Equidade digital na educação pós-pandemia: mediação pedagógica com plataformas digitais para o ensino de eletroquímica em contextos educacionais diversos

Abstract

Electrochemistry presents notorious and well-documented teaching and learning difficulties, which were substantially aggravated by the implementation of emergency remote teaching. This context demanded greater student autonomy and required educators to develop effective didactic alternatives for conceptual mediation at a distance, thereby deepening long-standing obstacles. This qualitative investigation aimed to evaluate the impacts of implementing digital educational resources—an offline application and a website titled Electrochemistry in Everyday Life—on the teaching and learning process. The goal was to overcome historical obstacles exacerbated by the remote context and promote equity in access to meaningful learning across distinct educational settings (public, private, and rural) in Itumbiara, Goiás, Brazil. The study unfolded sequentially in five methodological stages: first, a systematic literature review was conducted to map obstacles in electrochemistry education and analyze the effectiveness of active methodologies; subsequently, the challenges of emergency remote teaching in Science/Chemistry were investigated through the perceptions of teachers and students from three educational contexts, which were contrasted with institutional documents; third, after development and classroom implementation, the digital resources underwent rigorous validation by teachers and students (focusing on usability, user experience, and learning principles), resulting in an improved version and demonstrating feasibility even in contexts with limited technological infrastructure; finally, the impacts of these resources on student participation and cognitive performance were evaluated using pre- and post-intervention questionnaires across the three contexts. Initial diagnostic results confirmed the severity of the situation, with 63% of students rating their remote Chemistry classes negatively and citing a lack of concentration at home as the primary hindrance. These challenges were most pronounced in the Rural School, which exhibited a significant lack of teacher training and technical support. Following the intervention with the digital tools, quantitative data showed significant progress, noting a considerable improvement in conceptual understanding—exemplified by the Public School achieving approximately 50% correct answers in a Moodle Quiz—indicating the overcoming of cognitive obstacles. Qualitatively, students reported increased motivation and a clearer grasp of abstract concepts, attributing this progress to the resources' effective contextualization of content with everyday phenomena. Nevertheless, difficulties associated with prior curricular gaps persisted in the Rural School, despite these students showing notable engagement in practical activities. In conclusion, the complexity of challenges inherent to remote teaching, which manifest heterogeneously, tends to intensify pre-existing educational disparities. However, the developed digital resources, designed with a contextualized approach and subjected to a rigorous validation process, represent promising pedagogical strategies for mitigating learning gaps in electrochemistry. These tools demonstrated potential to catalyze student engagement, foster autonomy, and outline feasible pathways for promoting educational equity in diverse contexts, particularly in scenarios with infrastructural limitations. The research's legacy points toward transforming an emergency experience into lasting progress through continuous investment in evidence-based digital resources and teacher training for critical implementation.