Emergency remote teaching in Minas Gerais: a policy cycle analysis

Abstract

This article deals with the Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) proposed in consequence of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, focusing on the Special Scheme of Non-Presential Activities (REANP) program for students from 3 to 14 years old presented by the state government of Minas Gerais. The objective of the study is to understand the emergency remote teaching scenario and the possible difficulties related to its feasibility and operation, especially since it recommended a sum of efforts for the use of online, television, radio and/or printed mechanisms. In order to fulfill the objective, the theoretical and methodological inspiration was Stephen Ball's notion of policy cycle. Analytically, we reflected on the context of influence proposed by Ball that, in the case of the REANP, was strongly produced as a result of sanitary conditions and social isolation. It also addressed the contexts of textual production – relating the Minas Gerais scenario to the national one for the textual elaboration of REANP – and of practice – bringing aspects about access to digital technologies, working conditions, social realities and dissemination of information through the Internet about what is REANP and its possible interpretations in local realities. In analyzing the REANP in light of the policy cycle, two things were concluded: 1) school teaching already had difficulties that increased during the pandemic, with the most obvious being those related to teacher training, valuing the teaching profession, and the material conditions for working with digital technologies; 2) in the post-pandemic, if educational policies continue to give the same peripheral attention to such difficulties, social, political, and teaching problems will tend to become more acute.