Teacher Candidates’ Opinions on Educational (Un)usual Routine in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Report from the Research

Abstract

During the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the system of education in Poland was obliged by ministerial regulations to implement the solutions of distance learning. The aim of the research was to learn the opinions of students – prospective teachers – about their educational usual routine during the pandemic, when distance learning, for many years treated as supplementary to traditional education, became the basic way of learning and teaching. The research interests included many dimensions of educational routine, referring both to students’ subjective/personal space (i.e., mental and physical dimension) and the external space in which they had to function (i.e., material, practical, and socio-emotional dimension). The research objective was to diagnose the existing situation and find out which elements of the educational routine considerably contribute to assessing distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic as effective. The study was carried out using a diagnostic poll. Students of early education at the Pedagogical University of Krakow were asked to complete an original anonymous online questionnaire. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the collected empirical material was used to describe the educational (un)usual routine of the participants. Based on the analysis, a statistically significant correlation was found which showed that the students’ assessment of distance learning effectiveness is determined by the following elements of educational (un)usual routine: teachers’ use of equipment and software that ensures good communication with the students, teachers’ fluent use of distance learning tools, teachers’ skills of sharing knowledge and experience with students, teachers’ skills of activating students, easy communication with teachers, teachers’ empathetic attitude, and students’ high assessment of their own digital competence. The discovered regularities can be used to formulate guidelines whose implementation may contribute to raising the quality of online university teaching.