The pandemic education shock has raised five critical issues that demonstrate how student learning and achievement and social well-being are far from mutually exclusive.
We need a layered strategy — depending on the amount of community transmission – to ensure the response isn’t the same every time with each snap lockdown: to close schools. Here’s how to do it.
Provinces have struggled to mitigate the COVID-19 health concerns of full-time and substitute teachers. The need for substitutes has increased, but fewer are available.
Stay-at-home orders, school closures and other pandemic measures mean that parents and children are spending inordinate amounts of time together. Here’s how to deal with the inevitable frustrations.
We compared the educational progress in years 3 and 4 in 2019 with 2020 – the year normal schooling was disrupted by the pandemic. Overall, students progressed at the same rate in both years.
Issues like a lack of focus and heightened anxiety when learning at home could be due to students lacking the autobiographical memory they need to learn in an alternative context.
The risk associated with schools is tied to the level of community transmission. The more community transmission there is, the more transmission there will be in schools.
As provinces consider extended holidays, or school closures loom as a possibility under COVID-19, schools should commit to providing in-person schooling for students with disabilities.
This isn’t the first time America’s schoolchildren have studied remotely – and Chicago’s 1937 ‘radio school’ experiment shows how technology can fill the gap during a crisis.
The country’s Constitution, as well as several court rulings, offer clear guidelines for how children’s best interests should be managed and prioritised.
Remote school may look different to ‘normal’ school, but children are still being taught; they are still learning and many are still actively engaged in the curriculum.
One approach to figure out what to expect is to look at the experiences of different countries after they closed schools due to previous pandemics, war or industrial action.
Lisa Mundy, Murdoch Children's Research Institute and George Patton, The University of Melbourne
Children who ‘passively’ use screens are more likely to suffer academically, a study found. But there was no evidence of a link between video games and academic performance.
Director, Center for Community Child Health Royal Children's Hospital; Professor, Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne; Theme Director Population Health, Murdoch Children's Research Institute
Paediatrician at the Royal Childrens Hospital and Associate Professor and Clinician Scientist, University of Melbourne and MCRI, Murdoch Children's Research Institute