Abstract:

Pupils and teachers at all levels of school have been struggling with the new situation caused by the covid-19 pandemic for more than a year and half. The full-time teaching unexpectedly became distance teaching realized mainly through information technologies. This way of teaching took place (with a short break) in schools in the Czech Republic for more than a year, and it cannot be ruled out that it will have to be repeated.

The aim of this research was to find causal relationships in the real environment of distance teaching, to reveal and describe hitherto unknown phenomena in the use of a specific instructional video in chemistry teaching, to analyze them, to compare possible differences between full-time and distance teaching and to generalize algorithms of phenomena and relationships within this approach to teaching.

The research was conducted in a qualitative design; an exploratory case study was chosen to answer the research question. We asked following research question: What benefits and pitfalls does the use of an instructional video provide?, here a specific video entitled: Periodic Table of the Elements, from the popularization-educational cycle Open Science in Chemistry Teaching in Secondary School of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. We take advantage of the fact that the stated instructional video was used in teaching the same content even before the corona crisis, and we have records of the use of video during the last three years of teaching this content.

Data for this study were obtained from several sources, namely: pupils' autonomous writing; interviews with students; analyzes of pupils' didactic tests; assignment of distance teaching for pupils in MS TEAMS; analyzes of teacher preparation for teaching; teacher diary reports; interview with the teacher. A total of 89 respondents took part in the research, namely one teacher and three classes of pupils in the field of secondary vocational education in the field of study Economics and Business.

Data processing was performed using the technique of content analysis of texts. By triangulation of collection methods, over 120 standard pages of texts were obtained. The data were elementarized, analyzed and reassembled into meaningful units/statements. Data interpretation is realized in the context of phenomenological approach, where we look at the case as a phenomenon that exists in a particular school environment. We interpret the case using the so-called hermeneutic circle from pre-understanding the case through analysis and comparison processes to its final interpretation in terms of understanding the case and a certain, but very careful, generalization of the results.

Keywords:

Instructional video, distance teaching, secondary school, chemistry, qualitative design, exploratory case study, content analysis of texts.