The emergency (crisis) e-learning as a challenge for teachers in Poland

Abstract

The article was written as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland, which had an impact not only on public health, but also on the functioning of the educational sector. The text is an attempt to summarize the challenges of crisis e-learning from the perspective of the challenges faced by teachers in Poland in the period of March-December 2020. The article reveals a number of new phenomena not present in the literature in the context of e-learning implemented in an intuitive, non-linear way, without methodological support, and thus referred to as crisis e-learning. The aim of the research was to explore the characteristics of crisis e-learning in Poland from the perspective of teachers' experiences. Due to epidemiological limitations, the research area was narrowed down to cyberspace. This text presents the results of research relating to statements made by teachers posting in the largest Polish discussion group on education. The group currently consists of over four thousand people. The study uses an analysis of several thousand posts and then identifies and categorizes statements related to crisis e-learning along with a phenomenological interpretation. The analyses made it possible to identify seven categories of challenges attributed to crisis e-learning, such as: technical problems, use of non-standard solutions, the search for solutions to increase the effectiveness of e-learning, the transfer of proven applications and programmes, problems with students, problems with parents, and the modernisation of workstations. The data presented show teacher micro-worlds in the time of the pandemic in Poland. The article is a response to the need to understand the processes occurring in the Polish educational system under the influence of crisis events related to the pandemic. The text may prove valuable for educating future generations of teachers in the field of e-learning and increasing the effectiveness of training activities aimed at strengthening the digital competence of current teachers.