboard instead of the chalkboard. But now teachers are experimenting with the affordances of digital tech. For example, students create explanatory videos and upload them to the school cloud. Tech is being used to reach out to students, to maintain social contact, rather than to fulfil the curriculum. So, it’s not a matter of transferring analog things into the digital realm, but rather of conceptually incorporating digital educational media into the classroom. A third aspect is the raised awareness of the different technical prerequisites of the students. Socio-economic inequality exists fundamentally in the education system, but in the last months it has become clearer to some schools how digital media exclude some students from learning and how (low barrier) media can be used to make learning accessible for all. This may lead to the development of new digital educational media in the future that are better suited than the current ones to help shape a just and inclusive society.

Photos by Sergey Kolomiyets (top) and Adrian Swancar (below) on Unsplash

By contrast, at the senior high school level, instruction for all students has been delivered online. For this level, learning management systems were already commonplace before the crisis with these platforms acting as centres of coordination for classroom activities. Moving to distance education, these platforms and the content on them continue to take a key role, but in many ways, it is video-conferencing platforms that have become substitutes for the classroom. In this sense, the model for senior high school instruction centered around face-to-face lessons complimented by self-study with textbooks and other material resources has not dramatically changed for most subject areas without practical moments.

2 – Has the Covid-19 crisis changed the data policies in education in your country?
As a European Union member, Sweden has a relatively strong data privacy protection regime nationally that follows the General Data Protection Regulation. However, the school system can be characterised as highly decentralized and as such, responsibility for data policy specific for schooling is largely decided at the level of municipalities, not-for profit schools and commercial school companies. Before the crisis, several influential voices called for better national oversight of the relationship between schools and commercial internet platform providers, but this discussion has been somewhat quieted. As is the case in many countries, the crisis in Sweden engendered what can be described as ‘fast policy’ making with examples of local schooling providers rapidly setting rules and guidelines for the use of new digital platforms while signing new contracts with commercial providers to increase the capacity of their infrastructure.

3 – How have remote emergency education provisions (e.g. emergency technological infrastructures, hardware, software, home visits, other new practices) affected teachers and students from marginalized populations in your country? Which technological infrastructure do they have access to?
Even in Sweden with over 90% of the population with broadband internet access, issues of marginalization exist. At the level of technical access, many students have access to school provided laptops or tablets, but not all do and not all have access to a fast internet connection. Issues of hardware access and connection have been present in northern rural areas of the country, but the lack of school closures for younger children has limited the effects.

Beyond technical access, other issues of marginalization have been reported in the media. In particular, the issue of students lacking a study space despite internet access has been raised in relation to some communities in the inner suburbs of the large cities. Contrary to the general norm in Sweden, some students in these areas live in multi-generation family arrangements and often in relatively small apartments. In response, some senior high schools have opened spaces for those students who lack a place to do their schoolwork.

4 – Would you speak of a “pandemics pedagogy” (Williamson et al, 2020) in your country? If there is one, which features does it have?
If there is such a thing as a “pandemics pedagogy” in Sweden it would be distinctly different in primary and junior schools to senior high schools. While schools for younger children have maintained some degree of normalcy by staying open, they have adapted to having large numbers of children kept home for showing symptoms of illness. At the same time, teachers have been able to assume that parents can create accounts on the many instructional content platforms that have been offering free access during the crisis. This may have produced a kind of parallel semi-formal pedagogy.

By contrast, a “pandemics pedagogy” of senior high school in Sweden would likely imply a rather traditional instructional approach, perhaps more traditional than that before the crisis. Synchronous video-based sessions have become a dominant mode of instruction as they allow traditional teaching to be digitized with relatively little adaptation. This is an understandable choice given the available infrastructure in Sweden and the time constraints associated with the rapid switch to distance education. However, synchronous video can be rather limiting in terms of the types of instructional activities it supports, potentially leading to more traditional lecture style teaching.

Photo by United Nations COVID-19 Response (top) and Sharon McCutcheon (below) on Unsplash

The mobile phone is the most available and used device for remote schooling, and only 47% of students have a computer for school use. In many cases, the students have only access to a shared pre paid phone. Only few schools can organize synchronic meetings, mostly from the private sector; and they frequently use Zoom for that purpose.

The national plan Seguimos Educando (we keep teaching) includes a 3 hour per day special programming in public media —tv and radio—that follows the curriculum of primary and secondary school and there are also printed booklets delivered nationwide. Recently the Ministry launched the Juana Manso Federal Plan, a virtual platform for schools including virtual classrooms, open educational resources and tools to create online lessons.

2 – Has the Covid-19 crisis changed the data policies in education in your country?
The COVID-19 crisis is showing some impacts in the data policies in education in Argentina. The first policy adopted when the attendance to school was suspended on March 19 was not to charge data consumption for the .edu sites, including schools, universities and educational portals. This entailed an agreement with ISP and mobile phone service providers. Later in August, the National Ministry of Education launched the Juana Manso Federal Plan, which contemplates digital resources and virtual classrooms, that will later include a new proposal for data management at schools, which seems to be a first attempt to tackle the data issue in the educational system as a whole. Also in late August, a presidential Decree declared for the first time that internet, mobile phones and cable TV are considered public services, and freezed the tariffs until the end of 2020.

Different provinces or local governments are extending their virtual education proposals, designing online campus or providing digital resources throughout a .edu platform.

3 – How have remote emergency education provisions (e.g. emergency technological infrastructures, hardware, software, home visits, other new practices) affected teachers and students from marginalized populations in your country? Which technological infrastructure do they have access to?
The technological infrastructure students and teachers have access to is widely conditioned by income and the practices that have been documented are very much influenced by the inequalities in the social structure. The main device for pedagogical continuity is the mobile phone, in most cases, a shared pre paid phone. Two national surveys, one done by the National Ministry and the other by UNICEF show great disparities between access and pedagogical possibilities according to income: students from poor families are not able to connect every day or to participate in synchronic meetings.

Less of 50% of households in Argentina have quality access to an internet connection, 3 in 10 have no access at all; 27% can only connect through the mobile phone (using 3G or 4G) and 3% have no connection at all. 53% of households don´t have a computer dedicated to educational use. Access and connectivity in households where students attend private schools duplicates those of students that attend public schools.

Even though there have been a special credit line for teachers to buy notebooks, there is no public policy dealing with hardware and software equipment and many teachers are still using the netbooks delivered by the Plan Conectar Igualdad, 10 years ago.

4 – Would you speak of a “pandemics pedagogy” (Williamson et al, 2020) in your country? If there is one, which features does it have?
Pandemic pedagogies in Argentina are highly conditioned by previous inequalities that are getting worst in this period. While some schools can manage to implement remote schooling throughout different strategies and resources, combining the use of different software and expecting children to keep up with a designed plan (children that frequently have familiar support), other schools are struggling to make the school present in populations which have very limited access to technologies and connectivity. The National Ministry of Education designed and implemented different policies for reaching those who are being unconnected or disconnected from the educational system with printed and public media resources, and also designing future plans to reconnect schools and students, in a similar fashion as the Plan Conectar Igualdad did from 2010 to 2015 (the Plan distributed a laptop per student in secondary schools and implemented a large teacher´s training programme) but with much less resources. This plans intend to centralize a general policy for ICT in education, regarding hardware and software distribution as well as teacher’s training and digital resources and an expectation to foster teacher’s autonomy in the design of digital learning.

Photos by Sharon McCutcheon (top) and Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

1 – Most school systems in the world have organized emergency assemblages to deal with the Covid-19 crisis. What role have digital platforms played in these arrangements?

2 – Has the Covid-19 crisis changed the data policies in education in your country?

3 – How have remote emergency education provisions (e.g. emergency technological infrastructures, hardware, software, home visits, other new practices) affected teachers and students from marginalized populations in your country? Which technological infrastructure do they have access to?

4 – Would you speak of a “pandemics pedagogy” (Williamson et al, 2020) in your country? If there is one, which features does it have?

Argentina (by Patricia Ferrante)

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Sweden (by Thomas Hillman and Svea Kiesewetter)

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Germany (by Felicitas Macgilchrist and Birte Schröder)

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