Emergency Remote Teaching and Elementary School Teachers' Challenges: Thematic Analysis

The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the experiences, challenges and attitudes of elementary school teachers towards emergency distance learning or ERT. The research community was primary school teachers of Urmia, from which a sample of 720 people was selected using purposive sampling. Semi-structured questionnaires were used. The collected data were analyzed by thematic analysis method. Teachers' experience of ERT was placed in three categories: feeling unprepared, educational justice, and learning failure. Teachers in the areas of understanding the difficulty of teacher duties, opportunities for knowledge and skill learning, continuity of education, promotion of cooperation between teachers, promotion of parents' participation and students' responsibility, and in the areas of reducing classroom interaction, problems with the SHAD application, lack of necessary resources and ERT facilities, impossibility of valid and correct assessment and increased workload were satisfied and dissatisfied with ERT, respectively. Necessary changes from the teachers' point of view to improve ERT placed in the areas of improving the Internet network and educational platform, facilitating access to facilities and tools, and including technology-related training in the teacher training curriculum and in-service escaped. It seems that this form of education will remain as a complementary method to face-to-face education from now on. Therefore, it is necessary to check the necessary infrastructure to improve it.