The Future of Education

This study is grounded on the premise that distance learning and teaching, particularly in the foreign language area, make education more accessible all over the world. In fact, an increasing number of universities and institutions are turning to blended and distance learning to increase participation. The following study intends to trace an overview of the current situation caused by COVID-19 in Italy and detect limits and solutions to a new type of education which could lead to innovative and effective teaching practices. Specifically, the study will explore how teachers and schools have managed the unexpected circumstances, how quickly they have switched to online teaching with what consequences and limits, and to what extent DE success or failure is correlated to the sudden COVID-19 emergency (therefore insufficient time to re-organise the teaching and learning environment and mode), or it simply depends on lack of other objective requisites (teachers or students’ digital competences, online resources etc…). The proposed project will contribute to discuss the impact this exceptional time may have on eliciting new educational practices, and how it can stimulate self-reflection on future teaching strategies, as well as produce educational literature, as this is the first study on distance education during Covid-19, and because of timing matters, no research has been done yet. The participants are secondary school foreign language teachers working in Italy and who have switched to Distance Education mode due to COVID-19. This study uses qualitative interviews, in order to understand the research problem more completely. Hence, the research includes open-ended questions that will help to better explain and interpret the data and their validity and reliability. Because of the use of the Internet as a means of interaction and communication, and the need to reach a national and varied sample, the questionnaire was administered through VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technologies (such as Skype, Zoom, Meet…) and recorded.

Keywords: distance education, Covid-19, foreign language, secondary education, online learning.

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