Secondary School Mathematics Teachers’ Views on E-learning Implementation Barriers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Indonesia

TLDR

School closures during COVID‑19 left 45.5 million Indonesian students and 3.1 million teachers reliant on online learning, a largely unfamiliar experience for most participants. This study investigates secondary mathematics teachers’ perceptions of e‑learning barriers at teacher, school, curriculum, and student levels and examines how these barriers relate to teachers’ demographic backgrounds. Data were gathered through an online questionnaire completed by 159 lower‑ and upper‑secondary mathematics teachers across Indonesia. Student‑level barriers exerted the greatest influence on e‑learning use, were strongly correlated with school and curriculum barriers, and were unaffected by teachers’ backgrounds, underscoring the need to address student perspectives to improve e‑learning.

Abstract

School closures in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic have left 45.5 million school students and 3.1 million teachers dependent on online teaching and learning. Online teaching and learning are an unprecedented experience for most teachers and students; consequently, they have a limited experience with it. This paper examines the views of secondary school mathematics teachers on E-learning implementation barriers during the COVID-19 pandemic at four barrier levels, namely teacher, school, curriculum and student. Furthermore, it assesses the relationship between barrier levels with teachers' demographic background. Data was collected through an online questionnaire, involving 159 participants from lower and upper secondary schools in Indonesia. The findings of this study suggest that student level barrier had the highest impact on e-learning use. In addition, the student level barrier showed strong positive correlation with the school level barrier and curriculum level barrier. The study showed that teachers' backgrounds had no impact on the level of barriers. This study stimulates further discussion on the way to overcome e-learning barriers whilst simultaneously maximizing benefits of E-learning during this pandemic and beyond it by highlighting the importance of students' voices.