As representações sociais de docentes universitários acerca das ferramentas online antes, durante e depois da pandemia da covid-19

Abstract

In the context of a rapid transition to remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, educational practices underwent significant changes as the continuity of education became mandatory. This shift highlighted the need to understand teachers' social representations regarding the use of online tools before, during, and after the pandemic to assess whether meaningful changes occurred in educational practices. This study combines bibliographic and field research and is divided into two stages: initially, an online survey was conducted with 34 teachers from a private higher education institution in Aparecida de Goiânia, Goiás; subsequently, 11 teachers from the group participated in a focus group via WhatsApp. Data analysis was supported by the IRaMuTeQ software. The primary objective was to investigate university teachers' social representations in a private institution concerning the use of online tools across three periods: before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Specific objectives included discussing the integration and use of online tools in education, deepening the Social Representations Theory (SRT) as a theoretical framework to understand teaching and learning processes in higher education with the use of online resources, and analyzing and comparing the structure of teachers' social representations over these periods. This qualitative study is grounded methodologically in Serge Moscovici's Social Representations Theory. The findings indicate that practices adopted during the pandemic altered teachers' social representations regarding online tools. Although educational technologies became essential during the pandemic, their use remained predominantly instrumental in the post-pandemic period, suggesting that the integration of digital technologies in teaching practices requires deeper and more critical reflection