**1. Introduction - support of teachers as a COVID-19 emergency**

The pandemic crisis has affected people's lifestyles by inducing countries to change the management of entire sectors of private and public life [1–3]. It is estimated that over 1.58 billion children and young people attending educationtraining courses - around 94% of students worldwide - in 200 countries no longer went to school in March 2020 [1, 4] and that countries have had to adopt various measures to continue students' learning during school closure.

Countries have used a variety of resources to ensure remote learning for students (radio and television); specifically, to ensure online education, recovered instructional resources [5], as online platforms with tools included - educational content for exploring, real-time lessons on virtual meeting platforms, online support services for parents and students, self-paced formalized lessons [6].

Such situation is inevitably leading to the reconfiguration of the entire education system and, above all, to the acceleration of change in teaching-learning processes [7]. The urgent implementation of new ways to deal with the crisis - use of remote teaching, flexibility of schedules and functions, etc. - indeed, made it possible to experiment with 'solutions previously considered difficult or impossible to implement' (p. 4) and to concentrate efforts to address training needs that have always been known but which the pandemic situation has in fact forced to solve - such as, among others<sup>i</sup> , support for the teaching profession and the preparation of teachers.

The COVID-19 pandemic and such abrupt modification of teaching delivery accelerated the process of transforming teaching practices, such as remotely supporting students through innovative technological means [7, 8]; such situation asked teachers above all to face new challenges such as that of supporting students remotely through innovative technological means. Since the early pandemic teachers were tasked to implement teaching in distance learning modalities, "often without sufficient guidance, training, or resources" ([7], p. 14). They:

*were largely unprepared to support continuity of learning and adapt to new teaching methodologies (…) Even in contexts with adequate infrastructure and connectivity, many educators lack the most basic ICT skills, meaning they will likely struggle with their own ongoing professional development, let alone with facilitating quality distance learning' ([7], p. 15).*

For this reason, the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted among the many things that in-service teacher training 'are in need of reform to better train teachers in new methods of education delivery' ([7], p. 15).

As already noted by Hattie and by Pitler et al. [9, 10], the current situation has finally made it clear that to support the teaching profession and the preparation of teachers it is not enough to provide them with: 'Technology alone cannot guarantee good learning outcomes. More important than training teachers in ICT skills, is ensuring that they have the assessment and pedagogical skills to meet students at their level and to implement the accelerated curricula and differentiated learning strategies' ([7], p. 23).

As suggested by Anderson [11, 12], in order to avoid the negative effects of the so-called *coronateaching* [13]1 - i.e. the poor quality of the training offer and the ineffectiveness of the production of skills, due to sudden transformation of frontal lessons in virtual mode without investing the curriculum or teaching methodology - the support offered to students by teachers and tutors becomes fundamental, especially through - upstream - the redesign of the course in terms of both the curriculum and strategies, − downstream - the monitoring of students' learning processes.

The specific limit of the emergency adaptation of courses in online mode, in fact, would not be so much in the lack of support offered by teachers to students - in terms of the 'teacher-student' relationship -, but rather in the lack of link between

**21**

**Table 1**.

category (see **Table 2**).

*Remote Support through Technologies: A Research-Training on Teachers' 'Sophisticated Knowledge'*

pedagogical contents, of differentiated learning environments, by means of digital technologies and organization of learning experiences - in terms of the 'teachercourse' relationship -, which involves both the planning of the instructional design

As highlighted by UN ([7], p. 24) 'digital solutions need relevant content, adequate instructional models, effective teaching practices and a supportive learning environment'. It then becomes possible to dispel the *myth* of teaching 'with'

Already in 2019 the TALIS [19] survey revealed the strong need for teacher training in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) - despite 60% of teachers received professional development in ICT, 18% in fact reported a higher need for development in this area. The preparation of teachers to support students' digital learning is not based only on ICT skills [5]: 'technology does not just change methods of teaching and learning, it can also elevate the role of teachers from imparting received knowledge towards working as co-creators of knowledge,

Teacher training, in general and even more so in the current context, is effective if useful for build pedagogical and technical skills, for integrate digital tools into

While in the early emergency the first generalized response was to provide

OECD [22] stressed in the second study that 'for educators, the COVID-19 pandemic is a quintessence of the adaptive and transformative challenge, for which there is no pre-configured playbook that can guide appropriate responses' ([22], p. 2) and provides a set of online educational resources to support continuity of

1.*Curriculum resources* - as lectures, videos, interactive learning modules;

2.*Professional development resources* - resources to support teachers (or parents) in the ability to teach at a distance, to support learners, more independently at

3.*Tools* - teaching and learning management tools, communication, creation or

The second one resources were assessed on the basis of a specific taxonomy for classifying the curriculum and professional development resources [23], see

<sup>2</sup> Applications, platforms and educational resources for use by parents, teachers, school administrators

to support student learning and offer assistance during school closing periods.

Regards resources for professional development suggested by OECD [8], the following table shows the professional skills activated as well as the related taxonomic

 [4] that made it possible to set up a 'field' [21] distance learning, then it was possible to start thinking on the skills needed by the teacher to cope with this

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95949*

(ID) and the choice of learning design - LD [14–16].

**2. (Useful) support to (real) needs of teachers**

as coaches, as mentors and as evaluators' ([5], p. 17).

learning environment [5, 19, 20].

home rather than at school;

access to educational content.

tools2

situation.

teaching and learning:

technologies [17, 18] and put teaching strategies at the center.

<sup>1</sup> The neologism is taken from the UNESCO-IESCALC document 'COVID-19 and higher education' [13] in which it is defined as the tendency to 'transform present lessons in a virtual mode, without changing the curriculum or methodology (...) abrupt entry into a complex teaching modality, with multiple technological and pedagogical options and with a steep learning curve (which could involve) frustration and overwhelming adaptation to an educational modality never experienced before without the corresponding training' [13, p. 25].

*Remote Support through Technologies: A Research-Training on Teachers' 'Sophisticated Knowledge' DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95949*

pedagogical contents, of differentiated learning environments, by means of digital technologies and organization of learning experiences - in terms of the 'teachercourse' relationship -, which involves both the planning of the instructional design (ID) and the choice of learning design - LD [14–16].

As highlighted by UN ([7], p. 24) 'digital solutions need relevant content, adequate instructional models, effective teaching practices and a supportive learning environment'. It then becomes possible to dispel the *myth* of teaching 'with' technologies [17, 18] and put teaching strategies at the center.
