Getting learners back in classrooms

Never has the global education sector faced challenges of the magnitude it does today! Even in times of war, conflict and natural disaster school has been one of the key priorities, as societies for centuries have understood that schools draw society’s young people together, giving them a shared sense of security, and a distraction from whatever is going out outside the school gates. COVID-19 has done what nothing before has, and separated society’s pastoral and educational gatekeepers from their learners, with consequences that may be felt for a lifetime.

Teaching originally held that if I told you something, you then knew the same thing, and would not forget it. In fact, that is why large sections of those early societies remained uneducated. The mid-19th century saw compulsory education established in America and Europe, creating global models, when schools as we know them today, came into being. What changed however, was the pedagogy, the theory, methods and practice behind teaching, with the psychologies of teaching and learning progressively more important.

In the mid-20th century John Dewey, an American philosopher and education reformer changed the way schools should function with democracy and social reform, within the classroom. Dewey claimed that instead of preparing learners for society, schools cultivated passivity. He saw the need for reflection, critique and participation in a ‘whole child’ learning experience as the way forward. Almost all contemporary good practices are based on Dewey’s research and writings, and teachers have embraced the ‘politics’ of the classroom especially in implementing communicative language learning methodologies, where learners work in groups, using language to complete tasks, learning with and from each other by using their individual skills and knowledge for the progression of the group.

Teachers have studied, trained, taught and undertaken professional development to implement their pedagogy, fine tuned them to fit their own personalities and attributes, and become effective educators. Learners too have embraced being able to work with others, to share their knowledge and skills, and to utilise the teacher in a discretionary manner, appreciating their autonomy. They learn much in those groups from each other, and that is the beauty of communicative learning. When that is complemented over the years by research, writing, argumentative and analytical skills, we have learners who need little more than academic guidance and direction to achieve even higher order knowledge and understanding.

The problem is, that at all levels of the educational journey, those same teachers and learners have, overnight, been expected to learn and embrace new and different technologies and pedagogy, to teach and learn online, using an Internet system that was clearly not built for the tens of thousands of teachers and learners who now need it. Factor in that many thousands of young people who thought they were tech savvy because they knew their phones back to front were IT geniuses and may now be frustrated Zoom students because “nothing is working.”

Here, as anywhere, it is nobody’s ‘fault.’ It is simply the hand we are dealt. Online learning requires academic skills, knowledge, understanding, technological awareness, access and engagement. Very few, teaching or learning, are that complete package. So, the priority must be getting the learners back into the classrooms as soon as possible, whatever it takes. Teachers need to be in classrooms where they have genuine interaction with their learners. Where they can know and understand what is going on inside their heads from their achievements, behaviour and body language, where the three-dimensional learner poses the challenge, rather than the technology that, with all its frustrations, currently divides them.

The education sector never had any other option in response to the pandemic, but now, with COVID-19 looking set to stay, we must review all our options.