Croatian Teachers During COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The teacher plays a central role in every education system. In addition to imparting knowledge and perfecting students’ skills, the teacher is also a role model on a socio-emotional, moral and speech level. However, its role has changed throughout history and depended on culture and lifestyle. Today, the education system around the world is facing a major test, and thus the role of the teacher as the central person of this process is being tested. Namely, the pandemic caused by the coronavirus switched teaching to the online form in 2020, to which some countries were less and some more ready. In the Republic of Croatia, distance learning was performed for three months in the first half of the year, and in the second half of the year, there are three models of teaching: distance, live and a combination of these two models. Given the experience of distance learning, on the one hand, there was less activity of students in completing tasks, poor understanding of the content of the material, the high workload of parents, but also many inconsistencies of teachers who in a concise time had to transfer their work entirely online (without prior education). On the other hand, it has been observed how much both students and parents are beginning to understand the importance of the teacher figure in the learning and teaching process and how difficult it is to replace teachers’ living word with any form of online teaching. That is why this paper aims to examine teachers’ attitudes about experiences with distance learning, and comparative analysis to determine the most common difficulties, challenges, and successes of this form of teaching by comparing it with classroom teaching. It is expected that the changes brought by distance learning will accelerate the digitalisation of the educational process, but also increase the understanding of the critical role of teachers as the centre of the educational process.