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  • The FACT Team

Controlling personal circumstances & online-learning in Russia: A source of strength or anxiety?


This entry is shared by the Russian team. For more details see here


In our strand of research, we explore the pandemic responses with a special focus on education practices. Our sample includes 36 families from 8 Russian regions, 75 in-depth interviews were conducted in June-August 2020 with parents and children discussing their experience of self-isolation and distance-learning; some of our respondents also shared brief videos.


Russia declared a lockdown in mid-March 2020. Most business activities were suspended, all schools were closed and switched to online-learning and citizens were told to stay at home. The restrictions were lifted in June and schools were opened on September 1. In mid- September, after the summer travelling and relaxation, the number of coronavirus cases started to climb again. In response, the government recommended major employers to return to remote working again and the Mayor of Moscow is sending school children on extra holidays between October 5-18th (families are worried these holidays may slide into another period of distance learning, as it was this past spring).


A pandemic is something to a great extent beyond our control. The uncertainty of medical treatment, as in the case of COVID19, is combined with public health measures that also may not seem clear and reasonable. Under the sudden lockdown, many families in Russia found themselves in a situation with limited choices and imposed constraints. Their scope of control seems to have shrunk. However (perhaps as a psychological compensation), when reflecting on their situations, many of our respondents consistently highlighted various resources that still remained under their control, as if seeking strength in their new appreciation. They often linked their situations with 'luck' to enjoy these resources: luck to have an experience of remote work, luck to have developed, long ago, habits of digital communication with relatives and friends.


Speaking sociologically, many families were able to mobilise their allocative and authoritative resources (Giddens 1984, p. 258). Their allocative resources include access to technologies, instruments of communication, extra space (a spare room or a garden). Their authoritative resources are associated with their opportunities to organise their social time and space (flexible employment, learning opportunities, taking care of the children). Some of our respondents reflect on this below. First we have Anne's reflections followed by Nina's reflections and the images she shared about feeling grateful:


“My husband and I, we don’t rent any office for our company, we have been working at home, sitting right here, back to back, for the last six years, so luckily nothing much changed for us” (mum Natalia); “Oh, like to call each other on WhatsApp, to chat and wash the floors together, online with the girls” ( Anne, mother).


However, talking to our respondents, we noticed a certain paradox: people welcome control in their personal circumstances, describe as “lucky” their situations in which they were able to retain control over their work and general living conditions. Yet, when it comes to their children’s learning, parents prefer to step back, to avoid situations in which they have to exercise control. Rezeda, a mother in our study comments on this below:


…maybe one child out of thousand, some extra-gifted child was able to do everything in time, and knew how to upload the homework... I have my own work to do, yet I had to control him all the time, to remind him to log in, to hand in his maths... and I had to explain the topic. But how can I explain a topic, first I have to study it myself, I finished school long ago, I already forgot everything, and the curriculum has changed greatly since then, I can't just go and explain the topic, I’m not a professional” (Rezeda, mother).


This is a preliminary observation with two important implications for education. The first implication is associated with the idea of self-regulated learning (e.g. Zimmerman 1986). As our conversations with families reveal, the need to explore a topic independently, using resources recommended by their teachers, became a challenge both for children and their parents.The contents wasn’t explained”, “the teacher did not explain the material”, “textbook paragraphs are too difficult”, “the teachers were not able to chew the material for the learners, as usual” came as a refrain from our respondents. Such a reaction may serve as a timely alert for the system of education: there is a gap between the way learning contents is offered to students and their ability to work with it independently without the teacher as an interpreter. Parents believe, it is teacher’s responsibility to make the learning contents “digestible” for the children.

On the other hand, countries and jurisdictions that have implemented successful education reforms (e.g. Ontario, Finland) see parents as essential partners (Ontario 2010). But there is an intrinsic conflict of interests between teachers and parents that has to be attended to. Teachers – as professionals in the neo-Weberian sense – may use their expertise to achieve a relative autonomy and control over their job. Parents as lay people have no corresponding expertise (knowledge-base and skills). Yet, during the quarantine distance learning, they suddenly found themselves in teachers' shoes. They were granted the autonomy but they lacked the expertise to meet the demands imposed on them by the system of education. Therefore, controlling their children’s learning was a source of anxiety for many parents.


Some parents also realised that they cannot trust teachers, when they saw how little their children know (“Oh, it came as a revelation, my eyes opened, all she <my daughter> memorised is so superficial, she has no deep knowledge, we are opening her Year 5 textbooks together now” – Natalia, mother). This new lack of trust aggravates the anxiety: parents are not prepared to control learning, yet they feel they have to control the teachers.

Teachers – as professionals – are used to vertical relations with “lay parents”, as they assume they know how to teach and parents do not. In distance learning, teachers tried to remain in vertical relationships with parents; while parents, through their forced sharing of teacher’s control over learning, appeared to be ready for more horizontal – open – relationships.


Both implications may be important signals for a system of education which is heading to meet the grand challenges of the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world (e.g. OECD 2018).

References

Giddens A. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Polity Press.


OECD (2018) Future of Education and Skills 2030: Curriculum Analysis. Preparing humanity for change and artificial intelligence: Learning to learn as a safeguard against volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. 8th Informal Working Group (IWG) Meeting 29-31 October 2018. OECD Conference Centre, Paris, France. https://www.oecd.org/education/2030/Preparing-humanity-for-change-and-artificial-intelligence.pdf


Ontario (2010). Parents in Partnership. www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/parents/involvement/pe_policy2010.pdf


Zimmerman B.J. (1986). Development of self-regulated learning: What are the key processes? // Contemporary Educational Psychology. Vol. 16. P. 307–313.

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