EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING, STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY AND TRANSFORMATION POTENTIALS AN ANALYSIS OF GEOGRAPHY INTERNSHIP REPORTS (2020–2022)

Abstract

This study examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Brazilian basic education through the lens of supervised internship reports in Geography, produced between 2020 and 2022. Using a mixed-methods approach, it combines a quantitative content analysis of a corpus of 33 reports with a qualitative discursive analysis, aiming to map the deficiencies, efficiencies, and transformative potentials of Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). Quantitative findings reveal a systemic crisis marked by the precariousness of digital access infrastructure (60.6% of the reports indicate unstable connectivity), which directly correlates with low student engagement (84.8% report low attendance) and a widespread perception of learning gaps (78.8%). Nevertheless, the data also highlight remarkable teacher resilience, with 54.5% of the reports describing creative pedagogical adaptations. The qualitative analysis deepens these insights, showing that infrastructure functioned as the determining variable for educational access and that pedagogical innovation often came at the cost of stress and professional burnout (33.3% of the reports). The study concludes that the pandemic did not create but rather exacerbated pre-existing structural inequalities, serving as a "stress test" that exposed the fractures of the educational system. Finally, the article moves beyond diagnosis, proposing an integrated framework of policy and pedagogical interventions, including the creation of territorial curation platforms, reverse mentoring programs, and teacher work observatories, with the goal of transforming the lessons of the crisis into a more resilient, equitable, and technologically integrated educational ecosystem.