Responding to COVID-19 in Portugal: Government Measures and Teachers' Perceptions Regarding Equity in Learning

• In Event: Educational Impact of COVID-19: A Comparative Perspective Examining Finland, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, and South Africa

Abstract

Public emergencies such as the one arising from the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic are unexpected and pose enormous challenges for policy makers, who suddenly had to respond adequately to protect civil society. In Portugal, schools were physically closed on March 22, 2020, shortly after the 2nd term ended (March 16), and remained closed until the end of the school year 2019/2020. Confinement was welcomed by families and the society in general but switching to distance education raised issues of social justice and equity. Children in more vulnerable contexts were more exposed to conditions of greatest risk of social exclusion.
Therefore, the paper aims to examine the policy measures taken by the Portuguese government to face COVID-19 and to analyze how these policies have been enacted and interpreted by teachers to ensure equity in learning.
It is inscribed in a cognitive and normative approach to public policy that emphasizes the importance of values and ideas in policy making. Cognition and norms are very relevant to the study of policies. When a policy is produced, it involves producing a representation of the reality on which we want to intervene. We call this representation a “policy referential”, which once received and interpreted by the social actors, should consider the problems of the policy, and look for solutions to define how to act. Thus, the paper is grounded on the notion of the référentiel (referential) as defined by Bruno Jobert and Pierre Muller.
A qualitative research methodology, based on an interpretive approach, was followed, and data was collected using written documents and interviews. Written documents were available online in institutional websites (government, educational administration, legislation, official reports, communications, etc.), referring to the period between March and July 2020. The interviews were made to 15 teachers, from primary and secondary education, who teach in diverse schools from different regions of the country, to know how they interpreted the policy measures to ensure equity in learning. Based on the notion of referential we analyzed the policy measures that were designed by public authorities to solve the constraints imposed in education by Covid-19, specifically those related to ensure equity in learning. Findings indicate that state authorities used informative (e.g., websites, TV program, YouTube channels) and communicational (e.g., Facebook, a platform for school principals, email to pose questions) tools to mitigate COVID-19 effects. Equity issues were at the center of the government’s agenda, and schools were assigned social and economic responsibilities. Moreover, the ‘school for all’ ideal was taken as a guiding principle in policy discourses and policy measures.
The paper is scientific and scholarly significant as it gives a contribution to deepening knowledge about the responses given internationally by different countries to the pandemic, in addition to providing useful inputs on the effects of policy measures taken by governments and specifically on issues of equity in learning.

Author

• Estela Costa, University of Lisbon