“An understanding heart is everything, it is a teacher, and can never be valued highly enough…” (C.G. Jung)
To what extent has the learning progress of school-aged children slowed down during the COVID-19 pandemic?
This is the question that is triggering most of the teachers, educators, pedagogues, psychologists, parents.
A good part of my professional career has been in the school, first when I was a student, then a researcher and a teacher, so I care so much about this topic. During these years of teaching, I’ve seen a strong change in the learning process. In the society of acceleration (Rosa. H. – 2015), everything that seems extremely speeding today, tomorrow it will be extraordinarily slow. The quality of our life, our habits are changing quickly and our students are changing too. They are probably the “perfect victims” of this sense of time alienation: they live the best years for the learning process but they feel that what they are studying today, tomorrow could be overpassed. I’m mainly speaking for the secondary/high school and the University, but I see everyday with my daughters that this change is starting from very bottom of the educational path.
Teachers can’t avoid this process. Teachers of 2023 can’t be the same of teachers of the 2013, and the need of new researches in the learning sphere is undelayable. Before the COVID-19 pandemic this feeling on the school was already evident, now in the post COVID-19 it has become urgent. As a matter of fact it seems that what many students have lost, it is irrecoverable forever. And the students too don’t have the incentive to work for get back what it is lost.
I’m really happy to notice that all over the world this urgence is sincerely felt, in several research journals new results have been published.
The main findings of an article from “Nature Human Behaviour” [1] appeared in many scientific journals and blogs, are reported. It is important to understand the effects of a pandemic on the learning process to avoid potential mistakes in the future.
The authors conduct a pre-registered systematic review, quality appraisal and meta-analysis of 42 studies across 15 countries to assess the magnitude of learning deficits during the pandemic.
It seems that what observed since 2020 until today it is now written in black and white: the authors find a substantial overall learning deficit, which arose early in the pandemic and persists over time.
“Learning deficits are particularly large among children from low socio-economic backgrounds. Deficits are larger in middle-income countries relative to high-income countries. There is a lack of evidence on learning progress during the pandemic in low-income countries. The deficits are larger in maths than in reading.”
The disruption of the learning process, economic and care conflicts affect every part of the world
The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has led to one of the largest disruptions to learning in history, more than in other crisis time of the modern history. To a large extent, this is due to school closures, which are estimated to have affected 95% of the world’s student population. But even when face-to-face teaching resumed, instruction has often been compromised by hybrid teaching, and by children or teachers having to quarantine and miss classes.
The effect of limited face-to-face instruction is compounded by the pandemic’s consequences for children’s out-of-school learning environment, as well as their mental and physical health. Lockdowns have restricted children’s movement and their ability to play, meet other children and engage in extra-curricular activities. Children’s wellbeing and family relationships have also suffered due to economic uncertainties and conflicting demands of work, care and learning. These negative consequences can be expected to be most pronounced for children from low socio-economic family backgrounds, exacerbating pre-existing educational inequalities. The COVID-19 learning deficit is likely to affect children’s life chances through their education and labour market prospects. At the societal level, it can have important implications for growth, prosperity and social cohesion [1].
The figure plots the magnitude of estimated learning deficits (on the vertical axis) by the date of measurement (on the horizontal axis) [1]. The colour of the circles reflects the relevant country, the size of the circles indicates the sample size for a given estimate and the line displays a linear trend. The figure suggests that learning deficits opened up early in the pandemic and have neither closed nor substantially widened since then. We find no evidence that the slope coefficient is different from zero (βmonths = −0.00, t(41) = −7.30, two-tailed P = 0.097, 95% CI −0.01 to 0.00). This implies that efforts by children, parents, teachers and policy-makers to adjust to the changed circumstance have been successful in preventing further learning deficits but so far have been unable to reverse them.
Maths deficits and gender gap
As expected in general socio-economical conditions are crucial in the adaptation of the learning process to the new teaching methods that match digital skills with traditional lessons.
But I’d like to strongly underline the fact that again stem disciplines suffered more in this post pandemic contest. Authors highlight that learning progress in mathematics is more dependent on formal instruction than in reading. This might be due to parents being better equipped to help their children with reading, and children advancing their reading skills when reading for enjoyment outside of school [1].
Furthermore an Italian study [2] by Contini et al. found heterogeneity within children with low-educated parents. First, girls experienced a significantly greater loss than boys. This result is particularly alarming if we consider that even in ordinary times girls do worse than boys in math in Italy.
Two possible factors influenced this trend: boys are more assisted by families by providing additional help in studying than girls, and gender gap is even more influential when school is closed, particularly among children of low-educated parents.
Be more prepared for the future
These findings call for urgent policy action. On the one hand, the education system must be given the necessary tools to face possible future crises. On the other hand, remedial measures should be introduced to limit the damage that has already occurred, supporting pupils at high risk of being left behind and encouraging the learning of well-performing children, especially from disadvantaged social backgrounds [2].
Many reflections arise by these early data. First how can we defer the problem of the learning process, when it is one the catalyst of our quality of life? How can we ignore that school is today totally engaged in temporal structures that forced everyone to accelerate, but this acceleration could give alienation. A new interpretation of disciplines, knowledge, teaching methods, school in general are strongly needed, to prevent our new generations future loss.
[1] Betthäuser, B.A., Bach-Mortensen, A.M. & Engzell, P. A systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence on learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nat Hum Behav (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01506-4
[2]Contini, Dalit, Di Tommaso, Maria Laura, Muratori, Caterina, Piazzalunga, Daniela and Schiavon, Lucia. “Who Lost the Most? Mathematics Achievement during the COVID-19 Pandemic” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, vol. 22, no. 2, 2022, pp. 399-408. https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2021-0447
