Scenarios of School Everyday Life During the Epidemic From the Perspective of Children

Tanja Oblak Črnič

Summary:  During the recent epidemic with Covid-19, the school intensively and unexpectedly moved into the sphere of home, which consequently merged with the sphere of education and work. In the article, we ask what relationships in the daily lives of children were brought about by circumstances conditioned by the epidemic reality, and what scenarios of school everyday life were established among children. With the help of online pilot research on an arbitrary sample of primary school children (4th to 7th grade), we try to show the experience with digitalization of learning, identify responses and possible differences between children. As this is a pilot inquiry during the early phase of the epidemic, the discussion is only suitable as an exploration of children‘s personal views of digital school everyday life. The existing study shows, among other things, that the surveyed children responded relatively positively to distance learning, while detecting similar shortcomings and solutions. The key limitation of an isolated everyday life was perceived both in the absence of social contacts, and the ban on mobility outside the home. The experience of distance learning within a homogeneous group of children showed five separate scenarios – from general dissatisfaction and concrete limitations with distance learning to approval of new situations -, with the greater burden of school obligations partly affecting girls more than boys, who also expressed greater autonomy in the ways of practicing leisure time.