In 2020, the world was struck by the contagious Covid-19 disease. Due to the poor epidemiologic situation and the declaration of a pandemic, one of the main consequences was the closure of schools. Students and teachers were forced to leave their classroom and school desks, and start distance learning. The course of work had to be adjusted in a very short period of time, and new ways had to be found to continue the educational process uninterruptedly. The closure of schools greatly increased inequality of access to education in Slovenia and elsewhere in the world, and reduced equity, as school closures had the greatest impact on the most vulnerable students from families with lower socio-economic status. Distance learning, thus, required a great deal of flexibility, patience, and ingenuity on the part of students, teachers, and parents. At the same time, people were facing a great challenge as they were torn between two options. On the one hand, there were those who wanted children to return to school as soon as possible, and on the other hand were those who, at least for a few months, were comfortable with this way of education.
As the issue has been quite topical for the last two years, the aim of this Master’s thesis is to find out how distance learning and face-to-face teaching affect students’ knowledge of the Earth’s Movement learning content. The purpose of this research is also to determine whether the knowledge of students with specific characteristics differs depending on the way the lessons are delivered.
The research was conducted at the beginning of the 2021/2022 school year, in Year 4 of primary school with 45 pupils from two classes. In one class, the teaching took place in a traditional face-to-face way, whereas in the other class the learning process was adapted as if it were done in distance learning. The memorisation of the learning content and the assimilated knowledge were checked by knowledge tests, which were carried out before the first lesson (prior knowledge), after each lesson and a fortnight after the last lesson.
The research has shown that reading skills have a significant impact on results in knowledge tests. The findings show that face-to-face learning contributes to better achievements in a knowledge test for students with special educational needs, and that better prior knowledge is not a condition for better assimilated knowledge in a test after a finished discussion. Other results of the study have shown that the way of teaching did not significantly affect the students’ achievements in the knowledge tests that were conducted.
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