The country’s grim and persistent health and economic situation has been accompanied not only by political polarization and historical and scientific denialism. As has been the case in other crises humanity has faced, there is an opportunity for innovation and learning of all kinds, as the isolation that many of us have had to endure has forced us out of our comfort zones.

We had to, in one way or another, reinvent our professional practices—whether by working from home, selling services online, collaborating virtually, or teaching remotely. And no, we weren’t prepared for any of these possibilities—neither we in Brazil nor our contemporaries in other parts of the world.

Even so, there were apparently some factors specific to Brazil in this adaptation process, especially for teachers in Basic Education: connectivity was a more serious problem given the country’s vast territory and diversity, social inequalities resulted in students having less access to equipment and the Internet itself, and both initial and continuing teacher training did not incorporate digital skills—nor did it emphasize other aspects of teaching practice, as the National Education Council correctly noted when establishing the new National Teacher Standards.

In this context, it doesn’t make much sense to simply incorporate Europe’s technological lessons when addressing the educational response to COVID-19. We need a more context-specific strategy. In this regard, the analyses and proposals from the Center for Innovation in Brazilian Education (CIEB)—a civil society organization that supports public elementary and secondary school systems in their digital transformation through research, tools (including a self-assessment tool for teachers on the development of digital teaching skills), and practical guidance—are most welcome.

Similarly, some studies—such as those conducted by the Instituto Península, which surveyed teachers from across the country at different points during the school closures—provided important insights into how to address the schools’ lack of preparedness to handle the crisis and to clarify how to train and equip teachers—even on an emergency basis— teachers to practice more effectively, both during school closures and upon their return to the classroom.

We learned from these texts that it is possible to use digital platforms for a significant portion of students, especially high school students. They accessed these platforms largely through cell phones, but needed sponsored data to do so. We also found that while these devices may not be easy for adults to view or operate, young people found them much easier to use for learning.

Another key lesson was the need to combine different media in order to reach everyone. In this regard, television and radio—which had been used in the past for education, especially adult education—once again became important to the teaching process, provided they were paired with study guides sent to students’ homes. Later, as part of a “learning by doing” process, television programs were linked to digital apps.

However, according to a recent publication on the topic in “The Dialogue” by the Inter-American Dialogue, digital platforms have also been widely used to create communities of practice, bringing together teachers from different parts of Latin America in a process of professional collaboration that will certainly outlast the pandemic. After all, one of the most important skills for these times of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is precisely collaborative problem-solving, and students who see their teachers collaborating will certainly be more likely to learn to think and work together.

The document also refers to three complementary processes: digital assessments, the collection of learning data to inform teaching practices, and the digitization of school and educational administration, which has freed up teachers’ time so they can focus more on the teaching process.

Each of these initially required teachers to make an effort to acquire new skills, in an environment that was equally unfamiliar to the students themselves. Ultimately, everyone had to develop what are commonly referred to as social-emotional skills, such as adaptability, openness to new experiences, and perseverance.

As we return to in-person classes, much of what has been learned will eventually be incorporated into teaching and learning practices, creating the conditions for an education system that is not only better prepared to deal with emergencies like the ones we’ve experienced but also better suited to the challenges of the 21st century. After all, technology can be a curse for humanity—in the form of the accelerated replacement of human labor by artificial intelligence, as countless prospective analyses show—but it can also help make teaching less traditional and far more engaging when combined with the findings of research in the field of the science of learning.

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