Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is questioning the achievement of main challenges we face as a society, for instance, to ensure a free, equitable, and good quality compulsory education for all children or to reduce social inequality. During the spring lockdown, particularly in Spain, schools were closed for six months and a process of virtualization of teaching was total; that context generated important educational challenges. This paper presents and analyses forms of digital reciprocity and solidarity among pre-primary education children, families, and teachers, by presenting a case study of the parents’ WhatsApp class groups and a collaborative YouTube channel. The procedure developed was netnography and the data analysis followed the model of grounded theory. Both digital spaces created by parents have become a network of mutual support. It has had multiple positive impacts: (i) providing and receiving social support; (ii) generating dynamics of reciprocity and empowerment; and (iii) activating values that generate a sense of community (feeling of belonging, trust, etc.). The case study shows how virtual networks increase the subjective well-being of participants in a difficult context and also invites reflection about the key role of cultural capital of the parents as a key element in the conditions of educability of children, especially in e-learning of pre-primary education.
Highlights
Before 11 March 2020, when the World Health Organization announced the COVID-19 pandemic [1], the world was already facing a learning crisis and was quite far from meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development 2030 goals that comprise all nations within the aim of ensuring that “all girls and boys complete primary and secondary education, which should be free, equitable, and of good quality” [2]
The early childhood education sector gave priority to the personal and family well-being of pupils and the accompaniment of families [48], attempted to adjust the meaning of education, characterized by experimentation, attachment, and physical contact, to the new reality [29,34] by starting important initiatives to maintain continuity of learning during this period based on proposals, suggestions, and recommendations for non-assessable weekly voluntary activities. [48]
The results show that, in an unprecedented context of drastic social isolation, school closure for six months and an incipient virtualization of teaching, with the limitations this implies for early childhood education [49,50,51], the parents of the snail class and pupils selforganized and developed a creative response to break the social isolation that quarantine entailed, to continue with home schooling and to facilitate the reconciliation of care and telework, through the dynamization of the WhatsApp group of the families, as well as the creation of a YouTube channel Cargol Treu Banyes
Summary
Before 11 March 2020, when the World Health Organization announced the COVID-19 pandemic [1], the world was already facing a learning crisis and was quite far from meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development 2030 goals that comprise all nations within the aim of ensuring that “all girls and boys complete primary and secondary education, which should be free, equitable, and of good quality” [2]. Sustainability 2021, 13, 3654 losses, increased early school leaving and school failure, and greater inequality [5,6,7]; on the other hand, the economic crisis intensifies the social vulnerability due to reduced labor activity, unemployment, lack of social benefits, and so on. Agencies such as the UN, OECD, and the World Bank [8] predict that these two impacts will, together, have a long-term cost on human capital and well-being. We must take bold steps to build quality, inclusive and resilient education systems fit for the future” [9]
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