Distance learning as seen by teachers, pupils and families: a self-evaluation process in an elementary school

Abstract

Because of the Covid-19 outbreak, since March 2020, Italian schools have had to face distance learning. Some schools even undertook distance-learning monitoring. This study will document a self-assessment initiative in an elementary school of Rome, which aims at learning about teaching practices and tools im-plemented by teachers, the technical, relational and teaching difficulties, the pupils and families’ opinions about the school and about teachers initiatives. The descriptive survey was conducted by means of online questionnaires, which were administered to three groups: the questionnaire of the SIRD national research on distance learning was administered to the teachers; other two questionnaires were constructed for pupils and families by a team of school teachers. 138 teachers, 457 pupils and 702 family members re-sponded to the questions.
The purpose of the school was not only to know – by consulting the three components involved – what happened in the emergency phase, but also to have data in order to plan future initiatives. The article will present the main results that emerged from closed questions; open questions results will be analyzed in a subsequent study. Various aspects emerge from the data, including: general satisfaction of families and pupils with the prox-imity and availability of teachers, their satisfaction with the collaboration with colleagues and with the ini-tiatives launched by the school. The increase of working hours and the low effectiveness of distance learning for learning and inclusion were also highlighted.