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The COVID-19 pandemic has already had severe effects, with long-term social and economic implications. Due to issues like gender, disability, immigration, mother tongue, learning challenges, and other forms of socioeconomic disadvantage, the crisis has worsened already-widespread educational inequality. Indeed, in recent months, 40 percent of the world’s poorest countries have been unable to support their disadvantaged learners, with the many negative consequences of school closures being especially severe for disadvantaged children and their families, as well as all learners with learning difficulties and special needs.
The epidemic has brought to light the vulnerability of our educational systems, even those that were previously seen to be stable. As a result, it is critical that crisis-induced innovation and creativity be used to improve educational institutions and make them more equitable, inclusive, and resilient. As a result, the purpose of this article is to provide stakeholders in the educational system with a crisis-driven look at potential prospects for change in the areas of curricula, students, teachers, and educational settings.
Curricula to being improved:
Due to the protracted shutdown of schools as a result of the COVID-19 issue, stakeholders’ perceptions of schools and learning content have changed. While some students finished their education, many were denied proper opportunity and frequently lacked crucial services and instruments such as technology equipment and learning support services. As a result, particular goals had to be established, and some courses had to be prioritized over others in school curricula.
In the lack of clear operational rules and a contingency plan for curriculum priorities, education system players devised a range of solutions to ensure educational continuity. Some curricular priorities were proposed regarding the academic skills and knowledge that students needed to maintain in subjects such as languages, mathematics, science, and history, depending on their age and grade level, with the rest of the curriculum – such as the arts – being discounted as non-essential. This recommends that explicit criteria for preparing schools for other potential situations involving extended closures should be established.
Nonetheless, it’s worth remembering that many educational institutions have already changed their curricula after discovering that students are rarely able to translate their classroom knowledge and skills to real-life situations. Indeed, school learning was rarely used in real-life settings, contributing to the perception that education is uninteresting and obsolete. Many international organizations, like the OECD, have asked for redesigned curricula that are more demanding and fascinating for students in order to make education more “meaningful.”
Prioritizing authentic learning experiences
The COVID-19 controversy has raised serious concerns regarding the necessity, significance, and utility of some curriculum topics. Certain trends, particularly the authenticity of learning circumstances, have been noted. Indeed, in addition to academics, educational programmes, and student evaluation, the most pressing need has emerged to maintain students’ motivation, engagement, and interest, as well as their connection to the school, especially when schools are closed for extended periods of time. This necessitates a wide range of activities that are both adaptable and real. In this approach, the COVID-19 lockdown’s actual learning experiences could be used to contextualize student circumstances during the epidemic. This is an opportunity to reconsider curricular content and methods.
Teachers can use the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a source of inspiration for contextualized and authentic learning settings linked to humanity’s biggest concerns.
The UNESCO Chair in Curriculum Development recommends that parents use their children’s experiences during the epidemic as a springboard for learning activities, particularly in writing, arithmetic, and problem-solving. For instance, such activities could include:
Calculation of how far a km lockdown radius extends from the student’s residence in maths
Using critical thinking to create an argumentative essay on the legitimacy of a specific information source in language classes;
Understanding the parameters that influence the physical and chemical reactions when baking bread at home is important in science.
Students are at the centre of their learning when they are taught to use a variety of internal and
external resources to solve real-world problems. This promotes information transfer by putting them at the centre of their learning. As a result, authenticity in education would be a useful way for contextualizing students’ return to school and the continuation of their educational courses in the aftermath of the pandemic catastrophe.
Using learning outside of the classroom to its full potential
While the extended school closures in spring 2020 caused significant disruption to the school year, they also demonstrated that learning can be continued through distance education, particularly through digital means, without students’ physical presence in schools, despite some challenges. These difficulties can have an impact on a variety of facets of education, including the critical student-teacher connection. Even the most advanced technologies will not be able to entirely eliminate the gap between teacher and student. As a result, in-class education is still vital, but it must be put into context and tailored to the current circumstances. Furthermore, potential issues in satisfying physical distance standards in the classroom, particularly considering the return of kids to school, should be considered when preparing for their return.
.Outdoor classrooms are being evaluated as a viable option for not only dealing with the epidemic but also as a long-term strategy in higher education. Indeed, the risk of virus transmission is low outside, and open places make it easier to comply with physical separation. Outside-the-classroom education is thus an intriguing option for facilitating space management and maximising face-to-face educational activities while minimising the risk of viral transmission. Indoor classes cannot, of course, be totally replaced by outdoor classes, but the pandemic has opened up a new channel for investigation, even in the long run.
Outside-the-classroom initiatives and outdoor learning, according to research, add value to the in-classroom learning experience, especially when the two learning settings are used in tandem. A more student-centred education and a focus on students’ own initiatives, both of which enhance student involvement and in-depth learning, are among the benefits. Outdoor learning is also linked to more relevant and authentic learning settings because children are more likely to assimilate what they see; educational activities in the “real world” promote learning transfer.
Assisting pupils in their own study
Many students have been able to continue their education and preserve their social connections with school thanks to a variety of distance-education platforms such as telephone, radio, television, email, and video conferencing. Many families, on the other hand, have had difficulty accessing technology, and many parents have had difficulty in terms of their ability and availability to support their children in their learning and use of technology.
The pandemic’s impact on remote education has highlighted the need for students for self-directed learning. While children are accustomed to being watched, coached, and rigorously scheduled
in their schoolwork and use of resources, including computer tools, school closures have forced them to do otherwise.
Work plans for making students more independent and responsible could be a beneficial resource in this regard, as long as they are customized for each student and subject, and students are explicitly taught how to use them. Furthermore, work plans as an instructional tool could help student learning in regular circumstances by encouraging students to set their own goals and practise self-discipline, as well as allowing them some influence over the methods and instruments they use to complete tasks. Work plans should be integrated with educational approaches that enable independent learning, such as project-based or problem-based assignments, in terms of evaluation.
As a result, it appears to be worthwhile to promote students’ independent learning, especially given the possibility of a second wave of COVID-19 disrupting the school year and the fact that developing learning autonomy entails numerous benefits that are already widely recognized in the educational system. According to a Université Laval researcher, increasing learner autonomy will help students organize their work better, take more initiative, think more critically, and be more involved, responsible, and accountable, as well as motivate them. It should therefore be investigated whether it is possible to make the learning environment in schools more flexible in order to allow students to make more choices regarding their lives and learning, as was done in a primary school in the Chinese province of Zhejiang.
It swiftly and successfully adopted distance education during the lockdown, thanks to a learner-centred teaching paradigm that was already in place at the school and was built on the students’ abilities to seek knowledge, analyse, and solve problems in practical and inventive ways. Despite disparities in access to digital resources by students’ families, solutions were soon identified to reach kids and aid them in setting acceptable goals for continuing their education on their own.
Teachers’ digital skill is being improved
Given that distance education relies heavily on digital technologies like email, online courses, and document-sharing platforms, the situation has brought attention to the need for teachers to improve their digital literacy. While employing digital resources is an important element of the professional skills expected of teachers, and many teachers have already done so (e.g., video), many teachers still lack the knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to create high-quality online learning materials. Similarly, many pupils are unable to use technology on their own. As a result, throughout the crisis, teachers had to play the twin function of teaching pupils about technologies while also teaching them how to use them.
As a result of the crisis, there is a greater need to improve both initial and ongoing teacher training in the use of technology in the classroom. Several massive open online courses (MOOCs) on the topics of distance and online education were made available to teachers by institutions such as Coursera, the University of Pennsylvania, and FUN-MOOC to address short-term needs during school closures while waiting for the eventual development of this type of training. Many universities likewise rapidly rallied to give their students with distance education. To help teachers adjust to the lockdown, the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) prepared various training programmes on its Carrefour technopédagogique platform.
FAQs
What are the advantages of reopening a school?
See the complete response Closing schools has an obvious negative impact on children's health, education, and development, as well as family income and the economy as a whole.
Which condition does covid have the best chance to survive?
When exposed to UV radiation in sunlight, coronaviruses die swiftly. SARS-CoV-2, like other encapsulated viruses, thrives at room temperature or lower temperatures, as well as low relative humidity (less than 50%).
When was COVID-19 detected for the first time?
In Wuhan, China, the first SARS-CoV-2 illnesses were detected. The source of viral transmission to humans, as well as whether the virus became harmful before or after the spillover event, are unknown.
