The Impact and Evaluation of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Teaching of Biology from the Perspective of Slovak School Teachers

Abstract

The closing of schools due to COVID-19 was a critical incident that should have caused a rethinking of education in our country. Among the many changes that this crisis has brought, one is fully remote teaching. Our research focuses on a comparison of the changes between on-site and remote forms of biology teaching, the opinions and feelings of teaching staff across all the institutional levels, and their opinions regarding the usage of online teaching tools in the future. The research shows that teachers have used both time-tested teaching aids and modern technology to generate an environment that would be as close to on-site teaching as possible. Similarly, the teachers with longer teaching experience had felt a greater degree of stress during the remote teaching period. Teachers of primary and tertiary schools agree that they can imagine having a combined form of education in the future but that the practical classes of biology must be completed on-site. On the other hand, most secondary school teachers want to preserve only the on-site form of teaching. Our study provides information on the current state of coping with the pandemic situation in Slovakia from teachers’ perspectives.