The COVID-19 pandemic caused institutions to rethink traditional practices and consider new ways of learning and approaching students, faculty, and staff. Though not always embraced in the past, colleges and universities turned to online education in order to keep students enrolled as the health of students had to be prioritized. For institutions that may not have had health services on campus, such as community colleges, these needs called for more planning and options for referral of services. Education Reform in the Aftermath of the COVID-19 Pandemic educates individuals regarding the impact of COVID-19 on higher education institutions internally and externally and considers the lessons learned as well as what could be next. The book also presents solutions to the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic wrought on universities and colleges and looks toward using those solutions for future applications. Covering a range of topics such as student engagement, enrollment, and virtual spaces, it is an ideal resource for administrators, educators, mental health professionals, faculty, universities, and students.
This open access edited volume is a comparative effort to discern the short-term educational impact of the covid-19 pandemic on students, teachers and systems in Brazil, Chile, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. One of the first academic comparative studies of the educational impact of the pandemic, the book explains how the interruption of in person instruction and the variable efficacy of alternative forms of education caused learning loss and disengagement with learning, especially for disadvantaged students. Other direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic diminished the ability of families to support children and youth in their education. For students, as well as for teachers and school staff, these included the economic shocks experienced by families, in some cases leading to food insecurity and in many more causing stress and anxiety and impacting mental health. Opportunity to learn was also diminished by the shocks and trauma experienced by those with a close relative infected by the virus, and by the constrains on learning resulting from students having to learn at home, where the demands of schoolwork had to be negotiated with other family necessities, often sharing limited space. Furthermore, the prolonged stress caused by the uncertainty over the resolution of the pandemic and resulting from the knowledge that anyone could be infected and potentially lose their lives, created a traumatic context for many that undermined the necessary focus and dedication to schoolwork. These individual effects were reinforced by community effects, particularly for students and teachers living in communities where the multifaceted negative impacts resulting from the pandemic were pervasive. This is an open access book.
In just a few years, today’s children and teens will forge careers that look nothing like those that were available to their parents or grandparents. While the U.S. economy becomes ever more information-driven, our system of education seems stuck on the idea that “content is king,” neglecting other skills that 21st century citizens sorely need. Becoming Brilliant offers solutions that parents can implement right now. Backed by the latest scientific evidence and illustrated with examples of what’s being done right in schools today, this book introduces the 6Cs—collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence—along with ways parents can nurture their children’s development in each area.
The book features an analysis of teacher reform in Indonesia, which entailed a doubling of teacher salaries upon certification. It describes the political economy context in which the reform was developed and implemented, and analyzes the impact of the reform on teacher knowledge, skills, and student outcomes.
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges to the nation's K-12 education system. The rush to slow the spread of the virus led to closures of schools across the country, with little time to ensure continuity of instruction or to create a framework for deciding when and how to reopen schools. States, districts, and schools are now grappling with the complex and high-stakes questions of whether to reopen school buildings and how to operate them safely if they do reopen. These decisions need to be informed by the most up-to-date evidence about the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19; about the impacts of school closures on students and families; and about the complexities of operating school buildings as the pandemic persists. Reopening K-12 Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Prioritizing Health, Equity, and Communities provides guidance on the reopening and operation of elementary and secondary schools for the 2020-2021 school year. The recommendations of this report are designed to help districts and schools successfully navigate the complex decisions around reopening school buildings, keeping them open, and operating them safely.
Written for the wide range of physicians and professionals who treat children and adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), this book reviews the scientific research on the nature and causes of autism, outlines best treatment practices with children and describes a comprehensive assessment and treatment approach for adults. Topics covered include: • Classification, epidemiology and diagnosis • Neurodevelopmental abnormalities • Recommendations for early screening and evaluating at-risk children • Early interventions based on applied behavioral analysis • The critical role of special education, speech-language therapy, occupational therapy and assistive technology in treating children • Pharmacotherapy • Complementary and alternative treatments • Development of individualized and person-centered treatments for adults The Autism Spectrum is an invaluable resource for all those working with ASDs including pediatricians, psychiatrists, behavioral psychologists, special educators, nurses and therapists.
Educating dual language learners (DLLs) and English learners (ELs) effectively is a national challenge with consequences both for individuals and for American society. Despite their linguistic, cognitive, and social potential, many ELsâ€"who account for more than 9 percent of enrollment in grades K-12 in U.S. schoolsâ€"are struggling to meet the requirements for academic success, and their prospects for success in postsecondary education and in the workforce are jeopardized as a result. Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth Learning English: Promising Futures examines how evidence based on research relevant to the development of DLLs/ELs from birth to age 21 can inform education and health policies and related practices that can result in better educational outcomes. This report makes recommendations for policy, practice, and research and data collection focused on addressing the challenges in caring for and educating DLLs/ELs from birth to grade 12.
The Covid-19 pandemic caused major disruptions to education around the world. Since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, most students on the planet were affected by the interruption of in-person schooling. To mitigate the educational loss such interruption would cause, education authorities the world over created a variety of alternative mechanisms of education delivery. They did so quickly and with insufficient knowledge about what would work well, for which children, and for what aspects of the schooling experience.Having to create such alternative arrangements in short order was the ultimate adaptive leadership challenge, one for which no playbook existed, one for which solutions would have to be invented, rather than drawn from existing technical knowledge. The nature of the challenge differed across the world and regions, and it differed also within countries as a function of the differential public health and economic impact of the pandemic on communities, and of variations in institutional and financial resources available to redress such impact, including availability of digital infrastructure and previous knowledge and experience of teachers and students with digi-pedagogies and other resources to create alternative education delivery systems.Sustaining educational opportunities amidst these challenges created by the pandemic was an example of adaptive education response not to a unique unexpected challenge but to one in a larger class of problems, just one of the many adaptive conundrums facing communities and societies. Beyond the challenges resulting from the pandemic, other complications of that sort predating the pandemic included those resulting from poverty, inequality, social inclusion, governance, climate change, among others. In some ways, the pandemic served as an accelerant for some of those, augmenting their impact or underscoring the urgency of addressing them. Adaptive puzzles of this sort, including pandemics, are likely to continue to impact education systems in the foreseeable future. This makes it necessary to strengthen the capacity of education systems to respond to them.Reimagining education systems so they are resilient in the face of adaptive challenges is an opportunity to mobilize new talent and institutional resources. Partnerships between school systems and universities can contribute to those reimagined and more resilient systems, they can enhance the institutional capacity of education systems to devise solutions and to implement them. Such partnerships are also an opportunity for universities to be more deliberate in integrating their three core functions of research, teaching and outreach in service of addressing significant social challenges in a context in rapid flux.In this book we present the results of one approach to produce the integration between research, teaching and outreach just described, resulting from engaging graduate students in collaborations with school systems for the purpose of helping identify ways to sustain educational opportunity during the disruption caused by the pandemic. This activity engaged our students in research and analysis, contributing to their education, and it engaged them in service to society. The book examines what happened to educational opportunity during the Covid-19 pandemic in Bangladesh, Belize, the municipality of Santa Ana in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Kenya, in the States of Sinaloa and Quintana Roo in Mexico, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, and in the United States in Richardson Independent School District in Texas. It offers an systematic analysis of policy options to sustain educational opportunity during the pandemic.
This handbook showcases extraordinary educational responses in exceptional times. The scholarly text discusses valuable innovations for teaching and learning in times of COVID-19 and beyond. It examines effective teaching models and methods, technology innovations and enhancements, strategies for engagement of learners, unique approaches to teacher education and leadership, and important mental health and counseling models and supports. The unique solutions here implement and adapt effective digital technologies to support learners and teachers in critical times – for example, to name but a few: Florida State University’s Innovation Hub and interdisciplinary project-based approach; remote synchronous delivery (RSD) and blended learning approaches used in Yorkville University’s Bachelor of Interior Design, General Studies, and Business programs; University of California’s strategies for making resources affordable to students; resilient online assessment measures recommended from Qatar University; strategies in teacher education from the University of Toronto/OISE to develop equity in the classroom; simulation use in health care education; gamification strategies; innovations in online second language learning and software for new Canadian immigrants and refugees; effective RSD and online delivery of directing and acting courses by the Toronto Film School, Canada; academic literacy teaching in Colombia; inventive international programs between Japan and Taiwan, Japan and the USA, and Italy and the USA; and, imaginative teaching and assessment methods developed for online Kindergarten – Post-Secondary learners and teachers. Authors share unique global perspectives from a network of educators and researchers from more than thirty locations, schools, and post-secondary institutions worldwide. Educators, administrators, policymakers, and instructional designers will draw insights and guidelines from this text to sustain education during and beyond the COVID-19 era.
In the wake of the tragedy and destruction that came with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, public schools in New Orleans became part of an almost unthinkable experiment—eliminating the traditional public education system and completely replacing it with charter schools and school choice. Fifteen years later, the results have been remarkable, and the complex lessons learned should alter the way we think about American education. New Orleans became the first US city ever to adopt a school system based on the principles of markets and economics. When the state took over all of the city’s public schools, it turned them over to non-profit charter school managers accountable under performance-based contracts. Students were no longer obligated to attend a specific school based upon their address, allowing families to act like consumers and choose schools in any neighborhood. The teacher union contract, tenure, and certification rules were eliminated, giving schools autonomy and control to hire and fire as they pleased. In Charter School City, Douglas N. Harris provides an inside look at how and why these reform decisions were made and offers many surprising findings from one of the most extensive and rigorous evaluations of a district school reform ever conducted. Through close examination of the results, Harris finds that this unprecedented experiment was a noteworthy success on almost every measurable student outcome. But, as Harris shows, New Orleans was uniquely situated for these reforms to work well and that this market-based reform still required some specific and active roles for government. Letting free markets rule on their own without government involvement will not generate the kinds of changes their advocates suggest. Combining the evidence from New Orleans with that from other cities, Harris draws out the broader lessons of this unprecedented reform effort. At a time when charter school debates are more based on ideology than data, this book is a powerful, evidence-based, and in-depth look at how we can rethink the roles for governments, markets, and nonprofit organizations in education to ensure that America’s schools fulfill their potential for all students.
