Remote Teacher Actions of Mathematics Teachers in Higher Education

Resumo

Background: the investigation of teacher actions in face-to-face teaching has become a fertile line of research both in mathematics and in other areas. The pandemic moment that Brazil has been going through since March 2020, which forced teaching to take place remotely, provided conditions for the research to be extended to this type of teaching. Objectives: investigate teacher’s actions in remote education to understand what teachers actually did and do in their classes in this teaching format. Design: This research is characterised as qualitative, with the focus of observation on synchronous and asynchronous classes held by teachers. Setting and Participants: Eleven teachers who teach mathematics in higher education remotely at different institutions in the state of Paraná participated in the research. Data collection and analysis: Data were collected through interviews conducted via Google Meet, recorded, transcribed and analysed using discursive textual analysis. Results: From the analysis, the remote teaching actions were grouped into two moments, called Poscênio [Backstage] and Execution. The Backstage covered a set of seven actions (Self-education, Acquire, Organise, Elaborate, Send, Communicate, and Evaluate) that involved 35 different microactions, when the teacher carried out the preparation of the discipline and classes, as well as their closings asynchronously. The Execution moment comprised six actions (Operationalise, Write, Explain, Answer, Wait, and Interrupt) and 24 microactions, in which the teacher synchronously put into practice what was prepared in Backstage. Conclusions: Based on the results (large number of actions and micro-actions in Backstage), we conclude that remote teaching has required a great effort from teachers in the search for information and elaborate planning for the realisation of classes, which perhaps explains the anxieties revealed by them during interviews.