Due to Covid-19 pandemic several European countries moved to the use of distant learning in primary education. This paper presents a case of distant learning in Greek primary education aiming to offer the Greek experience for discussion and comparison.

This paper discusses how the implementation of a ‘fast-tracked’ education policy for the enabling of digitalised education due to COVID-19 affected education research, pedagogical practice and social inclusion. The paper derives from the research project ‘Policy Enactment and Pedagogical Practice’, project code: 5600.02.10.01, funded by the Department of Primary Education, University of Thessaly. The aim of the project is centred around the organisation of the pedagogical practice within primary education classrooms focusing on the role of time and space, symbolic interaction, and education policy.

In March 2020 Greece entered the first COVID-19 lock down and within two months online education was established through legislation for primary and secondary education for the first time. This paper focuses on the methodological choices, obstacles and solutions in our attempt to develop of a methodological framework for cyber ethnography, in order to research the pedagogical practice in digitally mediated classrooms in primary education. We aim to discuss both in terms of methodology and ethics (Addeo and D'Auria, 2022), the process followed for the acquisition of access in the digital classrooms. Finally, we will discuss how ‘fast-tracked’ policy implementation and realisation affects not only the act of schooling but also the research around schooling and education, by minimising access and possibilities of research.

Theoretically, in this paper we made the choice of using the notion of cyber ethnography over the notion of digital ethnography (Delli Paoli, 2022). We use and understand cyber ethnography, as an ethnography realised in virtual spaces and digital ethnography as an ethnography that uses digital means.

In relation to policy research, the paper draws upon the broader thematic of policy sociology, particularly Ball, Maguire and Braun (2011) work on policy enactment. In that sense the paper attempts to explore how a newly introduced policy, that of distant learning, is realised within primary school classrooms, but the discussion also extends to the obstacles that policy introduce to qualitative education research, particularly in access, methodology, and ethics.  

Following the presented above areas, our conclusions include the need for more up to date technology infrastructure in order to capture the moments of interaction and the demand for more researchers in cyber ethnography as participants rarely agree to be recorded, particularly when children are involved. Finally, the fast-tracked’ policy implementation changes the research landscape for education research, and opens blank points as to who is authorised to have access and who authorises access to data, people, and information use and flow. 

Methodologically this paper consists of a reflexive account of the act of research in relation to policy, through policy sociology (Ball, 1997) lenses. However, the project from which this account derives is an ethnographic research, redeveloped to adapt to virtual and digitally mediated classroom environments. The data collections associated with this part of the research consist of observations of lessons in digitally meditated classrooms and digital interviews. The observations were conducted in first- and second-year primary classrooms, with students’ age from 6-8 and the interviews were conducted with the teachers of those classrooms.

The main conclusions centre around a) the possibility of creating a methodologically informed framework for cyber ethnography in digitally mediated classrooms and b) to open the discussion of how particular education policies may change, alter or limit the research landscape for education research.

Addeo, F., & D'Auria, V. (2022). Going Digital: Challenges and Opportunities for Social Research Methodology. In G. Punziano, & A. Delli Paoli (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Advanced Research Methodologies for a Digital Society (pp. 24-41). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-8473-6.ch003 Ball, S.J. (1997) Policy Sociology and Critical Social Research: a personal review of recent education policy and policy research, British Educational Research Journal, 23:3, 257-274, DOI: 10.1080/0141192970230302 Ball, S.J., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2011). How Schools Do Policy: Policy Enactments in Secondary Schools (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203153185 Delli Paoli, A. (2022). Ethnography From Physical to Digital Contexts: Principles and Practices. In G. Punziano, & A. Delli Paoli (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Advanced Research Methodologies for a Digital Society (pp. 196-216). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-8473-6.ch013