New school culture? The question on potential impact of distance education during the COVID-19 pandemy

Abstract

Although the origins of remote education date back to the 18th century (Kentnor, 2015) however, only recently, in the second decade of the 21st century, due to a natural experiment that the COVID-19 pandemic has become, remote learning began to play a key role in mass global education. In these unprecedented times of reorganisation of time and space in order to ensure the continuity of social life, the school, subjected to a major organisational transformation, changed its form from the traditional setting (characterised by a clear division of time and space, i.e. lessons in the school classroom) to the virtual setting, escaping this division. The aim of the conducted research study is to describe to what extent the functioning of the institution of the school has changed (if at all) due to its virtual environment, with particular reference to the school culture understood as “the beliefs, views, attitudes and relationships, and the written and unwritten rules that shape every aspect of the school as an institution (...) and community” (Ward, Burke, 2004:1). In other words, the question considered is how and what has changed in the functioning of the school, with particular regards to school rituals, teaching strategies, and the interactions of school actors, as a result of remote education? Has online education changed the way teachers and students behave and perceive school?

The results of the study reveal that the functioning of the "virtual school" as compared to the "traditional school" in its essence remains unchanged due to the strong, long-standing cultural codes instilled by and within the institution of the school. In the virtual classroom, as in the material classroom, assessment and grading are teachers' strategies for recalling the definition of the school situation; moreover, they often become a survival strategy to maintain control over the group, in order to sustain ontological security (Giddens, 1984) in the performance of the school roles of teacher and student.