The Pandemic as an impulse for the reflections of pedagogy students – the point of view of qualitative analysis

Abstract

The article presents selected extracts of qualitative research results on the psychological and social situation experienced by people during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic in the opinion of pedagogy students. An attempt to prevent the virus from spreading by introducing lockdown confined millions of people in their homes, limited their freedom and interpersonal contacts. For many, this time was an impulse for a more profound existential reflection. The researchers, interested in the issue of students’ reflectiveness, asked a group of them to prepare short essays collecting reflections dating back to the first wave of the pandemic. The research involved 36 students of the Academy of Special Education, in two age groups – those beginning their studies and those heading towards the end. The gathered texts were subject to an analysis complying with the methodology of the grounded theory. The discourse analysis performed from the interpretative perspective allowed for selecting 4 key categories in the students’ comments, and then for pointing to differences between the groups as far as the issues discussed were concerned. This article presents the results of the research encompassing two categories: reflections of the subjects on their own subjectivity and reflections concerning their ecological identity. The younger subjects demonstrated a bigger concentration on the personal perspective and their comments were more emotional and optimistic. The older ones, more distanced towards reality, more often reflected bitterly on social policy, consumerism and egotism of modern societies, more frequently treating the pandemic not as a goal on its own but as a starting point for broader social and ecological criticism.