“I Study When All My Family is Asleep”. Gender, Time and Space in Online Education in the COVID-19 Pandemic^*,**

"Eu Estudo Enquanto Toda Minha Família Está Dormindo". Gênero, Tempo e Espaço na Educação Online na Pandemia de Covid-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has radically altered the ways of working, studying, and interacting globally, forcing people and communities to reinterpret their daily activities. This study analyzes the changes experienced by working mothers who began distance studies at an Argentine university during the second year of the pandemic. Results indicated how spaces and time were transformed, and gender inequalities deepened. The pandemic, above all, impacted the positions and negotiations that working mothers managed to establish to continue studying in a virtual university environment. In these cases, conquering time and space for learning is, at the same time, an act of acceptance and innovation as a woman.

Keywords:
virtual education; gender; COVID-19; narratives; dialogism

Resumo

A pandemia do COVID-19 alterou radicalmente as formas de trabalhar, estudar e interagir globalmente, forçando pessoas e comunidades a recriar os significados de suas atividades diárias. Este estudo analisa as mudanças vivenciadas por mães trabalhadoras que iniciaram seus estudos a distância em uma universidade argentina, durante o segundo ano da pandemia. Os resultados indicam como os espaços e tempos se transformam e as desigualdades de gênero se aprofundam. A pandemia, sobretudo, impactou as posições e as negociações que as mulheres mães conseguem estabelecer para continuar estudando em ambiente universitário virtual. Nesses casos, conquistar tempo e espaço para aprender é, ao mesmo tempo, um ato de aceitação e inovação como mulher.

Palavras-chave:
educação virtual; gênero; COVID-19; narrativas; dialogismo

Human experience and actuations materialize in sociocultural interactions where temporality and spatiality are fundamental (Rosa & Valsiner, 2018). The concept of chronotope refers to the ground that intertwines contextualization processes (Auer, 1995) occurring in the inbetweens (Buber, 1937) of online/offline interactions in which different layers of human activity become connected. Chronotopes of an epoch, events and activity (Barbato & Beraldo, 2020) interweave the grounds of the conditions of socialization between the historical and the situated, the collective and the individual. Cultural psychology argues that there is a co-construction between human experience and socio-historical contexts (Rosa & Valsiner, 2018). If there are changes in the latter, there will be modifications in the modes of experience and agency. Events that impact the preservation of life generally experienced in public and collective settings trigger changes in beliefs and values. They may modify how people feel, reflect, act and express themselves in different communicative modes produced in polyphonic dynamics. In this sense, polyphonies indicate positions illuminating clusters of meanings and practices relevant to a given group, ethnicity, or population in different territories that lead to cultural convergences.

As the central properties of dialogism, polyphonies are produced on semiotic grounds, generated by social conditions that emerge from historical tensions between public-private and collective-individual. Thus, when we analyze individual oral narratives, written and illustrated by images or objects produced by a specific group, we access a set of meanings that acknowledge a historical moment particular to that group that, for example, experiences an impact event. Historical and social changes expand the possibility of adopting new public and collective luminaires. Crises trigger transitions that can change the chronotope. While the crisis extends temporally, persons and groups live in a changing thread.

Chronotopic dynamics are generated in the negotiation between personal positions, communities of action, and societies, enabling advances in understanding how people interpret themselves, others, and the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has radically altered how people work, study and relate to others globally, forcing them and their communities to interpret in new ways their daily activities. There is a sense of dramaturgy in the pandemic (Di Gesú, 2021) that goes beyond the disease and the health situation, orienting the different experiences at a personal, familial, and institutional level (González, 2020; Di Gesú & González, 2020). With the multiple waves of infection, overloaded health systems, and generalized experience of uncertainty, most countries initiated a lockdown period as soon as the pandemic was announced.

Different health measures were implemented as days, weeks and months passed, and people worldwide acquired a whole set of new vocabulary and practices, such as social distancing and isolation. Face-to-face interactions were discouraged or prohibited; digital communication became the primary means to maintain educational processes and most jobs. Activities developed in different social and organizational settings were suddenly transferred to homes. From gender and feminist studies' perspectives, this study questioned how women who worked and studied interpreted changes in their routines and the reorganization of domestic space and time.

From the educational point of view, the interruption of face-to-face classes at all academic levels radically altered the family organization, increasing, in many cases, the gender gap associated with caring activities (UNESCO Report, 2020). On the other hand, university learning massively leaned toward virtual environments, adopting remote teaching practices almost worldwide (UNESCO Report, 2020). Introducing new learning practices may act as an obstacle, a difficulty, and a possible threshold, generating negotiations between known and new. Reflexivity about the now, before, and imagined future triggers innovation-permanence dynamics in narratives and arguments about students' learning. As the pandemic was an ongoing impact event, studying the second-year narratives may entail having access to the practices before its decree, the attempts to regulate the activities during the months until the writing of their histories, and the orientations of future expectations. This article aims to analyze women workers' and students' narratives on changes in their routines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Distance learning during the pandemic

Traditionally, it is understood that distance learning- and, more recently, online education, has made it possible for individuals and groups working full-time and living far from the campuses to access university education (González, 2020). This education modality is closely linked to TICs, going beyond face-to-face education's space and time boundaries. One of its features is the ubiquity of learning, thanks to the portability of devices- laptops, smartphones, and others. It is possible to learn and study at almost any time and place (Burbules, 2012), which implies a shift of educational time and space, traditionally located within the "physical" educational institutions and with fixed schedules. As stated, the ubiquity of learning has been perceived as positive without considering the concrete ways students need to adjust their studying time or how they deal with shifting time and place. The term chronotope (Bakhtin, 2003) precisely refers to the existing overlapping between time and space dimensions along with human experience. In the case of online education, the chronotope is set up around time and space juxtaposition and displacement. For example, students can access a class while commuting to work, complete an activity or work remotely with classmates when they have some free time. When this happens, there might be dynamic transformations in the different I-positions (Hermans, 2001) expressed in this simultaneity: a person can be a student while being a worker, a mother, and a father.

These dynamics are expressed differently according to the student's expectations, values and conditions. In this way, Di Gesú (2020) found that many students show resistance to doing online courses because they prefer to have a fixed schedule and to interact face-to-face with classmates and teachers. The author understands that these aspects are affective catalysts for the learning process. González (2020) states that the juxtaposition of time and space typical of online learning environments requires a personal and familiar reorganization of everyday activities. As a result, there is a time and space hybridization and the erasure of the boundaries between work, study, and free time. I-positions transitions occur while a person is studying in the living room, accompanied by part of the family, or while in their workplace, collaborating with other students. As mentioned, the COVID-19 pandemic imposed, at a global level, distance learning as an alternative to keep academic activities running in universities.

While face-to-face universities were closing their doors, the usual learning and teaching environments migrated to the virtual campus, videoconference platforms and access through mobile phones and computers. In many cases, distance learning turned into emergency online education (UNESCO Report, 2020), and the home was turned (for children and adults) into a place to attend classes, do homework, and so on. In this context, research has been done to get to know the students’ perceptions (Almendingen et al., 2021) of online education, in contrast with traditional face-to-face education.

Most of these reports focused on previous experiences using technology, platforms, and other devices and their assessment of the teaching about motivation, social bonds, and learning results. However, no specific work has been done regarding transformations in time-space dimensions, which had taken place when learning activities moved into the interior of the homes, and how this has caused tensions in the positioning of female students who are simultaneously, working mothers and students.

Gender, time and space during the pandemic

Gender and feminist studies focus on the management and use of time by women and sexual dissidents. Brigidi (2021) holds that time management and availability reflect gender inequalities and are part of an indoctrination imposed by the patriarchal system. Several researchers (O'Reilly, 2021; O'Reilly & Green, 2021) have pointed out that women have felt overloaded during the pandemic.

Gender inequalities related to women being responsible for care work (children, home, dependent people) are social and historically acknowledged, making this a burden for women who must act as jugglers (Faur, 2014). During the lockout imposed by the pandemic and the following months, many women had to do home office while accompanying their school-age children, adapting their time to do several care tasks.

For example, a study including Argentine families in 2020 highlights that interviewed women used 43% more time than men on housework. However, in the case of school homework supervision and house cleaning, women's time spent on these tasks exceeds men's by 70% (Report from Universidad Champagnat, 2020). The statements analyzed by O'Reilly & Green (2021) often refer to the disruption to women as mothers' time. During the pandemic, the time for paid work overlapped with care time, and many women mentioned situations of anguish and extreme fatigue. Others narrated their difficulties in reconciling family time and time with their partners. They needed to manage a more equitable distribution of care work with their partners. They could not count on usual external help such as school, caregivers, other family members, and friends.

However, O'Reilly & Green (2021) considers these realities to be a product of the gender inequalities that existed before the pandemic. The same situation was observed, to a great extent, with spaces. Salamaña (2021) describes home adaptations in the Catalonian context during the lockdown. Women answered to the necessary house adaptations to once rigid hierarchically organized home areas. They adapted available rooms to the alternation and simultaneity of tasks and provided new value to previously underused spaces. All home-shared spaces, mainly those with children, became occupied: from the garage to the terraces and balconies. The dining room has been turned into a multipurpose function room for recreational activities, leisure activities, teleworking and studying. The women-mothers included in the study expressed the tensions that appeared when coexisting in these spaces, with a feeling of permanent chaos and disarray.

Method

The study enquired into the changes experienced by women students and mothers, mainly regarding time-space arrangements for studying in a remote university course during the pandemic. At the same time, to inquire into the positioning that appeared when women-students narrated changes.

The study was developed during Compulsory and Preventive Social Distancing (DISPO, for its name in Spanish: Distanciamiento Social Preventivo y Obligatorio) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The DISPO was implemented according to the epidemiological situation in each province or area. Still, in general terms, it implied the suspension of social and recreational activities held mainly in closed spaces and the implementation of care and hygiene measures, such as using masks, hand washing, and other preventive actions. At the educational level, primary and secondary schools combined face-to-face classes organized in a "bubble" system- with attendance for specific periods and reduced groups, with remote education in different formats: uploading tasks in the platforms, online courses, and e-mail communication.

A pandemic is a dramaturgic event that has revealed gender inequalities and inequities. The World Health Organization stated their concern that women had been exposed to higher risks to their health during the pandemic due to their being positioned as primary care providers and because they are at the front line of health care. In the Americas, women were on the front line caring for patients, accounting for 72% of all COVID-19 cases among healthcare professionals in the region (Gender and Health Analysis Report, WHO, 2022).

The study was performed in the one-month module "Introduction to Studying in Virtual Environments" ("Introducción al Estudio en Entornos Virtuales") within the virtual university studies to be Surgical Technologists. This subject is the first students take as part of their course in which they learn to use the different tools from the virtual campus- forums, tasks, questionnaires, and other activities. They are also invited to ponder the meaning of going back to study, the cognitive skills, and the motivation level required to accomplish a successful course in the virtual setting.

Each subject begins with one virtual class with the participation of other students and the responsible professor that presents the research form. The remainder activities included tasks in a virtual classroom (in Moodle 3.0) performed for four weeks. (For more details about the didactic proposal of this module, you can consult González, 2020).

A group of students who were beginning their university studies in Health Sciences-Surgical Technologist within an online program, took part in this research. With the aims of this study in mind, we selected 44 women. Their ages ranged between 26 and 45 years old. Twenty-one of them live at least with one school-age child 0 to 12 years old, and with the husband, 8 are single mothers, 11 live with somebody from their family - mother, sister, father, or alone and they do not have children, and four live with their partners, one stated that she has a pet.

They all work as Surgical Technologists within the health system in Argentina, a paid job considered essential during the pandemic, i.e., they had to work in-house at the health care centers during the pandemic period. Within the framework of the activities carried out in the module Introduction to Studying in Virtual Environments, the students had to take a picture showing where and how they studied within the pandemic context and answer, in writing, the question about their time and space organization for learning during the 22 months since the declared pandemic.

They also answered a brief survey about age, marital status, paid work, children's ages, and availability of technological devices at home- smartphones, tablets, and computers, and uploaded the written task to the virtual campus. The activity included the agreement to be part of this study. All women agreed, in writing, to participate in the research with the use of their pictures.

The texts varied from 20 lines to 3 lines. Some answered with a unique text written as a descriptive paragraph; others copied the questions and answered one by one. The methodological approach of this study draws on the multimethod approach used by Mieto, Barbato, and Rosa (2017). They combine techniques for elaborating multimodal texts- visual and written narratives, within qualitative research. In this way, we designed an activity that would use images within texts asking students to represent their current everyday life and how they interpreted the new activity of studying and the activities related to their work, leisure, and family.

The images could include pictures taken by themselves or other people and drawings or other illustrations. The analysis of texts and photographs applied qualitative research strategies such as dialogic-thematic analysis. The illustrated texts were read repeatedly (Barbato et al., 2016).

This analysis requires intensive and extensive readings with the analyst's attention focused on the information produced by each participant's utterances oriented by textual coherence and cohesion in the socio-communicative situation of the task. The focus on how textual contextualization emerges and the availability and frequency of themes indicate positions and meanings that mediate the participants' narratives- the interplay between micro and macro levels dialogues with the study's objectives (Figure 1).

Figure 1.
Dialogic-Thematic Analysis

The use of multimethods that focus on how each participant construes their narratives (horizontal reading) and their relations (transversal reading) to other written-image productions within the group (vertical reading) allows in-depth analysis, the generation of suppositions and advances in the theoretical aspects of the study. At the macro level, pragmatic discourse analysis supports identifying who is writing, what text they wrote, what images they used. It identifies discursive genre, thematic sequence, and I-positions, positioning the other and the world (the situation- the task), and meanings that mediating the narratives. The micro-level analysis focuses on what remains the same and changes; the work of discourse in the text. Utterances that appear first in texts or when participants change theme, marked emphasis, repeated along each production, and other productions orient the identification of polyphonies. It considers the discursive sequence and frequency of information of the signifier- expression; and signified- content and its orientations; the ambivalences, when there are different meanings orientations in the same position; and changes in meaning-making in narratives.

The changes that occur are then submitted to microgenetic analysis of the discourse to verify if there are discursive patterns that trigger aspects of change. If materialized, these changes generate similar discursive functions. Each student's text is carefully read and analyzed, and paraphrases are elaborated, avoiding removing the material from its context. For example, maintaining the writing sequence and indicating relations, orientations of discourse, word-action, positions, and meanings.

The multimethod analysis allows elaborating of new suppositions and advancing theorizing on meaning change in the pandemic chronotope. Concerning these written narratives, the general assumption was that in households where women live with their children and partner there are more pronounced changes reflected in the negotiations for the use of time and space within each family and household. This dynamic can lead to changes in activities and agencies as women and mothers. In describing the results, the chosen examples of writing will sometimes refer to a specific woman selected for bringing a narrative with a differentiated force of orientation in expressing herself; other times, the highlighted recurrent themes or utterances. In the latter, despite variations in the expression and the subjective orientation of meanings, the information about who wrote is not marked as they were polyphonic with several participants' narratives.

Results

The chronotope triggered by the virus spread forced adaptation, introducing the need for redistribution and reorganization of routines, imposing constraints on time-space. Part of the population lost their jobs worldwide and sought refresher courses and new professional education. Work and study became primarily remote. Health personnel is essential workers in health emergencies. The present tense used in their writing marked changes in time-space orientations.

Narratives, time and space

Students wrote mainly using the present in progress. Polyphonies centered on changing routines at home, in the family, in virtual learning, and in working remotely. The participants used the word adaptation, following its use in the questionnaire.

The impact of the pandemic, combined with the introduction of remote education, especially in the narratives of women mothers and workers, made adaptation more difficult- described mainly using present tenses. They used the past tense in comparisons between then and the current present- indicating the event when the pandemic officially started in the country or before the pandemic. They generated the future twice- when one of the women referred to the ongoing plans for adapting the spaces in her home for the family´s remote study and work. Another wrote about her plans to buy a notebook to avoid sharing one with her partner.

The following temporal dynamics were observed: 1. from now > towards before the pandemic - when narratives began with an event in the present, as the texts marked the pandemic's beginning impact, in a movement of occurred changes reverberation. 2. Now> before-at-the-beginning-of-the-pandemic > now- mainly when there is a comparison between before, in the beginning, and now, in this chronotope. 3. Now, as time progresses during the pandemic > before the pandemic's beginning - when talks about the reverberation and difficulties of organizing and reorganizing family routines. They mentioned events of change, for instance: 3.1. they were related to changes that occurred in their homes, and 3.2. that were planned, expanding the present in progress to the future; they also happen when women have to dedicate themselves more to studying to improve their careers or learn more to do the planned activities.

Committing more time for themselves may indicate a departure from what is expected from them in the I-mother-caregiver for everyone's well-being position, including the obligation to care for the cleaning and organization of their homes. This value already existed before the pandemic and is materialized in an ambivalent form, referring to what the narrator imagines as her role and thinks the other expects from herself (other > I-positions) and her agency.

Mainly, what is traditionally expected from women with a family composed of a husband and children and in single-mother families indicates priorities. Living in those spaces was good before the pandemic. During the pandemic; they became small, with everyone inside the home. In the case of women with a fixed partner, mostly the husbands' and partners' work was a priority.

These temporal dynamics indicate the impact and reverberation of the enactment of the pandemic, the initial lockdown imposed by governments with varying authoritarian strengths, indicating that the event transforming the chronotope was underway 22 months after its official start. The space of the homes and the families' different schedules and time together became central to the organization <> reorganization of their routine of study and work.

The polyphonies focused on the change of routines at home, in the family, remote learning, and work, mediated by the concept of adaptation, used in the first question of the questionnaire. In this process, there were seven positions of the women respondents: (1) I-woman-mother-worker-student as: 1.1. I-mother-with peer-worker-students; and 1.2 - I-single mum-worker-student I-mother; 2. I-worker-student-with a partner; 3. I-single-worker-student: 3.1 I-living with the family; 3.2 I-living alone.

The focus on ways of living as a family or alone occurs when they explain the organization of their homes. Space became vital with the declaration of the pandemic and the initial lockdown period, followed by a prolonged period of social distance, with the necessary social isolation of those infected or who had contact with infected people, making the home space the center of social life.

Families became hubs to almost every activity, indicating changes in values ​​in the shared and combined use of living spaces and the I- as caregiver position of the women in their families since they became the managers and organizers of those spaces and the activities developed in them. Conventionalization occurred with greater strength in the vectors of the I-mother and I-worker positions.

The new position as I-student recently entered university, and remote education was introduced as a third force, disrupting the known pre-pandemic routine. The mothers' virtual learning inaugurated tensions with the children's learning and leisure times, with their partners and work, considering that those mothers were all considered essential professionals and worked in hospitals and other medical facilities.

Images illustrated the written narratives and demonstrated what happened, especially with the study spaces in the homes, allowing the identification of different analytical dimensions in the home spaces. Photos showed the narrator usually sharing the same table or room with one of the children; empty learning tables with the open computer, books, notebooks, and other learning materials; and studying alone.

Home as the place for safeguarding the family, an idea emphasized during the pandemic, possibly modified home and study values. The house that became the place of protection, of more care than before, became the place of defense against the pandemic, bringing social distancing closer to the values ​​embedded in social isolation that restricted socialization processes. The conditions of socialization changed. They mentioned the constraints of being with the various others outside the nuclear family, constant hygienic care, and protecting the family and grandparents.

Learning became remote and virtual, both for the children and parents who studied or were teachers and the women narrators. One of them narrated that she was returning to university after many years away. Two of them mentioned they had to rely on their older children and spouses to initially deal with the different usages of the digital platform and the unexpected and sudden demands of the internet and devices they had to share to access remote education. Woman 7, for instance, described how adaptation to remote communication occurred in the different generations of her family:

in fact, it has been a real challenge this last year to get used to this new way of studying, connecting at different times depending on the internet connection, which was overloaded when all these started (...) Today, children go on living as if they have always lived in this virtual dimension (...). In my parents´ case, it has been really difficult to learn in a completely unknown way, but they have to get used to it to be in touch with us and see each other through a screen. Luckily, we managed to adapt.

Learning, working, and caring during the pandemic

All participants emphasized introducing the new student position due to the need to rearrange the routine with free time, leisure, and self-care loss. The impact of the pandemic is narrated primarily by women who are mothers. They responsibly decided to become students, and in some cases, the narrators wrote that there was an agreement with their families. When they have children, the emphasis is on us, on the "together”.

In the pandemic, an ongoing impact event chronotope change is observed, with the home and family routines at the center of this change. In this chronotope, the home needs adjustments to become a place for protection and each family member's routine to cope with learning and working remotely. When they enter or return to university, the position of the participants as workers expands, and the present-future of their course of studies and the certificate come into play, reducing the leisure time and time for physical exercise. Adaptation depends on health and socioeconomic conditions.

The concepts of organization, responsibility, sharing, and taking turns marked the narratives. Among the mothers who have a partner, the concepts related to respect also appeared in the sense of conquering and deserving respect. They share the space at home with their families, with the daily demands of the families they live with, study and work at home, or work outside the house, with unique and instrumental configurations.

They also share the devices, with some participants using mobile phones mainly for watching videos and taking part in virtual classes, computers, and notebooks for reading, writing, and posting activities. The expansion and reorganization of the tasks performed on the different devices resulted from the urgency of remote, virtual activities, often imposed as the only possibility of learning, with changes in routine, given the need to share space-time in different conditions of adaptation to the new daily practices.

Over the 22 months of the pandemic, there were various routine reorientations, with abandonment and resumption of specific actions, which restricted face-to-face interactions and expanded virtual remote social interactions. These dynamics generated opportunities to manage new practices, such as new agreements between couples, their children, and themselves. These observed openings, which seem to be usual in impact events, can suffer a differentiated pressure by the pandemic chronotope, which makes them potential triggers of innovation as they generate new beliefs and values ​​regarding the functioning of the family.

Thus, narratives indicated a change in the mother and worker positions related to care values. The restriction of socialization processes outside the home expanded families' daily face-to-face interactions and virtual remote interactions with others. As a result, an extension of the mother's position as a caregiver and one or the only provider occurred.

Although this was an expected known position before the extended impact event, during the ongoing pandemic, mothers and women with partners became organizers and managers in the new order of their homes. Homes became spaces with amplified qualities for the family to study, work, and have fun.

The following four narratives exemplify the materialization of time-oriented by the student mother's personal choices that produced differentials in the organization of family and home life. In one case, the participant wrote that she asked her partner for help to have time for her to study with tranquility. She began the text by marking her style in a statement about her agency in asking for support that she emphasized as needing help during her daily studying time.

In another narrative, the narrator stated that her family collaborates during her study time, respecting her study schedules. Still, she points out that there was difficulty finding the minimum time to study and "a collective decision set in my family." In the same text fragment, there is a change from "them" to the use of "us." Her narrative began with marking the I-position when it came to her study, and then her writing moved between "me" and the use of "we." For instance, she wrote "my son" after marking "our son." Change from the use of "us" to refer to " us as partners" and to "us as me" implies a discursive ambivalence that brings the idea that she is not sure yet to be respected:

(...) it is a daily challenge, since, beyond the pandemic, the routine is itself exhausting and we must have a quality moment with our children. The space [in the house] is still the same, with no changes; however, what we highlight is the moments we have for ourselves and others, and we try to respect that. (Woman 27).

A third narrative is from a young participant. Woman 8 mentioned that she and her partner took turns caring for her baby, and since they both are students, "we take turns to take care of our little girl and study." She refers to herself only in the first sentence. In the rest of the text, she uses the first-person plural exclusively, indicating that the partner makes decisions and participates together. "At home, we coexist…" In the fourth case, the narrator, Woman 12, writes about her children, the computers, how they share them, how they adapted spaces in the house and how they use them.

The requirement of a picture, in this case, allows for the expansion of narratives since it is when talking about the image that the narrator highlights that she is writing about who she is: "This picture represents me since I study in my room and sometimes the family routine gets a bit messy." The four narrative examples were polyphonic, occurring: 1. In an ambivalent structure, concurrently, "this and that." 2. Introducing a mark of personal style in primarily first person of the plural discourse about the "we" as a family. 3. As she positioned herself only in the final part of her narrative as a kind of appendix. The former structure may indicate a tension between permanence and change forces, which orient the reverberation of the impact of the pandemic and the imposed remote study in the case of these essential workers.

Agency and positioning in tension

It is possible that, after the end of the pandemic, the created routines may return to perceived normality. For instance, people may interpret what happened during the extended impact event as a moment of remarkable dedication to personal study in a particular type of experience.

Although, and more interestingly, experiences expressed as tensions exemplified in the narrated families' interactions may indicate the triggering changes in agencies that could be in progress, pressured by the impact event, orienting transformation in the women's agencies and families' relationships.

The value change in the concept of woman-wife-mother-housewife-worker and student opens space-time for change in the relations and tasks of partners and children. It may indicate the genesis of a diverse division of housework, expanding the meaning-making of caring for the home so that partners and children can share more of this care with their spouses/mothers.

Reorganization implies the restructuring of time for mothers since the time for taking care of themselves- going to the gym and leisure time, is extinguished or drastically reduced, and leisure occurs together with the family, with reduced time for being "quiet" and "alone." In the position of me-mother-wife-worker-student, there are 21 participants. Adaptation for them was rather complex, "we are doing our best," "it was a challenge." Family and social relations underwent many changes. It took some time, routines were in disarray, and every family was affected by the new ways of studying, which affected other areas: "We have the means, but it's hard to find the time." In one case, the narrator states that they adapted satisfactorily and distributed tasks among "my" children, who helped her. There were changes in all areas of their lives.

The time is the daily present, the past, used in comparisons with the beginning of the pandemic and university admission, and it is a daily challenge. Space adaptations depend on the socioeconomic conditions of the families: the flat that used to be an adequate space before the pandemic "is too small now". The "we" refers to the family, the collaborative work with the family to catch up with the daily studying activities and time for university, the agreements, and the exhausting routines.

Except for two cases when - 1. the socioeconomic condition is better; 2. the children are adults. Narrators mentioned that, to organize their study, they prioritize their children. They look at their schedules for available time for themselves available time for themselves when the others are asleep or not at home. When the others are resting, they study anywhere for privacy and quietness.

They organize their routines to include studying time. Bedrooms, living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens, the patio, and a gallery became adapted spaces for learning. They used their mobile phones for classes, videos, and the computer to log into the campus, read the material and do activities. They share the computers with their children or partners and use them when the other person is not using them. One of them says:

adaptation of study time with daily working routines and the family was overcome in the best way possible. I made an effort and looked for places where I could read and log in to the campus. For example, I read when commuting to work and when I arrived home, I tried to answer the questionnaires and added all these to the housework and my children's school homework because they are young and need help. (Woman 1)

Routines and home (re)organization were critical to fulfilling all the responsibilities involved as parents and students. One must be well-organized to avoid neglecting the family while completing university assignments. The positioning of being a mother widened and shifted to being a teacher of the children, controlling school homework, checking that children did their homework, teaching them and dealing with revising study topics.

Regarding being a student, one stated that she manages her time adequately and has been able to save some time to study and prioritize their children, leaving aside leisure activities to do everything on time. They study when they can. The positions do not escape from this time re-structuring since women began taking advantage of work breaks- even if they are 10 minutes long, to revise, read some short material, and complete other learning tasks. In this way, time and space juxtapositions force them to divide their time between family time, children’s school homework, work and study time.

They share the devices with their children or partners. They help each other, but finding the right time to study is hard, even with some support taking turns caring for the children. One stated that she required more collaboration from her partner to be able to study: "after dinner, that’s the moment when I most need help." They also renounce their right to leisure time or time to exercise to preserve family arrangements:

My routine was adapted to the free time that I used to have. Instead of doing physical exercise, I take some hours in the week to read and check the bibliography of each module and to complete the virtual tasks. My family, they did not undergo many changes because I try to take some time to study when they are sleeping or aren't at home. (Woman 6).

In the me-single mother-worker-student position, there are nine women. The continuity of the present time relates to studying time with adaptations required for virtual learning when coming back to learning after a long time, highlighting work and family responsibilities. Their productions include the "we" to inform about family routines and their organization.

The past is recent. It refers to the pandemic's beginning, and the adaptation took place over some weeks. Narratives focus on the children's studies, such as sharing the devices to do homework, and how they adapt their routines to their children and jobs, how they adapted and share study spaces, and how they adapted to their families and their virtual life as students. Adaptations to space and on how to share the devices depend on socioeconomic conditions.

There are narratives describing that the adaptation presented some difficulties, such as being able to keep virtual routines with the family and adjusting the schedules. Some openly express that their priorities are the children, and the children's studies, school classes, music classes and English. Others mention that they organize so that they have the early morning for themselves, to "make the most of my time" before the children wake up and or after work and dinner to study. They get up early and go to bed late.

The meaning of responsibility includes daily routines in a quiet way and the decision to expand studying possibilities and careers. They search for "a moment alone for some rather long time to get the necessary concentration I need to read and do the assignments." Time is scarce, so they use "most of my free hours to do as many tasks as possible". One narrated that when she studies in her bedroom, "the family routine sometimes gets a little messy." When children do not go to school, it is clear that there are fewer difficulties in the adaptation to the daily routine since the mother is the only person who studies. Some mothers wrote that since they live in a province in the south of the country, where classes were face-to-face in the schools, they adapted to the virtual classes and had time to study.

Three women are in the I-worker-student-partner position. The time of the narratives is the present, and the use of the past to inform about changes after they started their courses- they changed sleeping time and physical exercise, and they added studying time. After agreeing with their partners, they shared space between work, study, and home chores.

One mentioned that adaptation was difficult because she had finished one course of studies and started studying medicine. She depends on her boyfriend's computer use, sometimes, they cannot coordinate the schedules, and she adapted the dining room, turning it into a study. A near-future plan in this position occurred once: she wrote that she was planning to buy a computer.

Another informs that she is married but does not have children. The pandemic did not alter her routines. She uses the computer when she needs it, but mentions that it is important to be well-organized, plan housework, study, work, and go back to study at night or to relax when the day is over. For her, it is not a problem to share the computer with her partner, who uses it most of the day- afternoon and night, and it is not a problem to get organized by sharing the space to study, or using an older computer or their mobile phones to fulfill the tasks.

One points out that there are no adaptation problems and that she studies in the kitchen. Eleven participants positioned themselves as I-single-who lives with family-worker-student or who live alone. The former group's narratives focused on the present. The past occurs in the interpretations of how the routine changes, especially with entering the university. For the latter, the adaption of their routines occurred without difficulty. There was a loss of idle time and a reorganization of free time for university and study.

Socioeconomic conditions affect whether they have to share spaces or take turns using the rooms to study. If they have to give space to others when they should study or wait until the device's owner finishes, and if they can use it and finish their tasks without interruption. There was almost no need to adapt the space at home. With specific socioeconomic differences, when they have to share electronic devices in small flats, one uses a computer received from the Argentine government in 2015.

The written narratives of single women who live with their mothers tell that for their mothers nothing has changed, even if they are working or retired. The argument is that their mothers- positioned as the other, did not have their routines altered, despite being active in their profession or developing activities as retirees.

The supposition is that the latter narratives indicate that single adult women's utterances on their mothers' actions are polyphonic to the commonly expected historical mothers' role performance of caring before for the other. These polyphonies become stronger when we consider their mother-student colleagues' comments on the effort they make so that nothing changes for their children and families and for them to feel the change as smoothly as possible, including their adult children living in the family home.

Appraisals are different when the single women narrators position a father and sister as the other; this is appraised differently from their viewpoint of their mothers as the other. The perspective of those single women who live with their fathers or sister strongly informs the value of collaboration, doing together, sharing with negotiations, and balanced values, even if there are still indicators of power asymmetry between them and their relatives.

For instance, in her I-daughter position, a single woman commented that her teacher-mother is very organized, she schedules herself a week in advance, and there is no significant change in routine for her. Those in position I-single person-worker-student mention that they adapt well, "without many difficulties," and there were no problems adapting to the virtual learning. Most of them note that the change occurred when entering university, and the time they used to have for themselves is used for studying, after work, or in their free time. One mentioned that she adapted the dining room to study. Figure 2 summarizes the main results of the analysis.

Figure 2.
Central results

Discussion

Human experience and actuations materialize in time and space markers (Rosa & Valsiner, 2018). The pandemic declaration suddenly transferred leading daily activities to the homes triggering transitions to new interpretations of self, the other, and known routines.

The pandemic dramaturgy (Di Gesú, 2020) changed the mothers' daily routines, overloading them with different responsibilities (Brigidi, 2021; O'Reilly, 2021; O'Reilly & Green, 2021), intensifying their routines. New games between centrifugal, and centripetal forces produced unresolved ambivalences in women's interpretation of self, the other and the situation. The ongoing event tensioned the mothers' efforts to conquer space and time for their learning while also offering support to their families.

Writing about the arrangements and rearrangements of family routines and agreements between couples, single-mother family, and their children materialized permanence and change in meaning-making processes. In the analyzed narratives, the grounds indicated an expansion of the women's responsibilities as managers and organizers of family-educational-sanitary activities at home. Two mothers who rearranged their schedules, and introduced the novelty of their dedication to studying acknowledged their homes as messy. Their perception of disorganization may be oriented to traditional woman-mother-worker-housewife roles and simultaneously to shifting monologic gender roles into dialogic positions.

The marked juxtaposition between the demands of the university course- time to study, logging in to the campus, and other learning tasks, and care included caring for dependent people and housework- cleaning, shopping, and other chores. Facing this situation, women developed a series of strategies to gain time; these include "trimming" or creating the moment for studying during the day, or one of the most frequent ones, to sacrifice personal time or rest time to be able to do the activities. In this sense, the opportunity of distance education (González, 2020) offers them the possibility of a win.

However, during the pandemic, even distance learning, with its time and space ubiquity and juxtaposition features, is built as a scenery where the position of student-mother-carer demands a strong effort as gender inequalities are more marked. Studying is not the main activity of these women, but one in a varied set of multiple daily tasks, working hours that go on at home, and which merge with care work and family management.

Few women pointed out a greater equilibrium and equity in house and care routines. The juggler women (Faur, 2014) add, in this way, another dimension in space-time to their everyday tasks, as the virtual space of university online learning. The overlapping of space and time from the perspective of online learning worsens with the addition of the gender perspective that emphasizes time as a dimension where inequities and social control ways are spread (Brigidi, 2021). However, simultaneously, different tensions appear and sometimes lead to new possibilities in this intertwined game between dialogic positioning and agencies.

Nevertheless, and despite the overloading implied in these activities of studying, working, and taking care of others, studying at university means, for many of them, an open door to the future, to new possibilities of development as professionals and greater autonomy.

There are recurrent and constant allusions to the search for a place of their own and respect from their children, partners, and families. This claim evidences, in a double sense, the real overload of tasks in the pandemic context- lived as an ongoing present- and the possibility of achieving greater autonomy in the future.

The marked preference for the continuous present tense during an impact event may expand the time space for autoregulation and increase opportunities in Being-as-event (Bakhtin, 2003). Constant changes required in current daily routines and the urgent need to care for and to make things go smoothly for their families are reckoned mostly by the women-workers-students that are mothers.

The perceived ongoing extended urgencies indicate a continuous effort to care for tensions relations and require agencies as reflexive actuations. Although there were indications of shared caring for activities when the women lived with their partners, the narratives posit that women still positioned themselves as the primary carer at home. This position reverberated in their managing of time and space, maintaining social conditions as they are even if they are now accumulating much more responsibilities.

Change in meaning-making encounters obstacles marked by centripetal forces oriented to secure the maintenance of social and family roles with their functions and expected consequences as they are. However, centrifugal forces are at work when the present and continuous tense actualize the meaning-making processes. These dynamics observed in the narratives keep the chronotope open to constant reflexivity and agencies necessary to transform the conditions of socialization and development.

The presence of innovation forces- centrifugal forces, may shift actions attributed to them, the other, and the situation with dialogic practices reverberating throughout time. Permanence and change of old practices into new ones depend on the dynamics of conventionalization (Bartlett, 1995), as spaces of negotiation between what is known and the novel meanings in everyday actuations- including historic beliefs and values about gender power balance and possibilities of shared responsibilities.

Meaning-making and agencies negotiated and renegotiated during the impact event reverberate throughout history. The lack of narratives of future possibilities indicates the gravity of the situation, with only two examples of utterances about the near future, both related to the reorganization of space (Salamaña, 2021) and actions related to the pandemics. Interpreting the contextualization that occurred in the written texts (Auer, 1995), the future is pushed by them being able to provide well-being at home and obtain success in their study, opening future perspectives in their jobs.

Conclusion

Chronotopes dialogically orient beliefs and values in positions that illuminate and actualize meanings in preferential cultural practices. When the crisis that triggers changes in transitions is ongoing, extending over time, changing chronotopes are experienced.

Change depends on the socialization conditions, their reverberations strength in return to face-to-face interactions, and the eventual decrease of sanitary concerns. Events that impact the safeguarding of life experienced publicly, for instance, in natural disasters, trigger changes in beliefs and values. These events can change how people feel, reflect and, act in the world. In this process, positions may be created and extinguished in the dialogic tensions in contra punctum with chronotopic experiences of the urgency of protecting life.

The worldwide-reaching internet's novelty gives access to different voices in different pandemic situations marked by geopolitics intertwined within the new chronotope. The change expands possibilities for new public-private, collective-individual luminaries. New voices and polyphonies emerge and are raised to the public realm overnight or along a lengthier time, according to the values ​​highlighted- political, as most practices, during the pandemic were imposed by governments; and medical and scientific, as those implemented by health authorities and suggested by scientists.

Changes in cultural tools lead to changes in the forms of interpretation of human experience and agency. In the negotiation between personal positions, communities of action, and societies in the different chronotopes, clusters of meanings are illuminated and make possible advances in understanding how people interpret themselves, each other, and the world when facing impacting events.

In this sense, studying online during the pandemic required a hefty dose of effort for these women. The narratives account for ambivalent experiences between the agency that orients the decision to study and the overload of health care and emotional work, indicating that centripetal forces oriented to the permanence of gender inequalities are vigorously active. Women are still taking care of themselves as their families are asleep.

References

• Almendingen, K., Morseth, M.S., Gjølstad, E., Brevik, A., & Tørris, C. (2021). Student's experiences with online teaching following COVID-19 lockdown: A mixed methods explorative study. PLoS ONE, 16 (8): e0250378. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250378
  » https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250378
• Auer, P. (1995). Context and contextualization. In: Verschueren, J. Ostman, J-O., & Blommaert, J. (Ed.). Handbook of pragmatics (pp. 1-19). John Benjamins.
• Bakhtin, M.M. (2003). Towards a philosophy of the act University of Texas Press.
• Barbato, S. & Beraldo, R. (2020). Polemic forum in blended learning as new strategies for a borderless higher education. In Di Gesú, M. G. & González, M. F. (Ed.). Cultural views on online learning in Higher Education: a seemingly borderless class (pp. 87-10).
• Barbato, S., Mieto, G. S. M., & Rosa, A. (2016). O estudo da produção de significados em interações: metodologias qualitativas. In Oliveira, M.C.S.L. Chagas, J.F., Mieto, G.S.M., & Beraldo, R . (Orgs). Psicologia dos processos de desenvolvimento humano. Cultura e educação (pp. 89-114). Alínea.
• Brigidi, S., Mancinello, F., Leyva-Moral, J., & Ausona Bieto, M. (2021). Privilegios, género y “dignidad del tiempo” en mujeres-madres-trabajadoras en la época de la covid-19. In: Campo Tejedor, A. del (Ed.). La vida cotidiana en tiempos de la COVID. Una antropología de la pandemia (pp. 141-155). Catarata.
• Bartlett, F. (1995). Remembering John Benjamins
• Buber, M. (1937). I and thou T& T Clark.
• Burbules, N. (2012). El aprendizaje ubicuo y el futuro de la enseñanza. Encounters/Encuentros/Rencontres on Education, 13: 3-14
• Di Gesú, M. G. (2020). Affect as a catalyzer of student's choice of learning environments. In: Di Gesú, M. G. & González, M. F. (Ed.), Cultural views on online learning in higher education: A seemingly borderless class (pp. 45-63). Springer.
• Di Gesú, M. G. & González, M.F. (2020). The imposed online learning and teaching during COVID-19 times. In: Di Gesú, M. G. & González, M. F. (Ed.). Cultural views on online learning in higher education: A seemingly borderless class (pp. 189-212). Springer.
• Faur, E. (2014). El cuidado infantil en el siglo XXI. Mujeres malabaristas en una sociedad desigual Siglo XXI.
• González, M. F. (2020). When online education helps to cross (symbolic) borders: An empirical study in an Argentinian university. In: Di Gesú, M. G & M. F. González (Ed.), Cultural views on online learning in higher education: A seemingly borderless class (pp. 29-45) Springer.
• Hermans, H. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture & Psychology, 7(3): 243-281. doi: 10.1177/1354067X0173001
  » https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X0173001
• Mieto, G.S.M., Barbato, S., & Rosa, A. (2017). Teachers in transition: a study on production of meanings in initial practice in inclusive education. Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa, 32(spe), 1-9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0102-3772e32ne29
  » http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0102-3772e32ne29
• Report from Champagnat University. (2020). Informe del Observatorio de Equidad de Género e Igualdad de Oportunidades. Universidad de Champagnat.
• Report Gender and Health Analysis: COVID-19 in the Americas. (2022). Organización Mundial de la Salud. Washington, DC: PAHO. https://www.paho.org/en/news/8-3-2022-covid-19-pandemic-disproportionately-affected-women-americas
  » https://www.paho.org/en/news/8-3-2022-covid-19-pandemic-disproportionately-affected-women-americas
• O´Reilly, A. & Green, F. (2021). Introduction. In A. O´Reilly & F. Green. (Eds). Mothers, mothering and COVID-19. Dispatches from a pandemic (pp. 15-32). Demeter Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1h45mcj
  » https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1h45mcj
• O´Reilly, A. (2021). “Certainly not an equal-opportunity pandemic”: COVID-19 and its impact on mothers’ carework, health, and employment. In: A. O´Reilly & F. Green. (Ed.). Mothers, mothering and COVID-19. Dispatches from a pandemic (pp. 41-52). Demeter Press.
• Rosa, A. & Valsiner, J. (2018). The human psyche lives in semiospheres. In: Rosa, A. & Valsiner, J. (Ed.). The Cambridge handbook of sociocultural psychology (pp. 13-34). Cambridge University Press.
• Salamaña i Serra, I. (2021). Hibridando el espacio doméstico: el trabajo de cuidados y el teletrabajo de mujeres jóvenes en periodo de confinamiento. In: Vázquez, G.G.H., Silva, J.M., & Woitowicz, K.J. (Ed.). Vivências de mulheres no tempo e espaço da pandemia de covid-19: Perspectivas transnacionais (pp.131-148) Editora CRV.
• United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization Report (2020). COVID-19 y educación superior: De los efectos inmediatos al día después. Análisis de impactos, respuestas políticas y recomendaciones. https://www.iesalc.unesco.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/COVID-19-070420-ES-2-1.pdf
  » https://www.iesalc.unesco.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/COVID-19-070420-ES-2-1.pdf

• *
  This paper is part of the Project Initial and Continued Professional Education Processes - learning and developmental trajectories for new modes of knowing and acting, as part of the CAPES Print Application n. 41/2017
• **
  Support: CAPES - Finance Code 001; CAPES PrInt, through the agreement between the Universities of Brasília and Nacional de Entre Ríos; and PROCAD Amazônia UFAM, UNIR, UnB (CAPES FAPEAM). We thank Gisele Cristina Resende and Carla Cristie de França Silva for their support in designing figures 1 and 2.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  15 May 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  30 Apr 2022
• Accepted
  12 Aug 2022