Inclusion and education

TEACHERS NEED TO BE A FOCUS OF 
SUPPORT
Lack of professional support and insufficient digital 
skills among teachers have often proved to be the main 
obstacles to education continuity. Teachers have pointed 
out that the guidelines they received were insufficient 
to support them. The guidelines did not indicate how 
to respond when teachers or students lacked access to 
internet or digital devices or when teachers lacked remote 
teaching skills. A study of about 1,000 primary school 
teachers in Poland found that 85% had no experience 
with distance learning before the pandemic outbreak, 
and 52% reported some difficulty using digital tools. In 
addition, 36% indicated that lack of equipment among 
students impeded distance education (Open Education 
Policy Network, 2020). Some countries, including Albania 
and Lithuania, have tried to provide digital devices for 
students and teachers to enable them to participate in 
remote learning.
Various countries organized in-service training or online 
consultations on remote learning. Examples include the 
two-week course ‘How to conduct distance learning 
effectively’ in Armenia and the online course ‘Let´s get 
ready for distance learning’ in Belarus. In Kazakhstan, 
in-service training that was intended to be provided in 
person was redesigned and transformed into online 
formats. Lithuania’s Ministry of Education, Science 
and Sport organized around 50 consultations about 
online education, online safety and digital learning 
facilities. In Ukraine, the online marathon ‘Education 
under the quarantine’ provided an opportunity to 
exchange experiences on top of other in-service training 
opportunities.
One weakness of training initiatives is that they tend to 
involve only the most motivated teachers; for instance, 
digital skills development involved only ‘active’ teachers, 
leaving behind those who may have needed the training 
the most. Ideally, school leaders should identify individual 
needs, especially regarding digital skills and integrating 
technology into instructional practice, to target such 
teachers and encourage them to upgrade their skills. A 
related obstacle has been scheduling, as teachers have 
noted that their workload during the pandemic has been 
higher than average.
Considering teachers’ current levels of digital literacy 
and average age, complementary solutions include 
strengthening partnerships among students and 
teachers, schools and families, and public and private 
actors. In addition, teachers have collaborated to support 
each other. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Centre for 
Education Initiatives Step by Step, an NGO, involved 
members of the Community of Innovative Teachers and 
proposed more than 200 ideas for classroom practice, 
shared by teachers, that were posted on a web platform. 
In Ukraine, teacher teams collaborated on individualized 
plans for students with special education needs.