Educational Proposals for Children With Congenital Zika Virus Syndrome During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Brazil

• In Event: Lessons from the Pandemic: International Perspectives Addressing Highlighted and Exacerbated Educational Inequalities

Abstract

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the state of pandemic caused by COVID-19, the “new coronavirus” (SARS-CoV-2). Since then, more than 46 million people have been infected worldwide, and of these, more than one million people have died from the virus. In Brazil, there are already more than 5 million cases and more than 580,000 deaths until August 2021.
Since then, social, economic, health, political and scientific impacts have challenged scientists and policymakers around the world. Countless countries have closed their borders, decreed lockdown, social distancing, and closed commercial establishments, schools and universities. The pandemic has generated a crisis unprecedented in human history and, according to analysts, could be worse than the Great Depression of 1929 (Azmitia, 2020). In Latin America, according to the same author, the number of people living in poverty will rise from 162 million to 216 million post-pandemic. All of this becomes even more disastrous when national governments adopt ineffective measures in managing the crisis, as is the case, among others, in Brazil.
In Brazil, about 52,898,349 students were affected by the closure of schools (UNESCO, 2020). Many education networks have adopted remote activities or online teaching actions. However, data collected by UNESCO reveal that in the middle of people living in poverty, people with disabilities were the most affected because they were most vulnerable. Among the problems faced by students, we highlight the inaccessibility of information and communication, especially for the deaf, blind and intellectually disabled people, the non-accessibility to programs and digital platforms for the partitioning of this portion of the population in online classes, when offered. In addition, the pandemic also revealed, in a more systematic way, the lack of preparation of health systems to meet the specificities of these people.
In this context, this article discusses the educational proposals for children with Congenital Zika Virus Syndrome, during the period of social isolation caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. The research is qualitative and is based on the analysis of local documents on remote education and on semi-structured interviews carried out with five Education professionals from a teaching network in Baixada Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who participated in a Continuing Education Program to act with children with Congenital Zika Virus Syndrome. For the analysis, the data were organized in thematic axes, showing, among other aspects, the lack of political guidelines and the teaching effort to develop online actions that promote interaction and participation of children in the proposed activities, in partnership with the mothers. Mothers started to act as mediators in their children's relationship with knowledge. Thus, the teachers' pedagogical work was given new meaning in the construction of collaborative forms of education. They also show how the pandemic affected the relationship of the school with the family and the teachers’ persistence/resilience in the face of the numerous challenges posed by the pandemic in their teaching performance.

Authors

• Márcia Denise Pletsch, UFRRJ

• Flavia Faissal de Souza, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro