Currently, the documentary review brings a large number of studies that have emphasized the main effects that humanity has suffered with the pandemic situation, but also with the consequences generated by the measures adopted to deal with it, which have affected the personal and social development of individuals in all areas of action. In this regard, Gualdrón-Moncada (2021) stated: “the pandemic has caused a crisis in all areas, and education has not been indifferent to this situation” (p. 336).

In fact, the education sector was one of the most affected by the whole situation. The World Bank Group (2020) points out that a number of consequences have been identified in the education sector due to the closure of schools as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic; among them, it mentions mainly: interruption of learning, increase in inequality in learning, reduction of attachment to school, lower quality of education and teaching.

Based on the above, the measure of social distancing and home confinement generated that, approximately, more than one third of school-age students worldwide did not have access to distance or remote education during the time that schools were closed. Among the main reasons, the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI, 2021) states: “This would be related to the lack of access to technology and the necessary tools to support distance learning, as well as the lack of support for studying at home” (p. 10).

Similarly, Heredia et al. (2022) state:

In times of pandemic, academic learning was affected for children by the lack of technological tools; for parents, [by] assuming teaching roles with their children and the different time implications; and for teachers, by adapting their pedagogical practices for early childhood through digital means, creating emotional affectations during this time. (p. 1530)

Regarding the lack of technological tools, Murillo and Duk (2020) emphasize that, in the specific case of Latin America, only four out of ten households have an Internet connection, revealing the inequalities that exist and that increase when an analysis is made by socioeconomic level. Another important fact is provided by UNICEF (2020), an organization that published figures showing that only half of the students in public schools had access to distance learning, compared to three quarters of those in private schools.

Therefore, it is explicit that children’s learning was hindered as a result of inequalities in connectivity and technological equipment; but in addition, there were other reasons, such as those exposed by Murillo and Duk (2020), from other areas; they add to the technological problem situations such as insufficient food, poor preparation of parents to assume a teaching role, lack of availability of educational resources, inadequate spaces for study, the digital gap between teachers, etc.

Dreesen et al. (2020) state that in Latin America, 90% of governments have adopted as their main educational response, the use and implementation of technological platforms to ensure continuity in studies. Similarly, Osorio and Cárdenas (2021) point out: “The possibility for children to continue their learning, playing and socialization processes remotely from home has been the main strategy of countries to cope with the pandemic” (p. 20). This decision was taken by educational institutions as a response to the health contingency presented, as a result of the few alternatives that the health measures allowed to continue the educational processes, using the few teaching resources available, most of which depended on the technological factor.

Consequently, the actions carried out did not guarantee the acquisition of the knowledge that the children should acquire in each of the educational levels, since several determining elements in the context of virtuality or distance education were not made viable. In this regard, Kim (2020) notes the existence of limitations for online learning, such as the lack of teachers and children’s ability to use online sites, which require technological skills; also, the use of devices such as computers or telephones, which require adult supervision at home to complete the learning process, especially for younger children.

On the other hand, the Instituto de Investigaciones sobre la Universidad y la Educación en México (IISUE, 2020) points out that the transformation of the home into a school has shown that teaching and learning are processes that require the training and professionalization of the people who carry out these tasks, thus justifying the teaching function. Among the main difficulties experienced by families in supporting their children’s learning process, the following were identified: i) lack of knowledge about pedagogical strategies that promote learning; ii) complications in expressing their concerns about the process in a precise manner; and iii) poor understanding of the methods used by teachers in developing classes.

However, IISUE (2020) points out that these difficulties could be overcome if the parents or representatives of the students had a higher level of education, or also if dialogues were established at home that favored collaborative work to complete the activities assigned by the teachers, resolving any doubts or concerns by seeking complementary information or establishing effective interactions and communication with the teachers through the available channels.

On the other hand, Muñoz (2020) points out that the period of confinement generated moments of anxiety for students, parents and representatives, where the main uncertainty was the date of return to normality. Then, despite the measures that the educational institutions took to comply with the teaching, there was the need to prioritize spaces for the tranquility of students and parents with specific communication. Figure 2 shows the main consequences of the situation created by COVID-19 in the educational environment, according to UNESCO (s.f.).

Figure 2
Main consequences of COVID-19 for education

According to UNESCO (s.f.), the elements shown in Figure 2 affect the learning of children and adolescents equally. This shows how the online education implemented by the emergency has revealed the digital divide that exists between different educational institutions, because it is not only about the technological capacity that they manage as an institution, but also about the teachers’ own competencies to manage information and communication technologies (ICT) as a pedagogical resource for the learning of their students (Murillo & Duk, 2020; Weeden & Cornwell, 2020; Muñoz, 2020).

Naslum et al. (2020) state: “In virtual environments, young children lose interest in a lesson after 15 to 20 minutes, drastically reducing the daily hours of interaction and learning” (p. 3). Then, considering the contributions of UNESCO (2020) and those of Naslum et al. (2020), it can be indicated that new problems have emerged with the transfer of normal face-to-face education to a remote, virtual, distance modality, being the most affected factors, social interactions and learning, adding also, the work overload, the shortcomings to work the computer platforms with the required agility, time management, among others.

Thus, the impossibility of establishing quality social interactions between teachers and students, students, and the interruption of learning, as stated by UNESCO (s.f.), show that children did not learn during the limited time in which virtual platforms were used, since “the lack of adequate interaction with teachers is also a major concern associated with online learning” (Muñoz, 2020, p. 36). Therefore, social interaction is an important foundation on which children’s learning development rests; moreover, the use of online education hindered the acquisition of meaningful learning.

It is noteworthy that, researchers have found that the general perception of student learning is correlated with their sense of social presence in the course (Sintema, 2020). In fact, it has been observed that students in the online modality tend to receive lower grades than students who attend class daily (Basilaia and Kvavadze, 2020). Among the explanations commonly found in the literature are late submission of activities, misreading of instructions, technological problems, among others.

In the literature review, the plurality of paradigms that exist to explain learning processes in the educational field is observed. Currently, “a paradigm is described as a consensus in the scientific community on how to use the progress achieved in the past in the face of existing problems, thus creating universal solutions” (Trujillo, 2017, p. 7). Therefore, it is necessary to establish a paradigmatic position before the occurrence of a phenomenon, fact, event, or educational problem about which one wants to scientifically deepen.

Then, “in general terms, a paradigm is a certain framework from which we look at the world, understand it, interpret it, and intervene in it” (Trujillo, 2017, p.07). On this premise, the question: how did the children learn? must be answered by establishing a position through the paradigm on which the process of reviewing, analyzing and interpreting existing knowledge is carried out, in addition to other information gathered from the literature socialized in the community in general.

In the case of educational paradigms, these are circumscribed in laws, theories and educational applications that include referential theoretical frameworks, theory and practice, and the classroom performance of teachers, with the purpose of guiding the pedagogical foundations, educational action and scientific research of those problems that arise in the educational context. Figure 3 relates the above assumptions.

Figure 3
Conceptual framework of the educational paradigm
Note. In Trujillo (2017).

The question: How did children learn during the pandemic? seeks to explain whether children were able to learn during this historical and sociocultural moment, considering that the consequences of this situation affected the learning process, as well as the acquisition of skills and abilities. The literature review allowed us to identify a variety of authors who support the thesis that knowledge is a product of social interaction and culture (Galán & Murillo-Estepa, 2020). This thesis refers to the social constructivism that, years ago, Lev Vygotsky exposed within the historical and sociocultural theory.

The theory of social constructivism emphasizes the influence of social and cultural contexts on knowledge and supports a discovery model of learning that emphasizes the active role of the teacher, while students’ mental abilities are naturally developed through different routes of discovery. In this regard, Quintero (2019) states:

The social approach makes it possible to understand how the student constructs his learning through interaction with his environment -his social environment- because the interaction that the individual establishes with society plays an important role in his intellectual functioning. (p. 327)

Based on the contribution of this author, it is stated that learning in general is a social process. Arias (2009) points out: “Social interaction is essential for learning, as it favors the development of human capacities, considering language as a mediating mechanism in this development” (p. 46). The above is confirmed by Cámara et al. (2017), who asserts that learning is an active, intentional, collective and extensive process of meaning construction. The exercise of learning involves different processes that start from the interactions with the surrounding world, as it happens in the activities developed in the classroom.

Vygotsky (1978) stated:

In the cultural development of the child, each function appears twice: first at the social level, and later at the individual level; first between people (inter-psychological), and then within the child (intra-psychological). This is true of voluntary attention, logical memory, and concept formation. All higher functions originate as real relationships between individuals. (p. 5)

In line with the above, Cisternas and Droguett (2014) state:

One of Vygotsky’s fundamental propositions about development is that mental processes develop first on a shared level, that of socialization, and are then internalized, which implies a journey from the inter-psychological to the intra-psychological level. (p. 8)

Vygotsky was interested in analyzing how children learn semantics as they develop. For him, children construct the meanings of words through a shared activity that he called the ‘zone of proximal development’. Therefore, the social constructivism he proposed underlies the process of social interaction that children experience in the classroom because it allows them to first build knowledge from the relationships and communication they experience daily with the teacher and with other children, and then to internalize all that learning to form knowledge that will serve them throughout their lives.

In this regard, Osorio and Cárdenas (2021) state: “During the first years of life, children learn to walk, sit properly, interact with others, communicate, and develop basic cognitive skills, which are essential elements for their future development” (p. 19).

Social constructivism as a learning theory gives relevance to social cognition produced in shared spaces of interaction. In this regard, Sahakian et al. (2021, as cited in Gualdrón-Moncada, 2021) point out: “Not only is social cognition important and therefore necessary for success in school settings, but children’s personal relationships are essentially based on emotional reasoning as a whole” (p. 338).

The authors point out, for example, that if children do not play or spend leisure time with their peers, they are likely to have difficulties in learning, showing empathy, sharing, managing their emotions, developing language and the ability to communicate socially; consequently, they will be vulnerable to its effects in the future as a result of not experiencing social interactions with their peers.

In summary, the social constructivism presented by Vygotsky assures that children’s learning is the product of the integration of cognitive development and affective and emotional development within an appropriate context to interact with both teachers and peers in the classroom. Arias (2009) affirms Vygotsky’s approach as follows:

The role of social interaction with others (teachers, parents, older children, peers) is considered fundamental for socio-affective development and is essential for the development of the teaching and learning process in accordance with the current times. (p. 50)

Likewise, UNESCO (s.f.) reinforces the role of social interactions within the learning process when it states that access to school in early childhood allows children to interact more easily with others of their age and to find an environment that stimulates not only cognitive but also social and emotional capacities. Then, learning should be understood as a social activity and not only as a process of individual realization (Amayuela, 2017). This conception reinforces the importance of facilitating spaces for social interaction as an entry to learning, and also spaces where the child internalizes learning individually.

In addition, Lev Vygotsky emphasizes the link between education and communication, which is a process that favors the formation of the student’s personality, the acquisition of knowledge and the appropriation of culture, which is generated by the interactions that take place in the classroom and in other educational spaces. Amayuela (2017) states: “It is very significant the value that communication has in the educational influence that the teacher must exert on the student and in the assimilation of learning, as well as in their formative process in general” (p. 10).

It is then necessary to understand that communication and education are processes that cannot be separated, but are related and complementary (Amayuela, 2017). When this complementarity is subjected to the current context experienced by children in times of detention, it can be inferred that learning, as part of educational processes, and communication, established in social interactions within the classroom, left empty spaces in their continuity; therefore, from the perspective of social constructivism, children did not achieve the expected learning with the use of virtual platforms.

First of all, it is important to quote the contributions of Quintero (2019): “Sociocultural theory emphasizes the active participation of the subject in its social context, since the development of thought is the product of the interaction between the two” (p. 327). Similarly, Castellanos and Castro (2017) emphasize that “the best teaching and the most significant learning of the human being comes from the context itself, where he creates his social life” (p. 78).

The above contributions are derived from Lev Vygotsky’s sociohistorical and cultural theory, which refers to the transcendence of the context in which individuals develop for learning. Galán and Murillo-Estepa (2020) express that, from his socio-cultural perspective, Vygotsky (1978) stated that all learning is the product of interaction with the social environment and always has a previous history, experiences prior to the institutionalized training phase that are characteristic of socio-cultural interaction.

Vygotsky’s theory emphasizes the role of the individual as a social and cultural being within the framework of a history that develops over the course of his or her life, starting from the interpersonal to the intrapersonal. Castillo and Gibert (2021) express that Vygotsky’s theory is based on the gradual construction of learning from the first years of the child, under the influence of the social context, because learning is acquired through social interaction, in addition to developing new and better skills, as well as immersion in a routine and familiar way of life.

The documentary review of the socio-historical and cultural theory proposed by Vygotsky significantly highlights the interaction of children with their teachers and classmates, in addition to other adults who at some point become facilitators of learning. Based on the above criteria, it is possible to understand that the learning process in the current socio-historical and cultural context has affected the normal learning process of children, severely hampering the pedagogical strategies used by teachers to achieve academic goals. Consequently, new actions should be implemented that, in some way, allow to recompose the void left by the pandemic during the last two years.