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Covid-19 Pandemic
Literacy Learning and Intervention Methods.
Aprendizaje de
Lectoescritura en la Pandemia Covid-19 y Métodos de Intervención
Omaira Ramirez Osorio[*]
Juan
Gabriel Castañeda Polanco*
Abstract
This paper identifies through social mapping a specific problem observed
and intervened through participatory action research related to the learning
processes in reading and writing of children in second grade of an educational
institution. The main objective was to understand the academic strategies and
tools used by families during the COVID 19 pandemic and to document the
intervention methods to address the problems found in the territory under
study. A bibliographic review was conducted in indexed databases, in order to document the theories, categories and variables
that make up the subject under study, in order to implement participatory
action research within social mapping and ways to implement in the classroom
the educational methods explored. Within
the results, the lack of knowledge on the part of the guardians and parents in
teaching-learning strategies from home through a technological medium is
evidenced.
As a main conclusion, the process of identification and analysis of
results allows the development of more viable and didactic pedagogical
strategies to be used in the classroom and by parents at home in order to strengthen students' reading and writing
skills.
Keywords: social mapping,
participatory action research, literacy, territory, Covid-19 pandemic.
Resumen
El presente escrito identifica a través de la
cartografía social una problemática puntual observada e intervenida mediante la
investigación acción participativa relacionada con los procesos de aprendizaje
en lectura y escritura de niños y niñas de grado segundo
de una Institución Educativa. El principal objetivo fue comprender las
estrategias académicas y herramientas utilizadas por las familias durante la
pandemia del COVID 19 y documentar los métodos de intervención para abordar la
problemática encontrada en el territorio objeto de estudio. Se realizó una
revisión bibliográfica en bases de datos indexadas, con el fin de documentar
las teorías, categorías y variables que componen el tema objeto de estudio, con
el fin de poner en marcha la investigación acción participativa dentro de la
cartografía social y las formas de implementar en el aula de clase los métodos
educativos explorados. Dentro de los
resultados se evidencia la falta de conocimiento por parte de los acudientes y
padres de familia en estrategias de enseñanza-aprendizaje desde casa a través
de un medio tecnológico. Como principal conclusión se da el proceso de
identificación y análisis de resultados, permite desarrollar estrategias
pedagógicas más viables y didácticas para ser utilizadas en el aula y por
padres de familia en el hogar a fin de fortalecer la lectura y escritura de los
estudiantes.
Palabras clave: cartografía social, investigación acción
participativa, alfabetización,
territorio, pandemia de
Covid-19.
Introduction
The year 2020
began with the news that a new virus called Covid-19 from the city of Wuhan,
China, was spreading by leaps and bounds throughout the world. The seriousness
of this virus led the World Health Organization to declare it a global
pandemic. In Colombia, the Ministry of Health (2020) reported the first case of
Covid-19 on March 6, 2020, since then, the Colombian government has taken
several measures to prevent the accelerated spread of the virus, including,
closing airports, limiting land mobility and closing
all types of commerce. According to the measures taken by the Colombian
government with the mandatory national quarantine given with the Decree 457 of
2020 by the Presidency of the Republic, 2020, and by which instructions were
given under the health emergency generated by the pandemic of the Coronavirus
COVID-19 and the maintenance of public order.
This situation
affected multiple scenarios of people's lives, as was the case of the
educational sector that migrated its classes to virtual areas, a situation
about which MINITIC (2020) highlighted the following important aspects:
This emergency has
changed everyone's life. We have had to transform habits, know
and take better advantage of technology and connectivity, which have shown us
that they are the best tools for equity. Therefore, we have developed different
actions to meet the needs of students and teachers; we enabled the
"Colombia Aprende" portal (Ministry of ICT,
2020).
In this regard,
Hurtado Talavera, (2020), has evidenced a series of consequences that have
affected the normal learning process, such as:
The technical
limitations of not having good internet access, not having a modern computer
that allows the student to use all the necessary platforms for learning,
distractions by students in their classes, sometimes because they are in noisy
or problematic environments (p. 2).
Likewise, the way
in which parents also changed the way they related to their children is also
subject to analysis, since they were at home much more, being closer to their
educational processes. This is why, for many parents, raising their children
during the confinement of the pandemic has been difficult, since confinement
can be a complicated situation, especially when it is accompanied by routines
that they used to do outside the home, such as studying. Gadermann
(2021) states that:
During the
pandemic, many parents have experienced increased pressures and erosions in
social supports as, globally, school and daycare closures and the disruption of
after-school activities have added to the pressure on parents to balance
responsibilities, including becoming the sole providers of supervision and
education for their children, all while experiencing increased financial and
emotional stress. (pg. 1)
Because of the above, many parents did not
have the necessary tools to accompany their children in academic subjects and
the consequences have been observed, in the case of the second grade 201 and
202 of the Educational Institution Antonio Ricaurte of Puerto Salgar, Cundinamarca, since upon returning from classroom
education different academic difficulties were evidenced, specifically in
reading and writing processes, as parents failed to find appropriate strategies
for their children to achieve skills such as: developing fine motor skills,
phonological awareness knowledge the letters of the alphabet (sound and
stroke), their communicative intention to produce messages and texts.
In view of this situation, a diagnostic
evaluation of the students was performed, and the support teacher was informed
and indicated that a report should be made to the disability entity UAI of the
municipality. There they were evaluated by specialists and as a result, they do
not present any type of learning difficulty, it refers to lack of pedagogical support
and low dedication to the educational process. This situation affects the
development of the subjects of the grade and the process of development of the
topics that have the classroom plan for each academic period, because in each
one there is a percentage of learning achievements that the child must reach in
order to be promoted to the next grade, since a student enrolled in second
grade must read fluently, understand the readings and his writing must be
accurate without spelling, since in second grade the spelling rules must be
strengthened.
Now, based on the
fact that according to the techniques and instruments for the collection of
information such as the focus group and the observation carried out in the
framework of this study, many parents did not have enough tools to accompany
their children in academic matters during the Covid-19 pandemic, in addition to
the fact that it was identified that this problem affected the academic
performance of the students under analysis, and that these results, In
addition, it was identified that this problem affected the academic performance
of the students under analysis, and that these results, regarding the low
academic level, demand alternatives and teaching-learning strategies to
overcome such educational and socio-demographic barriers of the territory, with
the understanding that situations such as taking classes from home with the
help of technology and the Internet during the pandemic, was daily news since
2020, and that as the months went by became topics to be developed within
important meetings in major governments, this in order to discuss the best way
to address this political, social, economic and in this case educational
challenge.
In this order of
ideas, as a result of the collection of information, sufficient parameters were
obtained within the review carried out to conduct an investigation through the
action and participation of this latent problem, which in the same sense
revolves around the question: What were the reading-writing tools implemented
by parents during the Covid-19 pandemic and in turn the methods of intervention
to address the problems encountered?
The answer to the
question posed above is based on the premise that, although the Ministry of
Education is responsible for ensuring an inclusive and quality education system
that contributes to the comprehensive and lifelong learning of people and the
development of the country, through the formulation and implementation of
policies, standards and regulations, from kindergarten to higher education
(Ministry of Education, n.d.), everything related to education on pandemic
issues and what continued after it, has been a challenge for parents, teachers
and students.
Now, a first
approach to this problem can begin by taking into account that the faculties at
national and local level for the facilitation of teaching-learning strategies
in Colombia, present an evident lack in the approach of methods and strategies
to be implemented in the educational instructions that have been affected by the
low academic performance of their students,
since the educational model proposed in the country during and after the
sanitary contingency, in which the educational institutions are immersed,
generate tensions at the time of clarifying which is the way to regulate
teaching, with the help of methods, strategies and study habits to be used both
at home and in the classrooms.
The above, taking
into account that constitutionally and legally and in accordance with the
provisions of Article 67 of the Political Constitution of Colombia, it is
established that education is a right of the people and a public service that
has a social function and that it seeks access to knowledge, science,
technology, and other goods and values of culture, in addition to the fact that
the Nation and the territorial entities will participate in the management,
financing and administration of state educational services. In addition, the
inspection, surveillance and control of education are
the responsibility of the Ministry of National Education with the help of the
Office of Inspection and Surveillance of the Quality of Education, which is why
the territory selected in this study should also be recognized within the
mechanisms or routes offered by the State in terms of the provision of
educational services that safeguard the pedagogical quality that is currently
lacking.
All
of the above is
supported when the State regulates this practice by stating:
[Its execution
comprises a set of operations related to counseling, supervision, monitoring, evaluation and control of the requirements of pedagogy,
administration, infrastructure, financing and management for the provision of
educational services that guarantee its quality, efficiency and timeliness and
allow its users to fully exercise their right to education (Decree 907, 1996,
Art. 4).
The fulfillment of
the above, hand in hand with the intervention of research such as this one,
will make from participatory action research and social mapping, a way to
contribute significant actions within the selected territories regarding
academic and pedagogical requirements, also through monitoring, evaluation and
control, derived from the academic requirements that ensure their effectiveness
and guarantee and allow students to assert their right to education.
In the same way,
the following pronouncements are part of the present study, which in a relevant
way contribute to the line of research addressed within the three elements to
be considered:
Participatory
Action Research is actually a broad family that includes different ways of
doing research for social change with the participation of people and that has
had diverse developments in the world: from Popular Education in Denmark and
Latin America to Organizational Learning in the field of business, to
Participatory Rural Appraisal or Cooperative Research in the northern
hemisphere, to mention just a few. What is important is that all these currents
or schools share their orientation towards action, are participatory and are
based on knowledge and experience (Zapata et al, 2016, p.7).
Thus, we want to
make it clear that the understanding of the concept of participatory action
research, allowed in the specific case, in the first instance, to identify a
problem, after that to carry out an intervention from knowledge and experience
using social-pedagogical mapping to be considered as a way of linking the real
territory in culture, intervening in an experiential way influencing
interpersonal, social, educational and political relationships; a statement
that finds its support when it is stated that "social-pedagogical mapping
becomes a very helpful strategy. This is a methodology that any group of
teachers, committed to the quality of education and liberation, can carry out.
(Barragán et al, 2014, p. 133).
In accordance with
the above, and in relation to the concept of social mapping, several authors
highlight important aspects such as the following:
Social mapping is
a participatory research methodology that invites reflection, organization and action around a specific physical and
social space. We refer to the territory as the place where we carry out various
daily activities. [...]
To the extent that
mapping makes it possible to identify and systematize the representations that
a group, community or organization has of a territory, it is useful to advance
in the organization, management and defense of this
territory. In this sense, our objective with social mapping is to better
understand the territory and consolidate a sense of belonging (Vélez et al,
2011, p.9).
Thus, the above
theoretical underpinning has served as a guide for the preparation of this
document, as explained below during the development of the content.
Materials and methods
For the specific
case of this paper, based on the understanding of action research and the
identification of the problems briefly described above, a social mapping
exercise was carried out by linking three fundamental elements (territory,
problems, feelings, representations and concepts), however, prior to this, a
bibliographic review of authors was carried out by analyzing documents
published at international, national and regional level that were directly
related to the three categories of analysis of this paper.
All of the above,
taking into account that the problem statement seeks to directly influence the
community studied, taking as a reference the tools they used for the
acquisition of the reading and writing code at the time of COVID 19, in
addition to the fact that the type of research used allows the
teacher-researcher to participate in all the processes, activities and
strategies proposed, with the understanding that, as Elliot (1993) indicates,
this type of research interprets what happens from the point of view of those
who act and interact in the problem situation.
The population
classified for the sampling is separated into three focal groups, which will be
identified during the development of this research based on the academic
evaluation given by the school and depending on the student's performance, they
are discriminated into three academic levels: low (with grades from 1.0 to
3.0), medium (with grades between 3.0 to 4.0) and high (with grades above 4.0).
Of the 26 students
enrolled in grade 201, all of the 24 parents of these
students attended the presentation of reports, but only 15 parents signed the
authorization form to be part of the focus group to be investigated.
As techniques and
instruments for the collection of information: a technique called standard
focus groups was used; an instrument that was used to know in a concrete way the
perception and understanding of a reality that people have about a problem in a
qualitative and evaluable way, according to Ruiz (2013), "the focus group
technique is an opinion space to capture the feeling, thinking and living of
individuals, causing self-explanations to obtain qualitative data" (s/p).
For the analysis
of the data, the results of 8 questions of the information collection
instrument were used for the focus groups under study, where qualitative
analysis was used through tabulation in Excel and in this way the results were
represented in pie charts, for a better understanding of the current situation
regarding the tools used in learning during the course of
the pandemic by parents. For the development of the action-research, 4 phases
were traced, as follows:
Phase I
Preparatory: in
this phase it was decided which would be the topic to be investigated based on
the problems identified, in addition to the materials and methods to be used,
and the approach to the results to be pursued.
Field work: data
collection through the application of focus groups with parents in three
groups, first group high performance, second group medium performance, third
group low performance and as a technique for data collection the observation of
students.
Data analysis: in
this phase, the analysis and interpretation of the data found was carried out
in order to express the results and conclusions of the study.
Writing of the
report and presentation and final presentation: oral and written, in this final
phase an answer is given to the question that guided the investigation and
consequently the investigation is culminated, the outline of the writing is elaborated and the final writing is started.
Results
The analysis by
means of questions to the parents, discriminating by focal groups the learning
techniques or tools, the reading-writing processes and the study habits of
their children, allowed to obtain as a result that in effect the parents were
not able to find adequate strategies for their children to achieve skills such
as: the development of fine motor skills and phonological awareness, knowledge
of the letters of the alphabet with respect to their sound and stroke, added to
the communicative intention to produce messages and text, this under the
understanding that the use of the computer, cell phone and internet becomes the
tool most used by parents or guardians for learning from home; 34.38% of those
surveyed stated that they use technological elements to develop activities,
search for information, connect with teachers or tutors, and make learning more
dynamic, since videos, audios and free platforms such as zoom, through the
Internet, allow teaching to be more dynamic.
It should be noted
that parents stated that prolonged use of the computer or cell phone for more
than 2 or 3 hours, causes their children to easily lose their concentration and
become distracted, showing signs of exhaustion from being in front of a
computer screen for several hours; Therefore, taking breaks during the study
days, making less extensive use of technological devices has an impact on the
student to better assimilate knowledge, not to be distracted and become
familiar with technology, since nowadays technological tools are more abundant,
easily accessible and increasingly used worldwide for distance processes.
An important
finding within the surveys conducted is that some parents use more than one
teaching tool for their children, and therefore the pedagogical process is more effective and timely, so that the accompaniment of
parents, guardian or tutor becomes the second most effective tool when teaching
students. Taking into account the population under study (second graders,
between 8-11), the accompaniment of an adult is essential in these learning
processes, since students at this age are more dispersed, easily lose attention
and have little concentration, so the presence of a person who tells them what
to do, how to do it, and also the students see the support and time that the
parent is dedicating for learning to be effective.
The surveys show
that 28.13% of the responses presented this tool as one of the most used at
home for their children's learning, evidencing that the mixture of different
teaching tools can generate better learning processes in the students,
achieving a higher degree of understanding of the reading and writing concepts.
A tool that reached 12.5% was to adapt a space in the house, with ambience,
desk, school supplies so that the student uses it as a study area and remains
familiar with the educational environment of the school, so that his classes
are virtual and in this way he feels more comfortable,
safe and at ease with the learning process from home.
Other tools used
by parents in the learning processes, obtaining 9.8%, were the academic and
didactic materials provided by the teacher and the use of an external teacher
to continue the training process from home, showing other learning processes
suitable for training from home. Sometimes some of these tools, such as an
external teacher, are not accessible to all families (due to economic issues),
but what it does indicate is that the presence of a family member or
tutor/teacher in training processes increases the degree of assimilation of
learning in the students since it demonstrates accompaniment, commitment to the
work of teaching, and generates discipline since there is a schedule of
activities.
Finally, tools
such as teaching by singing, or even using the uniform at home in their place
of study were used by parents, demonstrating the great variety of instruments
that can be used at home. Another important finding is that the use of several
tools at the same time increases the formative process of the student, and in
this way generates discipline, organization, motivation, better academic
performance and therefore the return to classes is not so complex and traumatic
for the student.
On the other hand,
the results obtained in relation to the question "How do you observe your
child's learning in reading and writing through the virtual classes?" show
three main groups, the first one where they rate learning as good, and this is
due to the fact that several tools were used at the same time, such as
assigning a schedule for homework, being accompanied by a family member,
adapting a space in the house, using weekends and technological devices
generated a better learning in reading and writing, and also generated academic
habits in the children.
The middle focus
group shows a better use of learning tools, as seen in the student's academic
performance and learning in reading and writing, only the accompaniment by the
family and the technological tools are enough to achieve good academic results
and more from a work at home. It is necessary to integrate more instruments to
improve the student's attention, disposition and
participation in their remote study so that their return to class is not
affected. Finally, the group discriminated as low, evidences
that the little use of tools for their children's learning affected
considerably their children's reading and writing.
The use of
technology alone in population groups such as the one in this study and the
little accompaniment of parents or family members in the educational process is
not enough to improve academically, as mentioned above, children at that age do
not yet have the capacity to concentrate and pay attention enough to spend
several hours on a computer, and additionally family members do not accompany
the student to do their homework, or be attentive during virtual classes, and
therefore the student is easily distracted and consequently does not have an
effective learning process.
In this case, the
activity most used (50%) by the parents is the incentive for reading and
writing at home, through dictation, planas, reading
with drawing or teaching with songs, and the purchase of didactic primers. In second place, with 33.33%, the playful
games of spelling, with the alphabet and playful exercises such as the
syllabary or graphomotor skills are useful activities at the time of
reinforcing the reading and writing processes.
The process of
reviewing reading comprehension and reviewing what was learned at school and
later at home is the third activity (11.11%) most used by parents in the
process of learning to read and write. Finally, sharing with children of the
same age is also a tool that can be used at the time of reinforcing reading and
writing knowledge; only 5.5% of the responses agree with this process.
Within the results
found in the present social mapping exercise, methods and pedagogical
strategies that strengthen reading and writing processes in the second grade
children under study were also conceptualized within the analyzed territory,
since more than 10 methods are known in the teaching of reading and writing,
but according to the participatory action research related to the findings
found in grade 201, the intervention will focus on three of them as they were
found to be adequate to address the problem, which should be documented as
shown below:
The
Inductive-Deductive Method
The
inductive-deductive method proposed by Aristotle as a tool for
"research" in the field of science, consists in the first place in
the creation of a theoretical body that explains through elementary principles
the phenomena to be studied, "induction stage", and in a second part
of the process, to deduce general laws to explain the observed phenomena, "deductive
stage". (Burgos et al., 2020).
The Global method
These global
methods have been applied recently, thanks to Ovid Decroly,
a renowned Belgian pedagogue, psychologist, doctor and
teacher at the end of the 1890s. The history dates that before 1904, this model
was worked at the Institute of Special Education in Brussels directed by this
pedagogue; at the beginning, the method was called the method of complete
sentences and the Decroly method.
The success of the
present method is that the students have a broad knowledge of the vowels and
consonants with their possible combinations, since these are the bases they will have to have in the following step, which is
to acquire a pertinent literacy. Since it must concentrate on the syllable, as
the only starting reference. The syllabic method has to
focus on the construction of syllables in order to consolidate the
literacy.
Discussion
After analyzing separately the strategies that strengthen the reading and
writing processes of second grade children as a result of the proposed
research, it is possible to establish clear and evident criteria and parameters
in accordance with what was proposed in the social mapping exercise. Likewise,
and in the light of the authors' rationale and the theories examined for each
of the methods that can help solve the problem, the following discussion is
then generated based on the way in which to intervene in
order to contribute together with the parents to strengthen the
shortcomings found in the educational processes of the children who served as a
sample in this participatory action research.
The problem begins
when taking into account the way in which parents
changed the way they related with their children in terms of educational
processes, since due to the Covid-19 pandemic, they stayed much more time at
home. It is for this reason that for many of the parents the upbringing of
their children during the confinement was arduous, since isolation was a
complicated situation and even more so when it is accompanied by routines that
they used to do outside the home, such as studying. In this regard, other
authors indicated the following:
The credit system
demands responsibility and commitment from the student and the professor to
achieve the learning goal, since it involves to a great extent a component of
independent work that must be planned by the student and directed by the
professor.
It is here where
study habits constitute an integrating and facilitating axis of the learning
process, since they activate the cognitive, environmental
and procedural resources available to the student (Monsalve et al, 2009).
In addition to the
above, the accompaniment and integration of family members to the
teaching-learning processes is decisive, since education, by focusing on the
needs and interests of the child, establishes a primordial element, in view of
the fact that educational and pedagogical practices should focus on the needs
of the different academic levels of the students, to support the different
physiological, contextual, psychological and behavioral components of the human
being.
Likewise, the
intervention carried out with the participation of parents and students is the
object of analysis within this discussion, so that the latter obtain better
grades, given that if parents and teachers work together, they teach more
effectively and study habits are strengthened through the construction of a
line of communication with them, especially for the case under study,
everything related to the strategies and methods so that children can learn to
read and write, not only from the teacher but also from their parents or
guardians.
This is supported
by the following author:
The crucial role
of parents in establishing the educability of their children, in facilitating
their development and achievement, and in solving educational and developmental
problems has been recognized. In addition, the rights
and responsibilities of parents to influence educational programs have been
emphasized. Parental involvement and education programs continue to grow, and
there is now a large and compelling body of research that supports and guides
these efforts.(Becher, 1984).
In this order of
ideas, all the foundations developed in this paper show that the playful
pedagogical strategies that were proposed beforehand were pertinent and
relevant to strengthen the methods of intervention in the analyzed problem,
because thanks to all the theory with which the research-action was documented,
the socialization with the students and parents of the second grade was carried
out through the school's mural newspaper and a brochure, the topic of study
habits and strategies that can be used both at school and at home.
The above, taking into account that the objective of optimizing the
academic performance of all students in the area of language and others, is
likewise demonstrated in the survey applied to parents in the data collection
techniques in question number 8, which referred to the importance of study
habits to promote the processes of reading and writing, a question to which all
respondents answered affirmatively.
Therefore, taking
into account that this study also revolves around the recognition of a problem
of a specific educational group, it is also necessary to mention that social-pedagogical
mapping has been consolidating as an effective route to address social problems
at the educational level, finding as advantages of this methodology that the
different actors can intervene in the processes of social construction of knowledge
and, additionally, in the possibilities of transforming their own realities,
which is, in the end, the meaning of research and education.
Thus, by trying to
enhance reading and writing skills, participatory action research under this
precept allows linking social mapping as a tool that provides recognition
activities regarding the territory and the community, allowing alliances
between the institution, society and the family; and
facilitating the teaching practice in Colombia.
Another aspect
that is important to mention in this discussion is the need to create
continuous links between teacher-family, as it was evidenced that the best
combination for the student to perform outstandingly in the reading and writing
processes, is the way in which families, regardless of how they are formed,
have assertive communicative processes with the students' teachers, added to
the shared responsibility of these nuclei to participate in the education of
their children, and in this way achieve the expected learning.
In addition to the
strategy of continuous links between teacher-family, we found the one proposed
by other authors, which is equally appropriate in this paper by highlighting
important aspects of collaborative work between students and teachers, such as
those mentioned below:
The incorporation
of strategies in the educational field offers the opportunity to work in a
pleasant and attractive environment; collaborative work among students and
between students and teachers is encouraged, strengthening human coexistence.
Through the motivation generated by the appropriate strategies, a love for
reading and the written practice of language is instilled, an exercise aimed at
learning to think about what is read, which refines reading comprehension
(Burgos & Rodelo, 2020).
In accordance with
what has been indicated above, some authors give an esteemed importance to
reading, for example (Barboza et al. 2014) argues that "learning to read
is a process that begins before the child enters systematized education and
continues throughout life." (p. 134). On the other hand, according to a
Swiss psychologist, biologist and epistemologist:
Development is
articulated according to the factors of maturation, experience, transmission
and balance, within a process in which biological maturation is followed by the
immediate experience of the individual who, being linked to a socio-cultural
context, incorporates the new knowledge based on previous assumptions (social
transmission), with true learning occurring when the individual manages to
transform and diversify the initial stimuli, thus balancing internally with
each cognitive alteration (Piaget, 1970).
As has become
evident in the development of this research, there are many questions that
revolve around the approach of pedagogical strategies that strengthen the
reading and writing processes in students to be used by both teachers and
parents, as these have become an important ally in promoting study habits that
will serve students in all academic areas; therefore, this is an issue that
concerns not only the institution, but an entire educational community
nationwide.