Redesigning education for post-pandemic success

(Editor’s word: This article is the primary in a three-part sequence about how faculty programs can construct on the progress and leverage the investments they’ve made in know-how throughout the pandemic to realize true digital transformation. Part 1 seems at how Ok-12 leaders can construct an efficient blueprint for redesigning education in a method that’s extra equitable, significant, and learner-centered. Part 2 will discover how leaders can receive stakeholder buy-in and assist for their imaginative and prescient, and Part 3 will look at what skilled growth ought to seem like to show this imaginative and prescient into motion.)

COVID-19 arguably produced the most important shift in education for the reason that invention of the printing press. Nearly in a single day, educating and studying moved from lecture rooms to on-line environments. School programs invested 1000’s of {dollars} in Chromebooks, Wi-Fi hotspots, and different applied sciences. Educators spent numerous hours working to make sure that college students may study from house uninterrupted.

Yet, except for the place the educational occurred, what else really modified?

For probably the most half, academics utilized the identical practices they used of their lecture rooms to distant instruction. This is comprehensible; in any case, educators have confronted monumental challenges throughout the pandemic, from guaranteeing continuity of studying to caring for college students’ social-emotional wants. It is smart they might keep on with methods they had been already comfy with in transferring to on-line instruction.

Should we actually be shocked, then, that merely replicating in-person educating and studying experiences in a web-based surroundings hasn’t been extra profitable?

Data from Project Tomorrow’s annual Speak Up survey point out that college students had been no much less engaged throughout distant studying than they had been earlier than the pandemic. But what this actually reveals is {that a} appreciable variety of college students haven’t been nicely served by their education system all alongside.

Prior to the pandemic, solely 54 p.c of scholars in grades 6-8 and 47 p.c of highschool college students agreed with the assertion: “I am engaged in what I am learning at school most of the time.” In 2020-21, these numbers had been 49 p.c and 50 p.c, respectively.

Time for a brand new method

As faculty programs have resumed in-person instruction, Ok-12 leaders could also be strongly tempted to return to their pre-pandemic idea of “normalcy.” However, we’re at a important inflection level in education, and it will be a disgrace to maneuver backwards as an alternative of forwards.

For years, most edtech implementations have consisted of tinkering across the edges, making minor modifications to classroom practices—like having college students create a Google Slides presentation as an alternative of writing a ebook report. The pandemic has offered faculties with a novel alternative to realize true digital transformation by reinventing education in order that it really works for all college students extra successfully, absolutely participating them in deeper studying that’s related to their lives and efficiently prepares them for the long run.