learning math during pandemic essay

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The future of mathematics education since COVID-19: humans-with-media or humans-with-non-living-things

• Published: 27 April 2021
• Volume 108 , pages 385–400, ( 2021 )

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• Marcelo C. Borba 1  

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The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the agenda of mathematics education. This change will be analyzed by looking at three trends in mathematics education: the use of digital technology, philosophy of mathematics education, and critical mathematics education. Digital technology became a trend in mathematics education in response to the arrival of a different kind of artifact to the mathematics classroom. It was thrust into the spotlight as the pandemic suddenly moved classrooms online around the world. Challenges specific to mathematics education in this context must be addressed. The link between the COVID-19 pandemic and digital technology in education also raises epistemological issues highlighted by philosophy of mathematics education and critical mathematics education. Using the notion that the basic unit of knowledge production throughout history is humans-with-media, I discuss how humans are connected to the virus, how it has laid bare social inequality, and how it will change the agendas of these three trends in mathematics education. I highlight the urgent need to study how mathematics education happens online for children when the home environment and inequalities in access to digital technologies assume such significant roles as classes move on-line. We need to understand the political role of agency of artifacts such as home in collectives of humans-with-media-things, and finally we need to learn how to implement curricula that address social inequalities. This discussion is intertwined with examples.

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1 Introduction

It is not possible to predict the state of the COVID-19 crisis at the time this article reaches the reader. The effects of the pandemic, and the response to it, have been shocking—with lockdowns, masks, and respirators, etc.—and have left most people at a loss. Some “world leaders” say that the virus is “just a cold,” while others say we may take months or years to have things “back to normal.” There are even those who say that COVID-19 is just a test for a much more serious health crisis that may be still to come. What is certain is that throughout the world, things have changed dramatically and suddenly. The virus has hit all classes of society, though of course it has hit the poor harder. But what are the effects of the pandemic in mathematics education? One effect that was almost universal was a tendency to “go online”: shop online, meet friends online, and learn online.

We have moved online because COVID-19 is caused by an invisible virus; it has no cure; and, without a clear pattern, it can cause the death of one person in a few days and cause almost no symptoms in another. Moreover, one may be infected and transmitting but asymptomatic for several days and then become very ill all of a sudden. Though not all “leaders” have taken their advice, most experts and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommend social isolation as the main tool to control, slow down, and hopefully stop the pandemic. All of a sudden, teachers, professors, and educational managers at all levels were put under pressure to develop (mathematics) education online, as the virus can be transmitted through physical contact—both between humans and between humans and non-living things.

Since the beginning of the official history of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI) in 1908, only war has interrupted the International Meetings of Mathematics Education (ICME), according to Menghini et al. ( 2008 ). This year, the ICMI decided to suspend ICME-14 Footnote 1 for a different reason: due to the risk of spreading the coronavirus, traveling and gathering in groups would be unsafe. Some would say that ICME-14 was suspended due to a different kind of war: instead of generals in the background, and soldiers in the field, ready to kill or die, we have the whole of humanity trying to fight this non-living being, a virus. It is debatable whether the war metaphor is appropriate or not for this health crisis, but terminology aside, the crisis can lead us to some reflection on mathematics education. This essay will raise some questions to the mathematics education community that were caused by this non-living-thing: the virus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

Engelbrecht et al. ( 2020 ) reported that they had to change the conclusion of their survey paper on digital technology in March to April of this year, as it occurred to the authors that the paper could become dated even sooner than other digital technology survey papers. In normal times, such papers become old because digital technology changes so fast, and we rarely even have the time to implement a given technology in the classroom before a new one comes up. However, at this point, everything may become outdated, because we cannot predict the evolution of the COVID-19 crisis, nor whether a new crisis will follow it. The authors decided to include discussion about COVID-19 in the introduction and conclusion of the paper. At the end of the paper, they write:

The question is, what has this [COVID-19] to do with mathematics education and digital technology? Besides the impact on conferences and on the transforming mathematics classroom we may have to ask broader questions: Digital technology intensified traveling and our way of living, so it is also partly responsible for the present crisis. Is it possible that the use of digital technology can generate a similar crisis in mathematics education? Conversely, if the crisis lasts for a long period, would digital technologies be able to provide alternative ways to implement mathematics education? There is not much research on online mathematics education for young children, but if the crisis lasts for a long time, are we going to implement it without sufficient research? If the current crisis is over soon, are we going to develop research on mathematics education for a possible “COVID-2X” crisis? In this paper, among others, we have anthropomorphized media, talking about agency. The notion of humans-with-media as the collective that produces knowledge, may synthesize it, as we discussed in this paper. The COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) is a non-living being: can we talk about the impact (agency) of COVID-19 on mathematics education and on the world? Engelbrecht et al. ( 2020 , p.838)

This paper will deal with the questions from this excerpt in the following sense: I will discuss how new trends of mathematics education may arise or change with the ongoing crisis, and I will draft responses to some of these questions. Trends in mathematics education can be understood as a response, an answer, to some problem, as suggested by D'Ambrosio and Borba ( 2010 ). A working group, or a conference on a given trend within mathematics education, emerges as a response to new demands. I will use the theoretical construct of humans-with-media to connect the COVID-19 crisis to three different trends: the use of digital technology, philosophy of mathematics education, and critical mathematics education. In the context of the trend of digital technology, I will discuss the possibilities and drawbacks of having more and more online education, as well as the new demand for this trend. In doing so, I will revisit the notion of humans-with-media and its perspective of collective knowledge production involving humans and non-human actors such as computers and SARS-CoV-2. This will put new issues on the agenda for philosophy of mathematics education, focusing on the agency of “things” and humans’ relation to this virus thing. Finally, I will give a brief history of the trend of critical mathematics education, and I will raise an agenda provoked by COVID-19 for these three trends in mathematics education. I believe that these discussions may be important for us to understand the moment we are living in, beyond mathematics education itself. They can also help to set an agenda of research and action in the classroom for those interested in these trends and their connection to the pandemic.

2 Digital technology and mathematics education

Taking into consideration the notion of trends, presented above, the trend that studies the link of mathematics education and “new technologies”—informatics, communication and information digital technology, and alike—has been present in conferences for more than 30 years. At ERME Footnote 2 and SBEM Footnote 3 (Borba, 2018 ), at ICMEs (Menghini et al., 2008 ), and at PME Footnote 4 , there are always working groups, discussion groups, and panels on the subject, because, as authors such as Jim Kaput ( 1991 ,  1992 ,  1998 ) have pointed out, we need to understand how to use computers in mathematics education. Borba et al. ( 2016 ) prepared a survey that was presented at ICME-13 and put forward four phases for the use of digital technology in mathematics education. The four phases themselves show the strength and the length of this movement, which has involved many researchers, teachers, and students.

The first two phases, symbolized, respectively, by Logo and by curriculum-topic software (e.g., Cabri-Géomèetre), are not so important for the discussion in this paper, as the Internet became the big star during the pandemic. The third phase of the use of digital technology was characterized by the emergence of the Internet and online courses. This phenomenon became important around the turn of the century, depending on the country. Some so-called developed countries saw the Internet become popular in the mid-1990s and in some other countries, like Brazil, very early this century. Brazil was one of the first countries to start online courses at the graduate level, at a time when other countries were very protective of their face-to-face education.

The current fourth phase is characterized by the arrival of fast Internet, which reshaped the possibilities of online education. As this phase has developed, Engelbrecht et al. ( 2020 ) have pointed out that different forms of blended learning are important, in particular for teacher education. The term “hybrid” has become more important to express the combination of face-to-face mathematics education and online education:

A wide array of media and technology is available to create new hybrid forms of teaching. The integration of technology enables educators to create learning experiences that actively and meaningfully pull students into course content. “This technology may form thinking collectives (Lévy, 1993 ) with teachers that can break the walls of the regular “cubic” classroom that is associated with lecturing.” (Engelbrecht et al., 2020 , p.838)

If we consider a trend as an effort to find answers to a given issue, COVID-19 has pushed forward the agenda of the digital technology trend in mathematics education. With the need for social isolation, it became necessary to offer education to children and undergraduates at home. In most of the world, the first semester of education in 2020 was suspended or went online. Many are now discussing different kinds of hybrid education as health conditions allow students and teachers to go back to school and universities. But although we have plenty of research on implementing education online on undergraduate education (Engelbrecht & Harding, 2002 , 2004 , 2005 ), this is not the case for education for children. In the survey articles mentioned above, and in conference working groups, hardly any research has been presented on online education for children. As this theme develops, (mathematics) education will have to deal with structural issues, such as the participation of parents or responsible others in education.

In Brazil, newspapers say that teachers are “going crazy” with demands from students coming from WhatsApp and other social networks, as students and parents in their home cannot deal with school tasks. Grading is another problem: can we grade students so young online? Is help from parents allowed? This type of question has not yet been researched. In Brazil, some research groups such as GPIMEM Footnote 5 are trying to document what is happening in some state systems as a first step for research and understanding of online education for children. In the state of São Paulo, a new app, CMSP Footnote 6 , was created in less than 30 days for 200 thousand teachers and 3.5 million students to somehow have access to education. The app operates in conjunction with two preexisting TV channels, one operated by the state and another by a consortium of universities (Paz, 2020 ).

Teachers and administrators were able to supervise students through the app to some degree, and students were having three classes a day instead of five, as the state is trying to implement education through other platforms as well (Secretaria de Educação do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo State Department of Education)—SEED, 2020 ). But this was a very complex moment: teachers had to go online without enough time to be prepared, and at the same time, they had to deal with their regular problems: São Paulo is the richest state in Brazil but pays its teachers a terribly low salary compared to other professionals, as pointed out to me in an online interview with a teacher who preferred to stay anonymous. Underpaid teachers now have to deal with students 24 h a day, 7 days a week, which includes dealing with students’ “personal” problems—including problems associated with the chronic social inequality in Brazil. Teachers with low salaries are not likely to have the best mobile phones, laptops, or Internet plans. Teachers who may teach fifty 50-min classes a week may deal with hundreds of students. It is likely that such problems are occurring in other countries as well, as differences between the “haves” and “have-nots” exist throughout the world, and are amplified by COVID-19, as described by the historian Walter Scheidel (Canzian, 2020 ).

Crisis is also a chance for change: teachers who teach 50 classes per week will not have time to learn to use digital technology for teaching. With many states and city educational systems forced to go online because of the pandemic crisis, the argument to use technology is very strong. It is likely that we will have a lot of research associated with this new reality. For the purposes of this article, I was not able to collect data systematically, but informal reports from teachers suggest that the reality of teaching young teenagers and children online will have to be investigated. As mentioned before, there is hardly any research on online education associated with levels below high school, which can be verified in many survey papers related to the theme (Engelbrecht et al., 2020 ). But the focus cannot only be on teachers. How do children experience this version of home schooling? There are also many jokes on social networks about parents losing control as they become home-teachers at the same time as they had to implement the home-office, so the role of parents in online mathematics education may be another area for research. Involvement of parents in mathematics education has been a theme of some research, including involvement associated with the use of digital technology (Ford, 2015 ; Wilson, 2013 ). However, this was in informal or blended settings, such as festivals (Domingues, 2020 ). Now we have new challenges, including to report and discuss how online assessment was developed (or not developed). Inviting students to produce mathematical videos was a research project developed before the pandemic. Having students expressing mathematical knowledge with videos, or doing research with videos, was not a solid trend in the literature. However, video production may be an alternative for education during and after the pandemic. Instead of focusing on test results, we can have students producing videos online to express what they have learned in conditions such as the pandemic. Videos can be produced collectively, with help of parents, friends, and different media. Differences in resources, including degree of parental aid received, can be considered by teachers and school systems in a “non-ranking” type of assessment.

Production of digital mathematical videos by students and teachers is growing in Brazil (see Fig. 1 for an example), and with the onset of the pandemic, an online “library” with more than 600 videos ( https://www.festivalvideomat.com/ ) has been used as a resource for teachers and students in their classes and as inspiration for the kind of task students and teacher may produce. Moreover, issues that have been the subject of previous research may gain new life: in a recent review paper (Engelbrecht et al., 2020 ), it became clear that different technologies used in a class, from the blackboard to the most modern mobile phone, are not necessarily only mediators but also actors. This is an epistemological issue, and it is part of a trend that has been discussed within the psychology of mathematics education and the philosophy of mathematics education.

Mud Sea: Modelling and Mathematics Education. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpCteGqjxd0&list=PLiBUAR5Cdi63gZoTSrJ9qXeiZQEH2wFBL

3 Philosophy of mathematics education and agency in the notion of humans-with-media

“Why do we have education? What are the relations between education and society? How do we know?” These are the basic questions of philosophy of education. For more than 20 years, there have been working groups on the philosophy of mathematics education (Bicudo & Garnica, 2001 ). “How do we learn?” is connected to “How do we know?,” and thus questions regarding epistemology, the theory of knowing, have also been debated by psychology of mathematics education discussion groups. Both domains of research may be seen as trends, as they seek foundations for mathematics education, and they discuss how mathematics education is articulated in the classroom, the research that is developed about it, and its “return” to practical settings: settings, like the classroom, which for many months have been on hold by the coronavirus pandemic. Several authors have discussed classrooms and schools and the artifacts produced there. For example, Villarreal and Borba ( 2010 ) have shown how mathematics is produced by collectives of humans-with-artifacts throughout the history of mathematics.

D'Ambrosio and Borba ( 2010 ), besides conceptualizing a “trend” as a response to a given problem, have argued that trends are intertwined, using the metaphor of a tapestry. It is unsurprising, then, that the discussion about who is the agent of knowledge is discussed in more than one trend: in digital technology working groups and in philosophy of mathematics education and psychology of mathematics education discussion groups or conferences. Different mathematics education authors (e.g., Faggiano et al., 2017 ) have claimed that computers, for instance, have agency. Inspired by the work of Lévy ( 1993 ) and on the phenomenological approach that humans are “being-with-others,” the notion of humans-with-media has been developed over the course of many years. The notion of reciprocal modeling was the first step (Borba, 1993 ). My early work on this showed not only that different media shape humans (an idea shared with many) but also gave some empirical evidence of how humans shape technology, specifically a piece of software about functions. Being part of the design software team and a mathematics educator developing research, I could see this “collaboration” between, on the one hand, a piece of software—full of the ideas of a multidisciplinary team, presented at meetings of developers, mathematics educators, teachers, and so on—and, on the other hand, how high school students would interact with the software (and with me, a teacher-researcher). A high school student, for instance, was influenced by what I said and by the design of the piece of software Function Probe (Confrey, 1991 ), and he also shaped the piece of software in ways that were not predicted by the multidisciplinary team that had developed the software. This student did not use the commands the design team had created but used the size of the computer screen and other measuring artifacts to coordinate algebra and graphs. Borba and Villarreal ( 2005 ) synthesized how the notion of humans-with-media could be understood based on the work of Lévy ( 1993 ), Lave ( 1988 ), and Tikhomirov ( 1981 ). This led to the notion that knowing was not social solely in the sense that it involves more than one person, but that it also involves things.

The notion of humans-with-media was proposed to emphasize that production of knowledge is a result of a collective of humans and things. From Tikhomirov and Lave came the idea that knowing was goal oriented and that values were involved. Later, in Borba ( 2012 ), discussions about the values, emotions, and media involved in knowing mathematics with GeoGebra (or whatever software was available) were extended to the idea that media and technology themselves change notions of what humans are. Media are therefore constitutive not only of what we know but also of what we are. Kaptelinin and Nardi ( 2006 ) also analyzed the idea of extending agency to non-humans. These authors compared the capacities to produce effects, act, and fulfill intentions of different agents: things (natural), things (cultural), non-human living beings (natural), non-human living beings (cultural), and human beings as social entities.

Agency, therefore, should not be seen as binary, as either present or absent, but having different levels. I see this notion of agency as a “fuzzy” one, as in fuzzy mathematics, in which we may have degrees of agency. In such a mathematics, for instance, my jeans are not just blue or not (zero or one), but they are, for instance, 0.6 blue. Kaptelinin and Nardi ( 2006 ) suggest three dimensions of agency: based on necessity (action is taken based on biological and cultural reasons), delegated (things or living beings act as the perceived intentions that are delegated by other humans and things), and conditional (actions of things or people which result in unintended effects).

The notion of humans-with-media, which is consistent with a more complex view of agency, has been challenged, in many instances, by arguments that want to preserve the power of a human as the center of any action. In these views, intentionality and action come from somewhere that is not social. Much of mathematics education, cognitivist or not, is based on such a “one-knower” view. From such a perspective, the agent of knowing is a single person, or collective of humans, even though most researchers would recognize the influence of artifacts, environment, and social cultural factors.

The notion that both humans and non-humans have agency is part of an effort to model artifacts—in particular, pieces of software, hardware, and the Internet of Things (i.e., things that are connected to the Internet)—as the historical, social, and cultural factors in the collective that produces knowledge. It stresses a view that knowledge is produced (both from a philosophical and a psychological perspective) by humans-with-artifacts. With a perspective in which things have agency, artifacts are labeled media as they are thought to communicate. This argument was more easily applied for technologies of intelligence (Lévy, 1993 ): humans-with-graphing-calculators were easier to accept as having agency than humans-with-libraries or humans-with-classrooms.

Regardless of whether readers value online mathematics education or not, they may at some point use their memory of a regular classroom to claim that face-to-face interaction is fundamental to any learning that occurs in mathematics education. Alternatively, one may use the notion of a “distributed classroom”: an office for one student, the bedroom for another, and some kind of computer center for others. But everyone would recognize that classrooms are changing. We have described this as a classroom in movement (Borba et al., 2014 ).

What constitutes the unit of knowing is an endless, philosophical discussion: is it a single person? Is it social because it involves more than one person? Is it social because it has a goal and it involves humans and non-human actors? It is an endless discussion, like most philosophical discussions. However, it seems that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 gives strength to one perspective on knowing because, according to authors such as Racaniello ( 2004 , p.1), “Viruses are not living things. Viruses are complicated assemblies of molecules, including proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and carbohydrates, but on their own they can do nothing until they enter a living cell. Without cells, viruses would not be able to multiply. Therefore, viruses are not living things.” Yet despite being non-living, the virus has dramatically changed the way humans live. Viruses are closely connected to us: they cannot exist for long apart from living things, like humans, who have cells; the symptoms of COVID-19 arise under certain conditions when the virus is inside human cells. We can say that the virus has agency in the sense that it has changed the way we have to do things. This analogy helps us to understand how certain things are much more likely to happen if certain actors are present. To use the metaphor of the virus, software also needs humans to “survive.” Software, and later on the Internet, has changed the environment of educational settings, in a similar way to how SARS-CoV-2 has suddenly turned children’s bedrooms into classrooms.

Latour ( 2020a , b ), another inspiration for the notion of humans-with-media, presents his concern with the virus crisis in a way that relates to the discussion in this paper:

But there is another reason why the figure of the “war against the virus” is so unjustified: in the health crisis, it may be true that humans as a whole are “fighting” against viruses — even if they have no interest in us and go their way from throat to throat killing us without meaning to. The situation is tragically reversed in ecological change: this time, the pathogen whose terrible virulence has changed the living conditions of all the inhabitants of the planet is not the virus at all, it is humanity! But this does not apply to all humans, just those who make war on us without declaring war on us. For this war, the national state is as ill-prepared, as badly calibrated, as badly designed as possible because the battle fronts are multiple and cross each one of us. It is in this sense that the “general mobilization” against the virus does not prove in any way that we will be ready for the next one. It is not only the military that is always one war behind. (Latour, 2020a , b , para.8)

Latour, without saying so explicitly, foregrounds the agency of this virus: SARS-CoV-2 spreads through humans to survive and reproduce, and this action provokes reaction—agency—from humans. Of course, every comparison or metaphor has its limits. But the coronavirus has transformed our lives—we still do not know for how long—in a dramatic way. Computers—now represented by mobile phones, which are much more potent computers than the ones used at the end of the last century by the minority of students who had access to them—have changed the way we can experience mathematics, in particular the way we can “experiment” with mathematics. The Internet has become a community, an agent, and an artifact. Videos that are produced and shared by students with digital technology soon themselves become a part of new collectives of humans and media that are involved in producing knowledge. Souto and Borba (Souto & Borba, 2016 , 2018 ) have discussed how the notion of humans-with-media, which had its origins in activity theory (Tikhomirov, 1981 ), is now about to change the third generation of activity theory, breaking the rigidity of the triangles espoused by Engeström ( 2002 ) and Sannino and Engeström ( 2018 ) (Fig. 2 ).

This version of the humans-with-media construction has been called system-of-humans-with-media (Souto & Borba, 2018 ) to emphasize even more the notion that the collective of humans and non-humans is goal oriented and embedded in a community that has rules (Fig. 2 ). Considering media as agent has made it possible to think of the rigid triangles of the third generation of activity theory as dancing triangles, or as a GIF, in which the Internet, for instance, could be jumping from the instrument corner to the subject corner and/or to the community corner. Such an animation can be found on the GPIMEM website, in order to overcome the limits of the printed text ( https://igce.rc.unesp.br/#!/pesquisa/gpimem---pesq-em-informatica-outras-midias-e-educacao-matematica/animacoes/triangulo-sannino--engestrom/ ).

The structure of an activity system. Source: Sannino & Engeström, 2018

It is hard to know, as mentioned before, where the developments of the current health crisis will take us, but it seems that thinking about agency of non-living things as discussed in this section will be part of it. Questioning what the definition of “living things” is may be another consequence, which, of course, goes beyond what has been called the psychology of mathematics education or philosophy of mathematics education. But it will be relevant to some questions that perhaps were put aside or never asked before, questions such as: What are the specific roles of spaces/artifacts such as the classroom, face-to-face environments made for the intense use of Internet in education, and the “online classroom?” If the pandemic lasts even longer, what do we really mean by “face-to-face?” What does it mean to discuss affection in mathematics education without physical contact (e.g., hand shaking, hugging, kissing the cheek), so important in many parts of the world? The whole discussion about humans-with-media may gain a new dimension, as suggested in this section, related to some of the basic questions of philosophy of (mathematics) education. The pandemic foregrounds the role of home and the role of different parents and different social conditions in collectives that construct knowledge, in activity systems that produce knowledge. The idea of seeing fuzzy agency in non-humans should be developed further to include not only good access to internet, but to housing, which is a site of brutal inequality in Brazil and elsewhere. This famous photo (Fig. 3 ) illustrates the extent of inequality in Brazil, which, from the educational point of view, suggests that different housing may have different agency in constructions of knowledge, in particular in situations such as the one we lived during the pandemic. Housing matters in knowledge construction. Trying to solve a mathematics problem in a crowded house in a slum is very different than doing so in a spacious, luxurious apartment with a veranda.

Social inequality. Source: Of “Com 1% do país concentrando 28% da renda, Brasil não tem como dar certo...” L. Sakamoto, 2020. Recovered from https://noticias.uol.com.br/colunas/leonardo-sakamoto/2020/12/15/com-1-do-pais-concentrando-28-da-renda-brasil-nao-tem-como-dar-certo.htm?fbclid=IwAR3cAed7k9bb4qhHWhi7uAtZVhgCLFz9J-yx1dPuoW5rAS1xqVfgey6YrOc

In this sense, SARS-CoV-2 has pushed homes into the center of a collective that produces knowledge. Once again, we ask all the basic questions of the philosophy of mathematics education and psychology of mathematics education. What is the role of mathematics education? What is the role of the different education of parents in mathematics education? What is the role of non-living things, such as viruses, pieces of software, and homes, in the way we know and learn mathematics? A question that may be more critical is: What is the role of mathematics education for resisting inequality in the world?

4 Critical mathematics education and coronavirus

The trend of critical mathematics education (CME) responds to the main problem of social inequality in (mathematics) education and struggles against the view that mathematics is a branch of science that is separate from social, cultural, and political issues. CME’s role in the community of mathematics education is to remind us all about social inequality and other types of inequalities. CME may be said to have been officially born in 1990, in a meeting at the Cornell University in the USA (Powell, 2012 ; Torisu, 2017 ). There, the Critical Mathematics Educators Group was founded, with several members Footnote 7 , focusing on the key phrase “social justice.” Powell ( 2012 ) reports on how at ICME 6, in Budapest, Hungary, there was a meeting of researchers and how after the Cornell meeting, the group began to meet regularly, starting at ICME 7, in Quebec, Canada.

Present at the Quebec meeting was Skovsmose ( 1994 ), who also wrote about the development of critical mathematics education in Europe. Skovsmose shows the connection of this branch of CME in Europe to the Frankfurt School of Critical Education, one of the main representatives of which was Adorno, whose main issue was seeking an education that would prevent Nazism from occurring again. Today, critical mathematics education is more than important, in a moment in which countries such as the USA, Brazil, and Italy have far-right or fascist leaders, who have praised some of the fascist leaders of the twentieth century.

In the Cornell meeting, issues of social inequality, the role of mathematics in society, the ideology of certainty, and research methodologies appropriate to CME were presented (Borba, 1991 ; Borba & Skovsmose, 1996 ; Skovsmose & Borba, 2004 ). Since the 1990s, in Africa, authors such as Paulus Gerdes, from Mozambique, developed curricula and research about African traditions in mathematics and how to incorporate them into mathematics education (Gerdes, 2010 ; Torisu, 2017 ).

Development of curricula and pedagogical perspectives that highlight social inequality, gender and racial inequity, and the ideology of certainty was the initial focus of CME. More recently, environmental issues, and issues that were treated in other trends (e.g., mathematics education to the deaf or the blind), were brought into the agenda of CME. In sum, CME is a trend that shows that education is not neutral: it can promote equality or inequality. There are indicators already from Forbes that social inequality is growing during this pandemic: the billionaires are becoming even richer (Gavioli, 2020 ). The owners of Facebook and Amazon are among them! There is no need to be a mathematician to understand that this concentration of wealth upward means that the rest of the people have less. The owners of tech companies stand to gain as people move more and more online: their companies run online social networks, run online shopping services, and store digital data in online systems worldwide.

As I have already illustrated, social inequality is also growing in schools. As most schools and universities suspend face-to-face classes and go online one way or another, the issue of access has been a barrier to some and a trampoline to even more social inequality. Some universities in Brazil even opted not to resume education online because of inequitable access; but of course, as the university is not the only source of knowledge, online education also may have caused more social inequality. Here is an example from (mathematics) education in Brazil of a Catholic school located on the outskirts of a midtown city in the state of Sao Paulo: the school does not charge tuition for students, as parents do not earn enough income to feed their families; violence is also part of the daily experiences of these children. Teachers are paid above average (considering Brazilian standards), and from interviews with them, it is easy to see their engagement in fighting social inequality. Classes were first suspended in mid-March 2020 and resumed online afterwards, at different moments of April, depending on the school. Two teachers, Luiz Felipe Trovão (mathematics educator) and Karla Cristina Stropa Goulart (science educator), who were asked to answer an open question about their experience with teaching during the pandemic, reported how hard it was to communicate with students. Most students did not have access to the Internet. When they had access, they did not have the money to buy credits to operate the Internet Footnote 8 . The school tried to overcome this problem by providing chips with credits or sending printed didactical material to the children. But with less interaction with teachers, and without an environment to study in poor homes, through no fault of the teachers or the school, very little mathematics education or science education occurred. Trovão said that it is almost impossible to teach geometry online without proper interaction: homes, Internet access, etc.

The billionaires are becoming even richer; the poor are having even more difficulty accessing mathematics education: this may foreground the need that children will have, after the pandemic, to understand what happened. Mathematics educators may have to explore some tough topics: exponential functions to explain the spread of the coronavirus and how the richest grew even richer. Mathematics will not be enough, but a new agenda will be generated. Freire’s ( 1968 ) work about the pedagogy of the oppressed will be even more important. Putting together the agenda for the three trends, one should consider, for example, the role that home, as a physical and emotional “thing,” has in the pandemic school. We have collectives of home-parents-internet-student-teacher as the minimal unit of the collective agent who produces knowledge. Home and parents, things and humans, have added more to social inequality and to discussions about how to use digital technology in mathematics education.

Humans-with-media, seen as an activity system, provides a dynamic epistemological view that we can use to understand the different social aspects (in the micro- and macrolevels) of the research of digital technology. Simultaneously, in acknowledging agency in a wide variety of things, not only computers, it will be possible to structurally show social inequality: homes equipped differently cannot be assessed the same way. Children will suffer even more injustice than they suffer in school, if differences in Internet access, the comfort of home, etc., are not considered in assessment and teaching. Research under this frame, in digital technology, critical mathematics education, assessment, ethnomathematics, and other trends, may help to bring light to more epistemological discussion that is not value-free.

5 The three trends interacting

During the pandemic, “Lives” have become a craze in Brazil: presentations streamed over the Internet by artists, educators, and others. First, artists began holding Live presentations to incentivize people to stay at home. Soon after, other types of workers, such as mathematics educators, started holding our own Live presentations. During this pandemic, I have given many Lives produced by collectives that included Geogebra, the Internet, my home, and various broadcast software. The discussions of the mathematics of the pandemic and the sigmoid curve and its derivative were used in possibly thirty Lives. Figure 4 is a screenshot from a short video that shows this curve dynamically: https://igce.rc.unesp.br/#!/pesquisa/gpimem---pesq-em-informatica-outras-midias-e-educacao-matematica/animacoes/curva-epidemica-no-geogebra/ .

COVID-19 flattening curve. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYNMuaPm654&list=PLiBUAR5Cdi60qXjrzAVdhOgufWVuWTdl2&index=16

The derivative of the sigmoid was used to explain why it was both possible and important to “flatten the curve.” Different curves, with faster or slower growth, were associated to the roles of prevention, social status, and different kinds of homes. Examples of this type of “virtual classroom,” outside of the school/university context, illustrate how much the three trends analyzed in this paper can be powerfully intertwined. This calls for research to understand what kind of mathematics education is being experienced by those who synchronously or asynchronously viewed the Lives.

6 Discussion and conclusion

Most of mathematics education is supported by empirical papers. In the 1970s, most research was quantitative, and data was used to “prove” that a given method of teaching was better than another. Empirical data had the same role it plays to this day in a good part of what is considered science: there were control groups and experimental groups, and the methodology was based on (or reduced to) statistical treatment and conclusions. Later last century, and earlier this century, qualitative research has swung the pendulum in another direction. Qualitative research sees data as a voice, as a complement that should be added to other evidence in order to make (“prove”) a point (Borba et al., 2018 ). Truth was assumed to be explicitly contingent and subject to change long before the COVID-19 pandemic brought so many instabilities to our beliefs. As arguments grew apart from data, a wide set of reactions, including some from powerful funding agencies, emerged. For example, there were funding agencies that require quantitative data in a project. Now the notion of mixed methods is prevalent, even though it is not clear what the role of the data or the view of “truth” is in much of the research published.

Essays such as this paper serve the purpose of discussing ideas and presenting bases for research papers, so that we can know (in the different directions briefly presented above) about mathematics education, in the different epistemological positions that characterize our community. In this sense, this paper is a result of a reflection on how three trends could have their agendas transformed by SARS-CoV-2. Of course, other trends, such as ethnomathematics or early-grades mathematics education, will also be affected. The issues raised throughout this paper should be transformed by readers and should themselves become the objects of research. In this paper, I choose to deal with digital technology, philosophy of mathematics education, and critical mathematics education because the pandemic seems to have played a significant role in the changes of the agendas of these three trends. It seems important to raise new issues in these trends.

Digital technology is now a theme of concern (or research) for everyone (Engelbrecht et al., 2020a , b ). The amplification of the starkness of inequality under the pandemic cannot be ignored (except for those who believe that the Earth is flat and that hydroxychloroquine is a miracle cure for COVID-19), and the rise of the home office, associated with home schooling, confinement, and lockdown, may help many to think about philosophical issues regarding the role of “place” in knowing/learning and notions such as humans-with-media.

In the paragraphs above, I have pointed at my choices in identifying important trends. Why did I say “I” instead of “we,” which would refer to a collective of humans-with-media? It is a good question, and a tentative answer, in another domain of discussion (qualitative research and its influence in the classroom), was given in Borba et al. ( 2018 ). The authorship of a paper or a book may be individual, but it is a result of a collective endeavor of “endless” humans-with-media. This paper Footnote 9 has one author, but it involved the active participation of one doctoral student (Juliana Çar Stal), three teachers who lent me their speech (Karla Cristina Stropa Gourlart, Luiz Felipe Trovão, and one who wanted to remain anonymous), the reviewers, the editors of this special issue, members of the research group I belong to, the more than 100 members of the graduate program in mathematics education at UNESP Footnote 10 , Rio Claro, friends, the computer, the word processor, the home, the office, and, of course, the pandemic, COVID-19. We hope we can discuss this at the next ICME and that it does take place in 2021!

https://www.icme14.org/static/en/index.html

European Society for Research in Mathematics Education

Brazilian Society of Mathematics Education

Psychology of Mathematics Education Annual Meeting

Grupo de Pesquisa em Informática, outras Mídias e Educação Matemática [Group for research in informatics, other Media and Mathematic Education] - GPIMEM website: ttps://igce.rc.unesp.br/#!/gpimem

CMSP–Centro de Mídias da Educação de São Paulo. Recovered from https://centrodemidiasp.educacao.sp.gov.br/

Alan Bishop, Arthur Powell, Claudia Zaslavsky, David Henderson, Dorothy Buerk, Europe Sign, George Gheverghese Joseph, Kelly Gaddis, Marcelo Borba, Marilyn Frankenstein, Marty Hoffman, Munir Fasheh, Paul Ernest, and Sam Anderson

In Brazil, most people will not have unlimited access to Internet in their cell phone. Especially if you are poor, you typically buy credits for Internet and pay as you go.

The content of this article is partially financed by the research Grants by CNPq, 400590-2016-6 and 303326-2015.

São Paulo State University

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Borba, M.C. The future of mathematics education since COVID-19: humans-with-media or humans-with-non-living-things. Educ Stud Math 108 , 385–400 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-021-10043-2

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Making Up the Difference in Math

• Posted November 4, 2022
• By Jill Anderson
• Disruption and Crises
• Student Achievement and Outcomes
• Teachers and Teaching

The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress' Nation's Report Card  showed big declines in students' math performance — in some cases, dipping as low as the numbers of 20 years ago. The results showcased the effects of the pandemic and in particular how hard it was to teach math, say Professors Heather Hill and Jon Star . 

“I worry a little bit that what affordances teachers have available to them in that instructional realm, they, in some way, emphasize what might be the least desirable aspects of math instruction that we would want to see. So, there's going to be more use of worksheets, there's going to be more teacher lecture, there's going to be less student interaction,” Star says. “The ways that teachers have had to teach ... it's not necessarily the teacher's fault, it's just the way that they've been forced to teach during the pandemic. It isn't what we know to be the most effective way to teach math, but that really is all that the teachers had at their disposal now.”

In this episode of the Harvard EdCast, Hill and Star share why the scores dropped significantly, how challenging it can be to teach math, and ideas on how to move forward from this moment.

Jill Anderson:  I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast.

The recent result of the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed huge drops in students' math performance, leaving many educators to ponder what happens next. Heather Hill and Jon Star say math struggles aren't a new issue for students. They are Harvard experts on math instruction and curriculum. They say teaching math during and after the pandemic has been uniquely challenging. Jon knows firsthand considering he returned to classroom teaching during this time. I wondered what makes it so hard to teach and learn math, and what can be done to change it. First, I asked them what they thought about the NAEP scores showing such big declines in math.

This was not shocking to anybody who's been watching what the scores have been looking at, like from other assessments, like state assessments, like private companies that do assessments. We knew that things were going to look bad. The longitudinal NAEP also looked bad. So, this was not surprising.

I think what was surprising to people was how much more the math scores dipped than the ELA scores. One thing that we know from the research literature is that math scores have always been more sensitive to students' opportunities to learn. When I teach a class on the impacts of policies on ELA and math scores, it's not uncommon to find that math scores are actually moved by policy, they are affected by policy, and ELA scores simply aren't. So, this is a canonical example of that. There was not a policy but a national emergency and it moved those math scores a lot more than it moved the ELA scores.

What's interesting is why this happens. The thinking among most people is that math learning primarily happens in schools. Kids are exposed to ELA in many places in their daily lives. They talk with their parents at the dinner table. They read texts from friends. They read books. They listen to music lyrics. They interpret those music lyrics. They make arguments with their parents about how late they should stay out at night, or whether they should be able to get the extra popsicle after dinner. So, a lot of those ELA skills are getting built even in the absence of kids being in school. School is the only place that kids, for the most part, learn math, and that's probably what's driving some of this.

A second reason is that math is cumulative. So, if you miss fractions, you're going to have a hard time when you get to high school and you start learning algebra, because fractions are really the foundation for a lot of what's happening in algebra. It's also possible, a third explanation is that it could be that math was just taught much less efficiently in the pandemic. Something about the move to hybrid or the move to instruction being largely online. It could be that teachers were able to keep the features of ELA instruction that kept that high quality, but they couldn't do that in math. They were resorting to worksheets or they were resorting to videos from YouTube that were not very good and not very aligned to the kinds of things that kids were supposed to be learning that year.

Jon Star:  One way I think about trying to explain what's going on with the math scores would be thinking about the learning that's going on, but another would be about the instruction that students have received.

With respect to the learning, I think it's really critical to think about the particular age that this drop was most significant, eighth grade, and the type of mathematics that kids are learning around that time. Every year is not the same in kids' trajectory in math. It's not sort of growing linearly. There are some years that are really more critical than others, I might argue. So, in these years leading up to eighth grade, and where the pandemic hit for these students, this is when they were transitioning from arithmetic into algebra. Into the all important realm of symbolic mathematics, which is so critical to their future in whatever else they're doing mathematically.

This is where these students experience their most challenging years during the pandemic in terms of math learning. They really may have suffered in their ... not only their learning of fractions, which happened kind of in the late elementary age, but in their proportional reasoning skills, in their pre-algebra, in their transition into algebra, which is fundamentally what's assessed on the eighth grade NAEP. So, there's really a lot that's been going on, or that we would've hoped has been going on mathematically for these students over the past years, and it just hasn't happened in the quantity or the quality that we hoped. So, in that sense, it's no surprise that they're really struggling. Those struggles are not going to be easy to make go away.

They're really lacking some fundamental knowledge about algebra that they're going to need for other future courses. So, there's a content based explanation for thinking about this in terms of what they learn.

I think we can make the same point about instructionally what might be going on. What I might wonder is that the instruction that the teachers have been providing during the pandemic, whether it's online or whether it's in other settings, I worry a little bit that what affordances teachers have available to them in that instructional realm, they, in some way, emphasize what might be the least desirable aspects of math instruction that we would want to see. So, there's going to be more use of worksheets, there's going to be more teacher lecture, there's going to be less student interaction. The ways that teachers have had to teach. It's not necessarily the teacher's fault, it's just the way that they've been forced to teach during the pandemic. It isn't what we know to be the most effective way to teach math, but that really is all that the teachers had at their disposal now. So, we're seeing the consequences of that.

It's this terrible interaction between the ways the teachers were forced to teach, which may not be the most effective way to teach math, and the content that students, as a result, are missing out on that is so critical to them in eighth grade, but even more so moving forward.

Jill Anderson:  Wow, there's a lot there to think about and a lot to unpack. Is math just far more difficult to teach than other subjects? Is math far more difficult to learn than other subjects? What's kind of going on here that math is always a challenge?

Heather Hill:  Yeah, that's not a small question. The best evidence is that the average teacher who ... Average K5 teacher is probably better at teaching ELA than at teaching mathematics. There's a lot of feeling among teachers at that grade level, that they're not math people, they don't love math, they don't feel confident in the way that they learned it. And then it makes it hard for them to teach it feeling confident, and teach it with the conceptual knowledge that we would hope that they would use to teach the content.

Teachers go through teacher education programs. They take a couple courses. Typically, a math methods course or a math content course, but it's not quite enough to relearn six years or eight years of math in relatively more sophisticated ways. So, that's one piece. It explains why math is typically not quite taught as well across the board, as you're going to see in ELA.

Jon Star:  Teachers may hold certain knowledge, but also, certain beliefs about math that may challenge their ability to teach it well. Again, just to emphasize, it's not just the knowledge, which might be true, but also, there's a lot of beliefs about math, what math is, what it means to learn math that teachers may have developed over their own years of schooling, that may not be that productive for the ways that we hope they would teach math. Our teacher education programs have gotten a lot better at trying to not only increase that knowledge, but change those beliefs as well, but it's very difficult.

Heather Hill:  Since the common core, there has been a kind of free-for-all. It's changing maybe in the last five years or so. But for a long time there was a kind of free-for-all about the materials teachers would use to teach math. It was kind of like a mark of pride to write your own things or write them with colleagues or find them on the internet. What ends up happening, teachers aren't meant to be curriculum designers. That is a full-time job, design a curriculum for kids. There's things that you just need to worry about, like, "Is the definition of fraction that gets used in sixth grade built on in seventh grade? Are kids getting exposed to multiple definitions of fractions that will then be later used in algebra?" I think because there was this long period of time when teachers were asked to kind of create their own program of study for their kids, I think the overall quality was lost a little bit.

Jon Star:  Our system is structured in a particular way, in that our elementary school teachers teach all subjects. There's a lot of reasons why that's what we do. Historically, there's a lot of pieces to our system that make that the way that we need to do things. But in other countries, that may not be the case. In other countries, people who teach math may only teach math, even at very young ages. They may have much greater mathematics training, both content and in terms of teaching math, than our elementary school teachers have about math. So, it's an interesting thing to wonder is whether that has something to do with the challenges that we're facing, and whether there's a interest in thinking more about that possibility of having specialists who only teach math, or only teach math in science at particular grades, and what that might have afforded us if we did that.

Jill Anderson:  I'd love to know what you hear or what kind of feedback you get from teachers when these types of NAEP results come out and they're kind of depressing.

Heather Hill:  I think teachers are much more kind of concerned when their own kids aren't doing well. I mean, we think that there's a sort of, "Well, that's a national problem," but if they see their own kids falling behind or suffering, or the kids walk into the classroom having a lot of unfinished learning, I think that that's pretty devastating for teachers. It's just hard to watch kids struggle in that way, especially watch your own kids struggle in that way, for teachers.

It also just makes it a lot harder for teachers to do their job. I mean, they're supposed to be teaching on grade level mathematical material. If they have kids coming in the door in all different places, they have to then help some kids catch up and keep some other kids occupied. It multiplies the difficulty of teaching mathematics.

Jon Star:  I'm not sure teachers would've been following the NAEP scores in the same way that we might or the press might. But I think teachers have had such a hard time over these years teaching math. They have been doing their very best, but it's been so difficult. I think Heather touched on what I see as a really central challenge that teachers are facing, which is that they're dealing with a class full of students who are coming from so many different places in terms of what they know and what they don't know. On the one level, that's always a challenge of teaching, is differentiating for the class that you're faced with.

But I think COVID has made that even more challenging. That you have some students coming in who have had nothing over the past year, they've have nothing of substance, and you have others that maybe didn't lose but a little bit. You have this enormous diversity of prior knowledge that you're trying to wrestle with. You're trying to figure out as a teacher whether you remediate for all those students that really need some serious remediation, but how do you do that at the same time that you're supposed to be continuing to move forward with grade level content? You just can't stop. You can't say, "Oh, you're in the sixth grade, but you don't know the fifth grade material, we're just going to do fifth grade this year." You can't do that. You have to continue moving forward. But there's some students that really did not get any of the fifth grade material.

So, how do you do that? It's an enormous challenge. We don't really have curricula that are designed for that particular challenge. Especially in its most extreme version, which is what we're faced with right now. Pedagogically, instructionally, it's just a really hard thing to do. It's kind of like extreme differentiation, when just the basic differentiation is hard enough as it is.

So, this is just tough. So, I don't think teachers are surprised so much that this is the direction that we're headed, because they've really been living with this on a day-to-day basis.

Jill Anderson:  Can I ask a question? The listeners should know that Jon teaches eighth grade. How much longer does it take you to plan a lesson when you have that extreme differentiation?

Jon Star:  Well, it seems like it's a completely different planning thing. Like, planning for those lessons is completely different than if I didn't have to deal or minimally was differentiating. That it forces me to look at each problem that I'm asking the students to engage with me on and think about what everyone in the room is bringing to it, and how I might need to modify that task or that problem, or the discussion around that problem to account for the different places that the kids are. It's tough. I think for teachers who have had minimal experience doing that, who do they go to ask questions about how to do this? I'm not sure who helps them out with this. The curriculum doesn't do a great job with this. This is not what most curriculum are designed to do. And even experienced teachers are really challenged by this. It's a core task of teaching that's there always, but it's a particularly challenging extreme version of that task now.

Jill Anderson:  I was wondering, Jon, because you've done a lot of work looking at math interventions and things of that nature, are there practices that can be adapted to this moment in time?

Jon Star:  Well, I'm not sure that there's an easy fix to this. This is hard. I always am a little reluctant to claim the sort of uncharted territory argument because there's been phases in the past, some that I'm aware of, some that maybe I'm not aware of, where we've dealt with things that have been similarly challenging. But I do think this is something that we need to foreground a little more than we have in the past. The ways in which teachers are needing to differentiate in a different kind of way, and how supports for that can exist, either curricularly or in professional development.

People like us on the research side, maybe we need to dive more into that directly and think about it. Because we haven't had to be thinking about that directly so much either. Again, it's a core part of teaching, but we haven't had to deal with it in the same way in the past. I think there's room for us to reengage with that, as well as researchers, just to help out. To design curriculum, to design interventions, to think about what's most effective. Other than something like tutoring, which we know to be effective. But what can the teacher do in a whole class setting to really help this situation?

Jill Anderson:  What are some things and resources that we can tap into?

Heather Hill:  Well, Jon was talking about tutoring, which, if done well, can yield really big gains for kids in terms of catching up. It's targeted to where the kids are. You can even put two or three kids in a group if the kids are needing to travel that same path back to kind of mathematical knowledge or up to mathematical proficiency. As long as the tutoring is of decent quality, you're going to also be able to figure out, "Okay, that kid is getting it." A good tutor will be like, "Okay, you got it now. You can move on to something else." Whereas the whole class, a teacher doesn't necessarily have that kind of knowledge of each individual child, or the capacity to check in with each individual child. So, those are just some of the reasons that tutoring seems to work.

There's also been some research on double dose. This would be for the older grades. So, making sure that kids can just make up the instructional minutes that they lost during the pandemic by having an algebra class, but then having a pre-algebra class that supports them, aligned with what they're learning in algebra. So, not completely like, "Let's just redo eighth grade math again while you're learning ninth grade math." They need to be synced up together so that, as kids are learning skills in algebra, they're getting the support for those in the other class that they're in.

Jon Star:  Yeah. I only had a couple things. One, that though we're in tension a little bit between these remediation goals and these advancing in grade level content goals, I think we should resist the inclination to do too much remediation in these situations. That I'm not sure that ultimately helps us. It just kind of kicks the can down the road, if you will. That I think teachers, though it's extremely challenging, need to figure out ways to continue to have kids move forward with grade level content despite the fact that they're bringing some serious prerequisite knowledge gaps. That's hard, but I think we need to do that.

And then maybe the second thing I'd say, and this is maybe more toward people like us researchers in the field, we need to think about partnerships between researchers and folks in schools to try to solve these really difficult problems. This is a really challenging, contextualized, embedded problem in the schools. It's really nuanced. And I think it could benefit from the kind of partnerships, the research practice partnerships that some people in the field are doing, but others are not. I think that would be a way that we could all try to contribute towards solving this really tough problem.

Jill Anderson:  Not everybody needs to be panicking, but in some cases we do need to panic. But I think that there is a big piece to these results in that it shows the disparities among people of color.

Heather Hill:  Yeah. I don't worry as much about the absolute numbers in this particular case, what really worries me is the gaps that have opened up. In particular between communities where kids were already disadvantaged, potentially, didn't have schools open as much as communities where schools were open. Those tended to be whiter and more affluent. What happens when you see those achievement differences widen is that opportunities will also widen. Because that turns into, who makes it through the first semester of college math in order to major in engineering, in order to major in computer science?

There was a pretty serious gating ... We have a kid in college and those are pretty serious gating moments. When you start to see the kinds of differences that have opened up on the NAEP, that's going to be reflected in the distribution of kids and the opportunities that kids all across the board have to participate in college level math, college level STEM fields, and ultimately, STEM careers. So, that's devastating. It's also devastating just because we don't have enough STEM trained individuals in this country. So, to lose kids in large number because of this I think is pretty ... it's pretty devastating.

It's like, if you told me kids can answer three fewer fractions problems in eighth grade, I'd be not that bothered by that. It's more that we have introduced even more inequity into the system because of the way the pandemic played out in schools.

Jill Anderson:  What do you think is the best path forward from here?

Heather Hill:  First, kids are pretty resilient. So, it is all about opportunities to learn. You give kids opportunities to learn and they learn stuff. In some ways, it's just counterbalancing those lost opportunities to learn, and making sure that kids make up the time in math class. I mean, in some ways it just boils down to that. It helps if we target the resources to the kids in the communities that saw the worst of it in the pandemic, so that we're making up the differences that grew and we're able to make outcomes more equitable. But we know that there were differences in who got to go to school during the pandemic, so we need to target resources to the communities that lost the most time there.

I mean, we can talk about improving math instruction across the board, but I also just think this isn't the time to bring in brand new initiatives when teachers, like Jon was saying, are dealing with so many other things. This is a hard job we're asking teachers to do, and schools to do. Right now, I think focusing on the basics can help kids catch up, because expose the kids to the content and they will learn the content. This is one thing that we know after 150 years of research in educational psychology.

Jon Star:  This is not terribly concrete, but keep the content specific nature of this challenge in mind. That we're talking about kids' learning of mathematics. As I said earlier, there's things that we were hoping they would learn in this particular time period that are related to algebra. This is also about kids' geometry knowledge, I'll mention. Because what's happened over the past few years is that something had to be cut in the curriculum as teachers were triaging. And too often, from my interactions with teachers, it's geometry that's been cut. I haven't looked closely enough at the NAEP results to know to what extent the score drop is related to particular question types, like geometry, that they didn't know much about. But kids are going to be moving into high school where they're expected to take geometry courses and they haven't seen any geometry, at least the geometry that they're expected to take.

Anyway, the larger point is that there's a content specific nature of these challenges, both in terms of the teaching and the learning, that I hope that we'll keep in mind. This isn't just any subject where the scores went down, what can we do to improve it? It's actually mathematics, and that should factor in to any answers that we put forward.

Jill Anderson:  Jon Star is an educational psychologist and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is also a math teacher. Heather Hill is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she is also a faculty co-chair of the Teaching and Teacher Leadership Program. I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast, produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.

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Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, megan kuhfeld , megan kuhfeld senior research scientist - nwea @megankuhfeld jim soland , jim soland assistant professor, school of education and human development - university of virginia, affiliated research fellow - nwea @jsoland karyn lewis , and karyn lewis director, center for school and student progress - nwea @karynlew emily morton emily morton research scientist - nwea @emily_r_morton.

March 3, 2022

As we reach the two-year mark of the initial wave of pandemic-induced school shutdowns, academic normalcy remains out of reach for many students, educators, and parents. In addition to surging COVID-19 cases at the end of 2021, schools have faced severe staff shortages , high rates of absenteeism and quarantines , and rolling school closures . Furthermore, students and educators continue to struggle with mental health challenges , higher rates of violence and misbehavior , and concerns about lost instructional time .

As we outline in our new research study released in January, the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ academic achievement has been large. We tracked changes in math and reading test scores across the first two years of the pandemic using data from 5.4 million U.S. students in grades 3-8. We focused on test scores from immediately before the pandemic (fall 2019), following the initial onset (fall 2020), and more than one year into pandemic disruptions (fall 2021).

Average fall 2021 math test scores in grades 3-8 were 0.20-0.27 standard deviations (SDs) lower relative to same-grade peers in fall 2019, while reading test scores were 0.09-0.18 SDs lower. This is a sizable drop. For context, the math drops are significantly larger than estimated impacts from other large-scale school disruptions, such as after Hurricane Katrina—math scores dropped 0.17 SDs in one year for New Orleans evacuees .

Even more concerning, test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20% in math (corresponding to 0.20 SDs) and 15% in reading (0.13 SDs), primarily during the 2020-21 school year. Further, achievement tended to drop more between fall 2020 and 2021 than between fall 2019 and 2020 (both overall and differentially by school poverty), indicating that disruptions to learning have continued to negatively impact students well past the initial hits following the spring 2020 school closures.

These numbers are alarming and potentially demoralizing, especially given the heroic efforts of students to learn and educators to teach in incredibly trying times. From our perspective, these test-score drops in no way indicate that these students represent a “ lost generation ” or that we should give up hope. Most of us have never lived through a pandemic, and there is so much we don’t know about students’ capacity for resiliency in these circumstances and what a timeline for recovery will look like. Nor are we suggesting that teachers are somehow at fault given the achievement drops that occurred between 2020 and 2021; rather, educators had difficult jobs before the pandemic, and now are contending with huge new challenges, many outside their control.

Clearly, however, there’s work to do. School districts and states are currently making important decisions about which interventions and strategies to implement to mitigate the learning declines during the last two years. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) investments from the American Rescue Plan provided nearly $200 billion to public schools to spend on COVID-19-related needs. Of that sum, $22 billion is dedicated specifically to addressing learning loss using “evidence-based interventions” focused on the “ disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on underrepresented student subgroups. ” Reviews of district and state spending plans (see Future Ed , EduRecoveryHub , and RAND’s American School District Panel for more details) indicate that districts are spending their ESSER dollars designated for academic recovery on a wide variety of strategies, with summer learning, tutoring, after-school programs, and extended school-day and school-year initiatives rising to the top.

Comparing the negative impacts from learning disruptions to the positive impacts from interventions

To help contextualize the magnitude of the impacts of COVID-19, we situate test-score drops during the pandemic relative to the test-score gains associated with common interventions being employed by districts as part of pandemic recovery efforts. If we assume that such interventions will continue to be as successful in a COVID-19 school environment, can we expect that these strategies will be effective enough to help students catch up? To answer this question, we draw from recent reviews of research on high-dosage tutoring , summer learning programs , reductions in class size , and extending the school day (specifically for literacy instruction) . We report effect sizes for each intervention specific to a grade span and subject wherever possible (e.g., tutoring has been found to have larger effects in elementary math than in reading).

Figure 1 shows the standardized drops in math test scores between students testing in fall 2019 and fall 2021 (separately by elementary and middle school grades) relative to the average effect size of various educational interventions. The average effect size for math tutoring matches or exceeds the average COVID-19 score drop in math. Research on tutoring indicates that it often works best in younger grades, and when provided by a teacher rather than, say, a parent. Further, some of the tutoring programs that produce the biggest effects can be quite intensive (and likely expensive), including having full-time tutors supporting all students (not just those needing remediation) in one-on-one settings during the school day. Meanwhile, the average effect of reducing class size is negative but not significant, with high variability in the impact across different studies. Summer programs in math have been found to be effective (average effect size of .10 SDs), though these programs in isolation likely would not eliminate the COVID-19 test-score drops.

Figure 1: Math COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) Table 2; summer program results are pulled from Lynch et al (2021) Table 2; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span; Figles et al. and Lynch et al. report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. We were unable to find a rigorous study that reported effect sizes for extending the school day/year on math performance. Nictow et al. and Kraft & Falken (2021) also note large variations in tutoring effects depending on the type of tutor, with larger effects for teacher and paraprofessional tutoring programs than for nonprofessional and parent tutoring. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

Figure 2 displays a similar comparison using effect sizes from reading interventions. The average effect of tutoring programs on reading achievement is larger than the effects found for the other interventions, though summer reading programs and class size reduction both produced average effect sizes in the ballpark of the COVID-19 reading score drops.

Figure 2: Reading COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; extended-school-day results are from Figlio et al. (2018) Table 2; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) ; summer program results are pulled from Kim & Quinn (2013) Table 3; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: While Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span, Figlio et al. and Kim & Quinn report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

There are some limitations of drawing on research conducted prior to the pandemic to understand our ability to address the COVID-19 test-score drops. First, these studies were conducted under conditions that are very different from what schools currently face, and it is an open question whether the effectiveness of these interventions during the pandemic will be as consistent as they were before the pandemic. Second, we have little evidence and guidance about the efficacy of these interventions at the unprecedented scale that they are now being considered. For example, many school districts are expanding summer learning programs, but school districts have struggled to find staff interested in teaching summer school to meet the increased demand. Finally, given the widening test-score gaps between low- and high-poverty schools, it’s uncertain whether these interventions can actually combat the range of new challenges educators are facing in order to narrow these gaps. That is, students could catch up overall, yet the pandemic might still have lasting, negative effects on educational equality in this country.

Given that the current initiatives are unlikely to be implemented consistently across (and sometimes within) districts, timely feedback on the effects of initiatives and any needed adjustments will be crucial to districts’ success. The Road to COVID Recovery project and the National Student Support Accelerator are two such large-scale evaluation studies that aim to produce this type of evidence while providing resources for districts to track and evaluate their own programming. Additionally, a growing number of resources have been produced with recommendations on how to best implement recovery programs, including scaling up tutoring , summer learning programs , and expanded learning time .

Ultimately, there is much work to be done, and the challenges for students, educators, and parents are considerable. But this may be a moment when decades of educational reform, intervention, and research pay off. Relying on what we have learned could show the way forward.

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6 things we've learned about how the pandemic disrupted learning

Cory Turner

How did the pandemic disrupt learning for America's more than 50 million K-12 students?

For two years, that question has felt immeasurable, like a phantom, though few educators doubted the shadow it cast over children who spent months struggling to learn online.

Now, as a third pandemic school year draws to a close, new research offers the clearest accounting yet of the crisis's academic toll — as well as reason to hope that schools can help.

1. Surprise! Students learned less when they were remote

But really, this should surprise no one.

Most schools had little to no experience with remote instruction when the pandemic began; they lacked teacher training, appropriate software, laptops, universal internet access and, in many cases, students lacked stability and a supportive adult at home to help.

Even students who spent the least amount of time learning remotely during the 2020-21 school year — just a month or less — missed the equivalent of seven to 10 weeks of math learning, says Thomas Kane of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University.

Much of that missed learning, Kane says, was likely a hangover from spring 2020, when nearly all schools were remote and remote instruction was at its worst.

Kane is part of a collaborative of researchers at Harvard, the American Institutes for Research, Dartmouth College and the school-testing nonprofit NWEA, who set out to measure just how much learning students missed during the pandemic.

And notice we're saying "missed," not "lost," because the problem is that when schools went remote, kids simply did not learn as much or as well as they would have in person.

" We try not to say 'learning loss,' because if they didn't learn it, they didn't lose it," explains Ebony Lee, an assistant superintendent in Clayton County, Ga.

Not everyone agrees. Some parents who saw their kids struggle while trying to learn remotely believe "learning loss" fits — because it captures the urgency they now feel to make up for what was lost.

"It would mean so much for parents if somebody would acknowledge it. 'You know, we have learning loss,' " says Sheila Walker, a parent in Northern California. "Like our board, they don't even use those words. We know we have learning loss, so how are we going to address it?"

Kane and his fellow researchers studied the test scores of more than 2 million elementary- and middle-schoolers, comparing the growth they made between fall 2017 and fall 2019 to their pandemic-era growth, from fall 2019 to fall 2021.

Though researchers focused on math, the instructional time students missed in reading was "comparable," Kane says.

One quick caveat: Obviously, test scores can tell us only so much about what students actually learn in a given year (social-emotional skills, for example, are harder to measure). But they're a start.

2. Students at high-poverty schools were hit hardest

Students at high-poverty schools experienced an academic double-whammy: Their schools were more likely to be remote and, when they were, students missed more learning.

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Let's break that down.

First, high-poverty schools spent about 5.5 more weeks in remote instruction during the 2020-21 school year than low- and mid-poverty schools, the report says. Researchers also found a "higher incidence of remote schooling for Black and Hispanic students."

And second, in high-poverty schools that stayed remote for the majority of the 2020-21 school year, students missed the equivalent of 22 weeks of in-person math learning.

That's more than half of a traditional school year (roughly 36-40 weeks).

By contrast, students in similarly remote, low-poverty schools missed considerably less learning: roughly 13 weeks, Kane says, and he warns that closing these gaps could take years.

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This new data backs up what many teachers and school leaders have been saying.

"It's very disconcerting," says Sharon Contreras, the superintendent of North Carolina's third-largest district, in Guilford County. "Because we know that the students who are most vulnerable saw the most amount of learning loss, and they were already behind."

Why did students in high-poverty schools miss more learning while remote? Recent U.S. Government Accountability Office surveys of more than 2,800 teachers offer some explanations.

Teachers in remote, high-poverty schools were more likely to report that their students lacked a workspace and internet at home, and were less likely to have an adult there to help. Many older students disengaged because the pandemic forced them to become caretakers, or to get jobs.

Making matters worse, as NPR has reported, high-poverty students were also more likely to experience food insecurity , homelessness and the loss of a loved one to COVID-19.

"These gaps are not new," says Becky Pringle, head of the National Education Association (NEA), the nation's largest teachers union. "We know that there are racial and social and economic injustices that exist in every system ... what the pandemic did was just like the pandemic did with everything: It just made it worse."

3. Different states saw different gaps

Kane and his fellow researchers found that learning gaps were most pronounced in states with higher rates of remote instruction overall.

For example, in the quarter of states where students spent the most time learning remotely, including California, Illinois, Kentucky and Virginia, "high-poverty schools spent an additional nine weeks in remote instruction (more than two months) than low-poverty schools," the report says.

On the other hand, in the quarter of states where overall use of remote instruction was the lowest, including Texas, Florida and a host of rural states, the report says, high-poverty schools were still more likely to be remote "but the differences were small: 3 weeks remote in high poverty schools versus 1 week remote in low poverty schools."

The report says, "as long as schools were in-person throughout 2020-21, there was no widening of math achievement gaps between high-, middle-, and low-poverty schools."

Kane says he hopes that, instead of relitigating districts' choices to stay remote, politicians and educators can use this data as a call to action.

"That student achievement declined is not a surprise," Kane says. "Rather, we should think of it as a bill for a public health measure that was taken on our behalf. And it's our obligation now, whether or not we agreed with those decisions, to pay that bill. We can't stiff our children."

4. High school graduation rates didn't change much

One more study , from Brookings, looks at the impact all this pandemic-driven turmoil had on high school graduation and college entry rates.

It turns out, for the 2019-20 school year, when graduation ceremonies were canceled and students ended the year at home, high school graduation rates actually increased slightly.

"The message clearly was 'just show up,' " says Douglas Harris, the study's lead researcher and director of the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice at Tulane University.

"So it became pretty easy," Harris says. "Anybody who was on the margin of graduating at that point was going to graduate because the states officially relaxed their standards."

For the 2020-21 school year, Harris says, states and school districts largely returned to pre-pandemic standards and, as a result, the high school graduation rate dipped slightly.

College enrollment plummeted during the pandemic. This fall, it's even worse

5. many high school grads chose to delay college.

While the pandemic appeared to have little impact on students' ability to finish high school, it seemed to have the opposite effect on their willingness to start college.

Harris says entry rates for recent high school grads at four-year colleges dipped 6% and a worrying 16% at two-year colleges. Why?

Harris has a theory: "I think for anybody, regardless of age, starting something new, trying to develop new relationships in the pandemic, was a nonstarter."

6. Schools can do something about it

School leaders are now racing to build programs that, they hope, will help students make up for at least some of this missed learning. One popular approach: "high-dosage" tutoring.

Here's what schools are doing to try to address students' social-emotional needs

"For us, high-dosage means two to three times per week for at least 30 minutes, and ... no more than three students in a group," says Penny Schwinn, Tennessee's state education commissioner.

Schwinn led the creation of the TN ALL Corps, a sprawling, statewide network of tutors who, Schwinn hopes, can reach 150,000 elementary- and middle-schoolers over three years. High school students with busier schedules can access online tutoring anytime, on demand.

In Guilford County, Contreras says the benefits of their tutoring program go well beyond learning recovery. Their new tutoring corps draws heavily from graduate assistants at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a regional HBCU.

" We want to continue to grow the number of Black and brown teachers in the district," Contreras says. "So hiring graduate assistants was a very intentional effort to make sure our students saw themselves, but also to introduce those graduate assistants to the teaching profession."

Multiple superintendents, including Contreras, emphasized that the purpose of these tutoring efforts was not to look backward, over old material, but to support students as they move forward through new concepts.

"We don't want to remediate," Contreras says emphatically. "We want to accelerate learning."

Kane says districts should also consider making up for missed learning by adding more days to the school calendar .

"Schools already have the teachers. They already have the buildings. They already have the bus routes," Kane explains. Extending the school year may be logistically easier than, say, hiring and scheduling hundreds of new tutors.

But that doesn't mean extending the school year is easy.

In Los Angeles, where students spent most of the 2020-21 school year learning remotely, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho says he would love to expand the next school year by as many as 10 additional days to help address what he calls "unprecedented, historic learning loss." But, he says, "[that idea] ran into a lot of opposition" from parents and teachers alike.

So Carvalho has had to settle for four additional student learning days next year.

Kane acknowledges that adding time to the school year is asking a lot of teachers and some families and would likely require a pay bump above educators' normal weekly rate.

"Everybody is eager to return to normal. And I can appreciate that," Kane says, "but normal is not enough."

If there is a silver lining for districts rushing to create new learning opportunities, it's that many school leaders — and politicians — are realizing they make good sense long-term too.

In Los Angeles, Carvalho says many students attending high-poverty schools "were in crisis prior to COVID-19," academically speaking. And he hopes these new efforts, forced by the pandemic, "may actually catapult their learning experience."

Tennessee's ALL Corps "is now funded forever more," Schwinn says.

"So this isn't going to be a COVID recovery. This is just good practice for kids."

Primary school mathematics during the COVID-19 pandemic: No evidence of learning gaps in adaptive practicing results

Affiliation.

• 1 LEARN! Research Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, V.d. Boechorststraat 7, 1081 BT Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Electronic address: [email protected].
• PMID: 34844699
• PMCID: PMC8487463
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tine.2021.100163

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic induced many governments to close schools for months. Evidence so far suggests that learning has suffered as a result. Here, it is investigated whether forms of computer-assisted learning mitigated the decrements in learning observed during the lockdown.

Method: Performance of 53,656 primary school students who used adaptive practicing software for mathematics was compared to performance of similar students in the preceding year.

Results: During the lockdown progress was faster than it had been the year before, contradicting results reported so far. These enhanced gains were correlated with increased use, and remained after the lockdown ended. This was the case for all grades but more so for lower grades and for weak students, but less so for students in schools with disadvantaged populations.

Conclusions: These results suggest that adaptive practicing software may mitigate, or even reverse, the negative effects of school closures on mathematics learning.

Keywords: Adaptive practice; COVID-19; Mathematics; Primary school; School closures.

Copyright © 2021 The Author. Published by Elsevier GmbH.. All rights reserved.

• Communicable Disease Control
• Mathematics
• Pandemics / prevention & control

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Teaching and learning in times of covid-19: uses of digital technologies during school lockdowns.

• Department of Basic Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

The closure of schools as a result of COVID-19 has been a critical global incident from which to rethink how education works in all our countries. Among the many changes generated by this crisis, all teaching became mediated by digital technologies. This paper intends to analyze the activities carried out during this time through digital technologies and the conceptions of teaching and learning that they reflect. We designed a Likert-type online questionnaire to measure the frequency of teaching activities. It was answered by 1,403 teachers from Spain (734 primary and 669 secondary education teachers). The proposed activities varied depending on the learning promoted (reproductive or constructive), the learning outcomes (verbal, procedural, or attitudinal), the type of assessment to which the activities were directed, and the presence of cooperative activities. The major result of this study was that teachers used reproductive activities more frequently than constructive ones. We also found that most activities were those favoring verbal and attitudinal learning. The cooperative activities were the least frequent. Finally, through a cluster analysis, we identified four teaching profiles depending on the frequency and type of digital technologies use: Passive, Active, Reproductive, and Interpretative. The variable that produced the most consistent differences was previous digital technologies use These results show that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) uses are reproductive rather than constructive, which impedes effective digital technologies integration into the curriculum so that students gain 21st-century competencies.

Introduction

When schools were closed in most countries in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers had no other option but to change their classrooms into online learning spaces. It was a critical global incident. In research on identity and teacher training ( Tripp, 1993 ; Butterfield et al., 2005 ; Monereo, 2010 ), a critical incident is an unexpected situation that hinders the development of the planned activity and that, by exceeding a certain emotional threshold, puts the identity in crisis and obliges that teachers review their concepts, strategies, and feelings. Thus, these incidents can become meaningful resources for training and changing teaching and learning practices because they allow us to review our deep beliefs ( Monereo et al., 2015 ).

The critical global incident generated by the pandemic forced most teachers to assume virtual teaching where they had to use digital technologies, sometimes for the first time, to facilitate their students’ learning. The closure of schools as a consequence of COVID-19 led to substantial changes in education with profound consequences. Today we know that educational inequalities have widened ( Dorn et al., 2020 ), while students have suffered greater social and emotional imbalances ( Colao et al., 2020 ). In this context, families have also been more involved in the school education of their children ( Bubb and Jones, 2020 ). Moreover, concerning the objectives of this study, it has been necessary to rethink the teaching strategies in the new virtual classrooms. In fact, this research focuses precisely on analyzing the uses that teachers made of the digital technologies or Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) (from now on, we will use this acronym) during the confinement to become familiar with their practices and use them to review their conceptions of teaching and learning.

For several decades, many authors have argued that ICT as educational devices facilitate the adaptation of teaching to each student. Some argue this is because they can promote collaboration, interactivity, the use of multimedia codes, and greater control of learning by the learner (e.g., Jaffee, 1997 ; Collins and Halverson, 2009 ). In this way, their integration in the curriculum would contribute to the acquisition of 21st-century competencies (autonomy, collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving) that the OECD ( Ananiadou and Claro, 2009 ) links to the so-called “global competence” that should define the current education ( Ertmer et al., 2015 ).

However, after decades of use of ICT in classrooms, they have not fully achieved their promise to transform teaching and learning processes. The results of a lot of international studies are, in fact, quite discouraging, like those claimed by the PISA studies ( OECD, 2015 ). In its report, the OECD(2015 , p. 3) concludes that “the results also show no appreciable improvements in student achievement in reading, mathematics or science in the countries that had invested heavily in ICT for education.” Thus, Biagi and Loi (2013) found that the more education ICT uses reported, the less learning in reading, mathematics, and science achieved. These data caused even Andreas Schleicher, head and coordinator of PISA studies, to claim that “the reality is that technology is doing more harm than good in our schools today” ( Bagshaw, 2016 ).

These conclusions contrast with the results obtained in most of the experimental research on the effects of ICT on learning. A decade ago, after conducting a second-order meta-analysis of 25 meta-analyses, Tamim et al.(2011 , p. 14) found “a significant positive small to moderate effect size favoring the utilization of technology in the experimental condition over more traditional instruction (i.e., technology-free) in the control group,” a conclusion that is still valid today. Various studies and meta-analyses reflect moderate but positive effects on learning, whether for example from the use of touch screens in preschools ( Xie et al., 2018 ), from cell phones ( Alrasheedi et al., 2015 ; Sung et al., 2015 ) or video games ( Clark et al., 2016 ; Mayer, 2019 ). It has also been found that they favor collaboration in secondary education ( Corcelles Seuba and Castelló, 2015 ) or learning mathematics ( Li and Ma, 2010 ; Genlott and Grönlund, 2016 ), science ( Hennessy et al., 2007 ) or second languages ( Farías et al., 2010 ).

What is the reason for this disagreement between research conducted in experimental laboratories and large-scale studies? Many factors could explain this distance ( de Aldama, 2020 ). But one difference is that the experimental studies have been carefully designed and controlled to promote these forms of learning mentioned above, while the usual work in the classroom is mediated by the activity of teachers who, in most cases, have little training using ICT ( Sigalés et al., 2008 ). Several authors ( Gorder, 2008 ; Comi et al., 2017 ; Tondeur et al., 2017 ) conclude that it is not the ICT themselves that can transform the classroom and learning, but rather the use that teachers make of them. While the experimental studies mostly promote activities that encourage autonomous learning ( Collins and Halverson, 2009 ), the most widespread uses of ICT, as reflected in these international studies with more diverse samples, report other kinds of use whose benefits are more doubtful.

Different classifications of teachers’ use of ICT in the classroom have been proposed in recent years (e.g., Gorder, 2008 ; Mama and Hennessy, 2013 ; Comi et al., 2017 ). Tondeur et al. (2008a) differentiate three types of educational computer use: (a) basic computer skills; (b) use of computers as an information tool, and (c) use of them as a learning tool. Laying aside the acquisition of basic skills related to digital devices, learning is promoted by the last two uses that lead to second-order digital skills related to information management and its conversion into knowledge ( Fulton, 1997 ; Gorder, 2008 ). Thus, the distinction is usually made between two types of use. The first use is aimed at traditional teaching, focused on the transmission and access to information, and usually called teacher-centered use (although perhaps it should be called content-centered use). The second one, called student-centered use, promotes diverse competencies (autonomy, collaboration, critical thinking, argumentation, and problem-solving) and is part of the Global Competence characteristic of 21st-century education ( Ananiadou and Claro, 2009 ; OECD, 2019 , 2020 ). According to Tondeur et al. (2017) , integration of ICT in education requires assuming a constructivist conception of learning and adopting a student-centered approach in which the students manage the information through the ICT instead of, as in the more traditional approach (content-centered), it being the teacher who uses the ICT.

The experimental studies mentioned above show that student-centered approaches improve verbal earning, producing a better understanding of the subjects studied, promoting self-regulation of the learning processes themselves, and generating critical and collaborative attitudes toward knowledge. Thus, Comi et al.(2017 , pp 36–37), after analyzing data from different standardized assessments, conclude: “computer-based teaching practices increase student performance if they are aimed at increasing students’ awareness of ICT use and at improving their navigation critical skills, developing students’ ability to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant material and to access, locate, extract, evaluate, and organize digital information.” Besides, they also found a slight negative correlation between using ICT to convey information and academic performance.

In spite of these better results of adopting student-centered uses, the studies support that the most frequent uses in classrooms are still centered on the teachers, who indeed use ICT as a substitute for other more traditional resources to transmit information ( Loveless and Dore, 2002 ; Sigalés et al., 2008 ; de Aldama and Pozo, 2016 ). Even if what Ertmer (1999) called type I barriers are overcome, related to the availability of these technological resources and the working conditions in the centers, several studies show that there are other types II barriers that limit the use of ICT ( Ertmer et al., 2015 ); in particular, the conceptions about learning and teaching to the extent that they mediate the use of ICT ( Hermans et al., 2008 ).

Different studies have shown that these teachers’ beliefs about learning and teaching are the best predictor of the use made of ICT in the classroom ( Ertmer, 2005 ; Ertmer et al., 2015 ). Most of the work on these beliefs ( Hofer and Pintrich, 1997 , 2002 ; Pozo et al., 2006 ; Fives and Gill, 2015 ) identifies two types of conceptions: some closer to a reproductive vision of learning, which would be related to the teacher or content-centered teaching uses, and others nearer to constructivist perspectives, which promote student-centered teaching uses. Studies show teachers who have constructivist beliefs tend to use more ICT than those with more traditional beliefs ( Judson, 2006 ; Law and Chow, 2008 ; Ertmer et al., 2015 ). They also employ them in a more student-centered way, and their uses are oriented toward the development of problem-solving skills ( Tondeur et al., 2017 ). On the other hand, teachers with more traditional beliefs use them primarily to present information ( Ertmer et al., 2012 ).

However, the relationship between conceptions and educational practices is not so clear and linear ( Liu, 2011 ; Fives and Buehl, 2012 ; Tsai and Chai, 2012 ; Mama and Hennessy, 2013 ; Ertmer et al., 2015 ; de Aldama and Pozo, 2016 ; de Aldama, 2020 ). Many studies show a mismatch between beliefs and practices, above all, when we refer to beliefs closer to constructivism that do not always correspond to constructive or student-centered practices. We can distinguish three types of arguments that explain the mismatches. First, the beliefs seem to be more complex and less dichotomous than what is assumed ( Ertmer et al., 2015 ). The studies comparing beliefs and practices tend to focus on the more extreme positions of the spectrum -reproductive vs. constructive beliefs-, despite research showing they are part of a continuum of intermediate beliefs between both aspects ( Hofer and Pintrich, 1997 , 2002 ; Pérez Echeverría et al., 2006 ). Thus, for example, the so-called interpretive beliefs maintain traditional reproductive epistemological positions. People who have these conceptions think that learning is an exact reflection of reality or the content which should be learned, whereas they also think teaching is mediated by cognitive processes of the learner which are based on his or her activity ( Pozo et al., 2006 ; López-Íñiguez and Pozo, 2014 ; Martín et al., 2014 ; Pérez Echeverría, in press ). Other examples of this belief can be found in the technological-reproductive conception described by Strauss and Shilony (1994) , which is close to a naïve information processing theory.

Second, we must acknowledge that neither teachers’ beliefs nor their educational practices remain stable but vary according to the teaching contexts. As Ertmer et al. (2015) claim, beliefs are not unidimensional, but teachers assume them in varying degrees and with different types of relationships. The teacher’s beliefs seem to be organized in profiles that gather aspects of the different theories about teaching and whose activation depends on the contextual demands ( Tondeur et al., 2008a ; Bautista et al., 2010 ; López-Íñiguez et al., 2014 ; Ertmer et al., 2015 ).

Third, we consider that this multidimensionality of beliefs makes them very difficult to measure or evaluate ( Pajares, 1992 ( Schraw and Olafson, 2015 ; see also Ertmer et al., 2015 ; Pérez Echeverría and Pozo, in press ), so perhaps different studies are measuring different components. For example, many studies focus on explicit beliefs, or “what teachers believe to be true” for learning, and therefore evaluate more the general ideas about what ICT-based education should be. Usually, these statements tend to be relatively more favorable to the advantages mentioned above. In this paper, we have chosen to analyze teachers’ stated practices as a means of addressing specific beliefs about teaching.

In addition to beliefs, other variables have been identified that influence the use of ICTs such as gender, age, educational level, or subject curriculum, with results that are usually inconclusive. Thus, while Mathews and Guarino (2000) found that men were more inclined toward the use of ICTs than women, in other studies no differences were found ( Gorder, 2008 ; Law and Chow, 2008 ). Similarly, other studies ( van Braak et al., 2004 ; Suárez et al., 2012 ) concluded that there was an inverse relationship between the age of the teachers and their interest in ICT, but other studies did not confirm this conclusion ( Gorder, 2008 ; Law and Chow, 2008 ; Inan and Lowther, 2010 ). Finally, the teaching experience gives equally ambiguous results; some papers report a negative relationship ( Mathews and Guarino, 2000 ; Baek et al., 2008 ; Inan and Lowther, 2010 ) while others find no relationship ( Gorder, 2008 ).

The influence of factors like educational level or curriculum subjects has also been analyzed. The data seem to be more conclusive regarding educational level: teachers in secondary education have more favorable attitudes toward ICT than teachers of earlier levels ( Gorder, 2008 ; Vanderlinde et al., 2010 ). However, the data are not so conclusive regarding the influence of curriculum subjects ( Williams et al., 2000 ; Gorder, 2008 ; Vanderlinde et al., 2010 ).

Although it will take time to understand what has happened in teaching during these months, many studies and proposals have analyzed the use of ICT in distance education. We can classify them into three types of research. The first type of analyses has measured the impact of classroom closures on the education of students, many of them focusing on their effects on inequality or the way different countries have dealt with this crisis ( Crawford et al., 2020 ; Reimers and Schleicher, 2020 ; Zhang et al., 2020 ). Second, studies have aimed at proposing principles that should guide the use of ICT in the classroom ( Ferdig et al., 2020 ; Rapanta et al., 2020 ; Sangrà et al., 2020 ). The last ones, which are close to the aims of this study, are focused on how teachers have used ICT for the COVID-19 crisis. Some of these studies have carried out qualitative case analyses in different contexts, institutions ( Koçoğlu and Tekdal, 2020 ; Rasmitadila et al., 2020 ), and even countries ( Hall et al., 2020 ; Iivari et al., 2020 ). However, others have resorted to the use of questionnaires applied to larger samples to inquire about the teaching experience for confined education ( Devitt et al., 2020 ; Luengo and Manso, 2020 ; Tartavulea et al., 2020 ; Trujillo-Sáez et al., 2020 ). These studies have concluded the most common use by teachers was to upload materials to a platform ( Tartavulea et al., 2020 ); the most activities were teacher-centered ( Koçoğlu and Tekdal, 2020 ); or the more constructivist the teachers are, the more ICT use is reported for confined education ( Luengo and Manso, 2020 ).

However, despite these indications, there has been no study that analyzes the activities and uses of ICT in school during confinement. What learning have teachers prioritized in this period? Has it been more oriented toward verbal, procedural, or attitudinal learning? ( Pozo, in press ). Through what activities, either more constructive or reproductive, have these learnings been promoted? Have the ICT been used to assess the accumulation of information or the global competencies in its management? What variables prompt carrying out one type of activity or another? These are some questions that have guided our research and are reflected in the following specific objectives.

1. Identifying the frequency with which Spanish teachers of primary, and compulsory and non-compulsory secondary education carried out activities using ICT during the pandemic, and how some variables influence this frequency (gender, teaching experience, previous ICT use, educational level, and curriculum subjects).

2. Analyzing the type of learning (reproductive or teacher-centered vs. constructive or student-centered) promoted most frequently by these teachers, as well as the influence of the variables mentioned.

3. Analyzing the types of outcomes (verbal learning, procedural learning, or attitudinal learning), assessment, and social organization promoted by the ICT and the possible influence of the mentioned variables.

4. Investigating if different teaching profiles can be identified in the use of ICT, as well as their relationship with the variables studied.

Regarding objective 1, as the contradictory results reviewed in the Introduction showed, it is difficult to sustain a concrete hypothesis. However, in the case of objective 2, as argued in the Introduction, we expect to find a higher frequency of reproductive activities (or teacher-centered) than constructive (student-centered). Along the same lines, concerning the third objective, we hope to find more activities oriented to verbal learning, reproductive assessment, and individual organization of tasks, with few activities based on cooperation between students. Finally, about objective 4, we hope to identify teacher profiles that differ in the frequency and type of activities proposed to their students and that these profiles are related to some of the demographic variables analyzed in the study.

Materials and Methods

Task and procedure.

To achieve these objectives, we designed a questionnaire on ICT through the Qualtrics software and sent telematically to various networks of teachers and primary and secondary education centers in Spain. For the construction of the questionnaire, we consulted different blogs where teachers shared the activities they were applying during the pandemic. The questionnaire was composed of two parts. In the first one, after participants gave informed consent, they were requested to provide personal and professional information (see Table 2 ). The second part comprised 36 items that described different types of teaching activities. Participants were asked to rate how often they carried them out on a Likert scale (1, Never; 2 Some days per month; 3, Some days per week; and 4, Every day). After the analysis of the methodologies carried out in the Introduction, we considered asking teachers what they were doing in their classrooms was the most accurate procedure to know the true practices they were carrying out. On the one hand, we wanted to avoid the bias of classic questionaries on conceptions that require teachers to express their agreement with some beliefs. On the other hand, the analysis of teachers’ actual practices in their classrooms would require a different, more qualitative work, with a smaller sample size.

As we show in Table 1 , these activities were directed toward reproductive and constructive learning and different types of learning outcomes (verbal, procedural, and attitudinal), assessment (usually called summative and formative assessment), and cooperative activities.

Table 1. Structure and examples of questionnaire items.

Table 2. Characteristics of the sample and variables.

Participants

The participants were primary and secondary education teachers who were working in Spain when they completed the questionnaire. In Spain, compulsory education is from 6 to 16 years. In primary education (6–12 years), a single generalist teacher imparts most of the subjects, while specialist teachers (music, physical education, foreign language, etc.) only attend class during the hours of their subjects. After compulsory secondary education, there is a non-compulsory secondary education (16–18 years old) that is taught in the same centers as compulsory secondary education and by the same teachers.

We used directories of emails from public, private schools, and high schools of Spain to get in contact with the participants. Besides, to encourage participation, we raffled 75 euros for the purchase of teaching materials among all participants. We collected 1,541 answers. We eliminated 52 of them because they belonged to people who were not teachers of primary or secondary education in Spain. Then, we removed 45 participants who completed the questionnaire in less than 5 min, insufficient time to read and complete it, and we excluded 41 participants who indicated the 3rd (“Some days per week”) or 4th option (“Every day”) in over 80% of the items. We argue this exclusion as it is unlikely that a teacher could carry out such a quantity of activities in the span of a week. The questionnaire has 36 activities, so doing over 80% of items with a frequency of a minimum some days per week implies carrying out almost 29 activities per week. We consider this is not possible in the pertaining virtual class context and noted several contradictions in the answers. Therefore, the final sample had 1,403 teachers (see Table 2 ). Note that the sum of all variables does not reach this total because some values were so unusual that they were not considered in the statistical analyses.

Data Analysis

To ensure the consistency of the questionnaire and the dimensions, a reliability analysis was carried out using Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient. The reliability of the scale was 0.90, the reproductive and constructive scales obtained alphas above 0.75, and the verbal, procedural, attitudinal, assessment, and cooperation dimensions got alphas above 0.65.

The 1, 2, and 3 objectives were analyzed with one and two-factor ANOVA. These factors can be both repeated measures and completely randomized, according to the characteristics of the variable. Besides, we carried out post hoc analysis in which the Tukey or Bonferroni correction was applied depending on whether the ANOVA was 1 or 2 factors, to see the differences between categories in the ANOVA analyses. However, post hoc analyses were only performed on the ANOVA of the two factors when the interaction effects were significant.

Finally, a cluster analysis was implemented to identify different teaching profiles (objective 4). Once identified, we created contingency tables and their corresponding Corrected Typified Residuals (CTR) to know which variables were related to each profile. Finally, we carried out ANOVA to analyze the differences between profiles according to each of the designed dimensions. All the statistical analyses were carried out using SPPS version 26.

The results are written referring to what the teachers were doing to facilitate reading. However, in all cases, we refer to declared activities.

Frequency of Activities Carried Out

Regarding the first objective, teachers performed the activities between Some days per week and Some days per month on average ( M = 2.44, SD = 0.50). However, this frequency varied according to teaching experience, educational level, curriculum subject, and previous ICT use. Gender did not produce differences (see Table 3 ). In the case of teaching experience, according to the post hoc tests, teachers with intermediate experience (from 16 to 25 years) carried out a lower number of activities than novice teachers (5 years or fewer) ( p < 0.05). In turn, teachers who taught children between 6 and 9 years old were also less active than the rest ( p < 0.01). Within primary education, the generalists, who spend more time with the same students, proposed more activities than the specialists ( p < 0.01). In secondary education, the teachers of Spanish language were more active than those of mathematics and physical education ( p < 0.01). Finally, there seems to be a positive linear relationship between previous ICT use and the amount of activity for confined education ( F = 61.66, p < 0.001).

Table 3. Influence of personal and professional variables on the frequency of activities.

Teaching Activities: Reproductive or Constructive?

Nevertheless, we were not so much interested in the total amount of activities carried out as in the type of learning they promoted (reproductive or constructive). For this, we proposed objective 2. The data was overwhelming. They showed much greater use of reproductive ( M = 2.79, SD = 0.50) than constructive ( M = 2.16, SD = 0.60) learning activities ( F = 2,217.91, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.61). This is the largest and most robust effect size in this study; it occurs in all groups and for all variables ( p < 0.001), although to a different degree, as shown in Table 4 .

Table 4. Influence of the different variables on the type of activity.

Post hoc results reveal that novice teachers (5 years or fewer), the most active group according to the previous analysis, performed more reproductive activities than teachers with experience from 16 to 25 years ( p < 0.01), the least active one. However, the most experienced teachers (more than 25 years) executed more constructive activities than those with intermediate experience (from 16 to 25 years) ( p < 0.05). The teachers of children between 6 and 9 years old did less reproductive and constructive activities ( p < 0.05) than the rest of the groups, with significant differences in all cases except in the case of the teachers of non-compulsory secondary education, who stated less reproductive activities than they did.

In secondary education, the mathematics teachers did less constructive activities than those of Spanish language and social sciences ( p < 0.05). In turn, physical education teachers performed less reproductive activities than the rest of their classmates ( p < 0.01).

Finally, the higher the previous ICT the teachers used, the higher the frequencies indicated by them in both reproductive ( F = 33.57, p < 0.001) and constructive activities ( F = 61.61, p < 0.001). Notwithstanding, the size of the observed effect shows greater differences in the case of constructive activities (reproductive, F = 13.94, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.29, vs. constructive, F = 25.60, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.95).

Learning Outcomes, Assessment, and Cooperation Dimensions

The third objective was to determine what kind of learning outcomes resulted from the activities. As we show in Figure 1 , the teachers focused more on verbal and attitudinal learning than on procedural ( F = 100.11, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.07). On the other hand, the mean responses of the assessment tasks were similar to those of verbal learning and attitudinal learning, but the cooperative activities were less frequent than the remainder ( p < 0.001), performed between never and some days per month ( M = 1.78; SD = 0.74). However, as we see in Table 5 , these results are mediated by the effect of some variables.

Figure 1. Average of the frequencies of each type of activity.

Table 5. Influence of different variables on the frequency of activities for each dimension.

Post hoc analyses show that men carried out more activities focused on procedural learning than women ( p < 0.05), who in turn promoted more activities related to attitudinal learning ( p < 0.001). Men also carried out more cooperation activities than women ( p < 0.01), but there were no differences among them in the Assessment activities. However, the only effect related to teaching experience shows that less experienced teachers (5 years or fewer) carried out more assessment activities than teachers with intermediate experience (from 16 to 25 years) ( p < 0.05).

The teachers of the youngest children (6–9 years old) carried out more activities aimed at attitudinal learning ( p < 0.05) and fewer at procedural learning ( p < 0.01) than the rest of the teachers. Interestingly, the activities aimed at attitudinal learning decreased progressively when the educational level increased, with differences between the upper level of primary education (9–12 years) and secondary education ( p < 0.001). At the same time, the older the students were, the more verbal learning activities they performed, with differences between the first years of primary education (6–9 years) and secondary education (12–18) ( p < 0.05). Besides, the assessment and cooperation activities became more frequent as the educational levels advanced, with differences in both cases between the teachers of the first years of primary education ( p < 0.01) and the last years of primary education and non-compulsory secondary education ( p < 0.05).

In secondary education, verbal learning predominates in almost every subject. However, the Spanish language and foreign language teachers also carried out many activities aimed at attitudinal learning. Only in technology were more activities aimed at procedural learning executed compared to the others ( p < 0.05). At the same time, the mathematics teachers stand out for their little use of cooperation activities. To sum up, the activities aimed at verbal learning increase their frequency when the educational level increases, while attitudinal learning decreases. Nevertheless, the characteristics of each subject have some influence on the increases among educational levels. The cooperation activities also increase, although their frequency is still small. Finally, again, the higher the previous ICT use, the higher the frequency of all activities during the pandemic ( p < 0.001).

But all these differences become more meaningful when we look at the type of learning (reproductive or constructive) that is promoted by these activities. Again, as we see in Figure 2 , there is a considerable difference between the reproductive and constructive activities regardless of the dimension involved (see Table 6 ), a trend also confirmed by the low frequency of cooperation activities that, by their nature, promote constructive learning. It is remarkable that the highest differences between both scales happen in attitudinal learning. In fact, the most frequent activities in the questionnaire involved attitudinal reproductive learning.

Figure 2. Average of the reproductive and constructive activities in each dimension.

Table 6. Differences between reproductive and constructive activities in the dimensions.

Profiles of Teachers in the Use of ICT

Our final objective was to identify possible profiles in the use of ICT during confined education. For this purpose, we proceeded with a cluster analysis that allowed us to identify different teaching profiles as we showed in Figure 3 . After testing clusters of three centers in which the groups only differed in the number of activities, we executed a four centers cluster, which showed differences in the amount of activity ( F = 2,220.33, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.83) and the mean differences between reproductive and constructive activities ( F = 310.39, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.40).

Figure 3. Frequency of use of reproductive and constructive activities for each teachers’ profile.

• The first profile (“Passive”) was composed of 327 teachers who were characterized by a very low activity (MD = 0.63, SD = 0.02, p < 0.001), essentially reproductive ( M = 2.15, SD = 0.35) and scarcely constructive ( M = 1.52, SD = 0.29).

• The second profile (“Active”) was composed of 424 teachers, was the most numerous. It had a very similar pattern to the previous one, focused mainly on reproductive activities ( M = 2.82, SD = 0.33) rather than constructive ( M = 2.41, SD = 0.21) but with a higher level of activity ( MD = 0.41, SD = 0.02, p < 0.001).

• The third profile (“Reproductive”) was composed of 263 teachers with a similar level of activity to the previous one. However, they have a relatively higher frequency of reproductive activities ( M = 2.93, SD = 0.29) with hardly any constructive activities ( M = 1.82, SD = 0.24).

• The fourth profile (“Interpretative”) which was composed of 389 teachers, was corresponded to the most active teachers. This profile had the smallest differences between reproductive ( M = 3.32, SD = 0.29) and constructive activities ( M = 3.04, SD = 0.31), ( MD = 0.29, SD = 0.02, p < 0.001). According to the terminology used in the introduction, we have called it Interpretative because it integrated both types of activities.

Among the different profiles, we found systematic differences in the dimensions and types of learning. In fact, all differences among profiles were significant ( p < 0.01) except between the Active and Reproductive profiles in verbal, procedural, and attitudinal reproductive learning. There were also no differences between the Passive and Reproductive profiles in cooperative activities because of their low frequency in both groups. On the other hand, teachers in the Interpretive profile carried out more activities in all dimensions than the rest of the groups; the teachers of the Passive profile did fewer tasks than the others (except in the cases already indicated) and finally, the other two profiles maintained an intermediate level of activity, with the difference that the teachers of the Reproductive profile focused almost exclusively on reproductive activities as we see in Figure 4 .

Figure 4. Use of each dimension for each teachers’ profile.

The distribution of teachers in each of the four profiles varied depending on educational level (χ 2 = 29.57, p < 0.001), primary curriculum subjects (χ 2 = 60.97, p < 0.001), secondary curriculum subjects (χ 2 = 60.97, p < 0.001), and previous ICT use (χ 2 = 77.46, p < 0.001). We did not find any relationship with gender or teaching experience, the variables with the least influence in the study.

As we see in Table 7 , the first profile or Passive was over-represented by teachers of children aged 6–9, and teachers of non-compulsory secondary education were under-represented. Between the primary education teachers, specialists predominated, and there were practically no generalist teachers. The only secondary education teachers that appeared in this profile were physical education ones. Finally, there is a significant number of teachers who had not used ICT with their students before the confinement, and there was hardly any representation of those who had most used them.

Table 7. Variables related to each of the profiles.

The second or Active profile is distributed homogeneously way among the different educational levels. It is predominantly formed by secondary education teachers of Spanish language and social sciences. In the third or Reproductive profile, secondary education teachers who taught mathematics, and those who had never used ITC in the classroom were over-represented.

The fourth or Interpretative profile, characterized by integrating reproductive and constructive activities, had hardly any teachers of children from 6 to 9 years old nor specialist teachers of primary education, unlike the first profile. However, this profile included a high number of generalist teachers of primary education and Spanish language teachers of secondary education. On the other hand, it had a few mathematics teachers from secondary education who were over-represented in the Reproductive profile. Finally, the teachers who used ICT more before confinement were also over-represented, and there were hardly any teachers who had not used them.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this study, taking advantage of the critical incident caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we analyzed the type of activities with ICT that primary and secondary education teachers proposed to their students. Our purpose was to check if, in this context, ICT contributed to promoting more constructive ways of teaching. The most dominant effect of the results, related to the second aim of the study, showed that teachers carried out significantly more activities oriented to reproductive learning than constructive ones. In other words, they preferred teacher-centered activities to student-centered ones. This effect was very robust ( F = 2,217.91, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.61), and it was manifested in all dimensions of the questionnaire, was maintained when we introduced any of the variables studied and was presented in all profiles.

On the other hand, our work has revealed other variables that influence the frequency of ICT use. Thus, we have found that teachers who attend to young children use them less than teachers of older students. These data coincide with those found in other works ( Gorder, 2008 ; Vanderlinde et al., 2010 ) and are probably related to the characteristics of the teaching activity itself. It is undoubtedly more arduous to use ICT in class with young children than with adolescents or adults. We have also found a greater frequency of use by generalists than specialists because the former teach more hours in the same class and consequently have more responsibilities with their students. Both the specialists and the teachers of the youngest children were overrepresented in the Passive profile. Nevertheless, the influence of the subjects taught in compulsory and non-compulsory secondary education is not so clear. We found there was hardly any influence of gender on different results. Data from other studies show that the influence of this variable is quite unstable and varies among studies ( Mathews and Guarino, 2000 ; Gorder, 2008 ; Law and Chow, 2008 ). However, teaching experience seems to influence in another way: whereas less experienced teachers are more reproductive, the more experienced teachers present fewer differences between reproductive and constructive activities. It should be noted that in other studies this variable has also shown ambiguous results ( Mathews and Guarino, 2000 ; Baek et al., 2008 ; Gorder, 2008 ; Inan and Lowther, 2010 ).

The third objective analyzed the learning outcomes that the activities provided, the type of assessment used, and the cooperation that activities promoted. In general, we have seen that teachers performed more verbal and attitudinal learning than procedural. However, in these cases (as well as in the assessment), activities were aimed at reproductive instead of constructive learning. The least frequent activities were cooperative (between never and some days per month), which is consistent with the importance given to reproduction. The salience of verbal learning increased as the higher the educational level was and, in the same way, the attitudinal activities decreased, with hardly any change in the procedural ones.

Considering that these data were collected in Spain when there were strict confinement and social isolation, we would emphasize that the activities related to attitudes were directed at maintaining classroom control in all groups and profiles (but outside the classroom) whereas there was much less frequency of activities focused on getting the ability to managing student attitudes, behavior or self-control during that situation of confinement. This difference suggests that teachers were more concerned about controlling their students’ study habits.

Regarding our fourth objective, we find four profiles of teachers (Passive, Active, Reproductive, and Interpretative). The first two differed only in the amount of total activity performed, while the Reproductive one was characterized by almost exclusively executing reproductive learning activities. Although, as in the previous groups, the Interpretative teachers carried out many reproductive activities, they also carried out constructive activities with considerable frequency. Teachers of children from 3 to 6 years, for whom engaging in the virtual activity is more complicated, abounded in the Passive profile. However, in the Reproductive profile, teachers of mathematics of secondary education predominated. In contrast, in the Interpretative profile, in which there were fewer differences between reproductive and constructive activities, generalists of primary education and teachers of social and natural sciences and Spanish language of secondary education were over-represented. But principally, this profile was over-represented by teachers who had previously used ICT.

In conclusion, it seems the teachers in this study use ICT essentially for presenting different kinds of information ( Tondeur et al., 2008b ) and do not use them as learning tools that help students to build, manage, and develop their knowledge. On the other hand, this study seems to show that teachers’ beliefs are much closer to the reproductive pole than to the constructive one. In this study, beliefs have been inferred through the frequency with which the teachers stated they carried out predetermined activities. In our view, the description of the activities was much closer to the actual practices and theories of the teachers than the results that questionnaires on beliefs could provide us with. For this reason, we expect the mismatch between theories and practices ( Liu, 2011 ; Fives and Buehl, 2012 ; Tsai and Chai, 2012 ; Mama and Hennessy, 2013 ; Ertmer et al., 2015 ; de Aldama and Pozo, 2016 ) was smaller and helped us to discover the true beliefs of teachers when they teach.

We could therefore conclude that, despite all the educational possibilities and all the promises of change in teaching that ICT raise ( Jaffee, 1997 ; Collins and Halverson, 2009 ), teachers have only perceived these tools as informative support. It seems the critical incident caused by the pandemic has not been resolved in the short-term with a change in favor of student-centered activities and content-centered ones continue predominating. Therefore, our data are more consistent with the results of some international mass studies ( Biagi and Loi, 2013 ; OECD, 2015 ) than with the experimental works that analyze how teachers who are previously chosen use ICT ( Tamim et al., 2011 ; Alrasheedi et al., 2015 ; Sung et al., 2015 ; Clark et al., 2016 ; Xie et al., 2018 ; Mayer, 2019 ). However, there is no doubt that the pandemic has contributed to familiarizing teachers with ICT. In our results, previous use of ICT was the variable that produced the most systematic differences in both the frequency of proposed reproductive and constructive activities. In this sense, perhaps the pandemic may have contributed to an increase in teachers’ experience in two of the three educational computer uses described by Tondeur et al. (2008a) : basic computer skills and use of computers as an information tool. Maybe, this fact could contribute in the future to using the third one, the use of ICT as learning tools. However, there are undoubtedly other variables related to first-order and second-order barriers (beliefs) or teacher training with ICT that influence this possibility of change.

In summary, our work shows that activities carried out through ICT during confined schooling were more teacher-centered than student-centered and hardly promoted the 21st-century skills, that digital technologies should facilitate ( Ertmer et al., 2015 ). However, the data also show that the greater the stated previous use of ICT, the greater and more constructive its use was reported for the pandemic. Previous use of ICTs is related not only to beliefs about their usefulness but also to specific training to master these tools and to use them in a versatile manner, adapted to different purposes or objectives. It seems clear that teacher training should be promoted not only to encourage more frequent use of ICT but also to change conceptions toward them to promote constructive learning. In this sense, the forced use of ICT because of COVID-19 will only encourage this change if we support teachers with adequate resources and activities which facilitate reflection on their use.

However, we should consider that one limitation of this study is that the practices analyzed were those declared by the teachers. It would be necessary to complete this study with an analysis of the practices that the teachers really applied and to analyze their relationship with their conceptions of learning and teaching. In fact, we are currently analyzing the actual practices of a sub-sample of the teachers who filled out the questionnaire, taking the profiles found in this work as the independent variable. In future research, it would be necessary to analyze the relationship between student learning and these different teaching practices.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Autonomous University of Madrid. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

J-IP: funding acquisition, project administration, conceptualiza-tion, methodology, supervision, writing – original draft, and writing – review and editing. M-PE: funding acquisition, conceptualization, methodology, validation, writing – original draft, and writing – review and editing. BC: conceptualization, methodology, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, software, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing, and visualization. DLS: conceptualization, methodology, and writing – review and editing. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This work was supported by the Ministry of Innovation and Science of Spain (EDU2017-82243-C2-1-R).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our colleagues from SEIACE for their participation in the item dimension task. We would also like to thank Ricardo Olmos for sharing his statistical knowledge with us. Finally, we would like to appreciate Krystyna Sleziaka her support with the translation of this paper.

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Keywords : digital technologies uses, constructive learning, reproductive learning, learning and teaching conceptions, learning outcomes, COVID-19

Citation: Pozo J-I, Pérez Echeverría M-P, Cabellos B and Sánchez DL (2021) Teaching and Learning in Times of COVID-19: Uses of Digital Technologies During School Lockdowns. Front. Psychol. 12:656776. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.656776

Received: 21 January 2021; Accepted: 07 April 2021; Published: 29 April 2021.

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Copyright © 2021 Pozo, Pérez Echeverría, Cabellos and Sánchez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Juan-Ignacio Pozo, [email protected]

† These authors have contributed equally to this work and share first authorship

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New research finds that pandemic learning loss impacted whole communities, regardless of student race or income.

Analysis of prior decade shows that learning loss will become permanent if schools and parents do not expand learning time this summer and next year

(May 11, 2023) – Today, The Education Recovery Scorecard , a collaboration with researchers at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University (CEPR) and Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project, released 12 new state reports and a research brief to provide the most comprehensive picture yet of how the pandemic affected student learning. Building on their previous work, their findings reveal how school closures and local conditions exacerbated inequality between communities — and how little time school leaders have to help students catch up.

The research team reviewed data from 8,000 communities in 40 states and Washington, D.C., including 2022 NAEP scores and Spring 2022 assessments, COVID death rates, voting rates and trust in government, patterns of social activity and survey data from Facebook/Meta on family activities and mental health during the pandemic.

They found that where children lived during the pandemic mattered more to their academic progress than their family background, income, or internet speed.  Moreover, after studying instances where test scores rose or fell in the decade before the pandemic, the researchers found that the impacts lingered for years. 

“Children have resumed learning, but largely at the same pace as before the pandemic. There’s no hurrying up teaching fractions or the Pythagorean theorem,” said CEPR faculty director Thomas Kane. “The hardest hit communities—like Richmond, VA, St. Louis, MO, and New Haven, CT, where students fell behind by more than 1.5 years in math—would have to teach 150 percent of a typical year’s worth of material for three years in a row—just to catch up. That is simply not going to happen without a major increase in instructional time.  Any district that lost more than a year of learning should be required to revisit their recovery plans and add instructional time—summer school, extended school year, tutoring, etc.—so that students are made whole. ”

“It’s not readily visible to parents when their children have fallen behind earlier cohorts, but the data from 7,800 school districts show clearly that this is the case,” said Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality, Stanford Graduate School of Education. “The educational impacts of the pandemic were not only historically large, but were disproportionately visited on communities with many low-income and minority students. Our research shows that schools were far from the only cause of decreased learning—the pandemic affected children through many ways – but they are the institution best suited to remedy the unequal impacts of the pandemic.”

The new research includes:

• A research brief that offers insights into why students in some communities fared worse than others.
• An update to the Education Recovery Scorecard, including data from 12 additional states whose 2022 scores were not available in October. The project now includes a district-level view of the pandemic’s effects in 40 states (plus DC).
• A new interactive map  that highlights examples of inequity between neighboring school districts.

Among the key findings:

• Within the typical school district, the declines in test scores were similar for all groups of students, rich and poor, white, Black, Hispanic. And the extent to which schools were closed appears to have had the same effect on all students in a community, regardless of income or race.
• Test scores declined more in places where the COVID death rate was higher, in communities where adults reported feeling more depression and anxiety during the pandemic, and where daily routines of families were most significantly restricted. This is true even in places where schools closed only very briefly at the start of the pandemic.
• Test score declines were smaller in communities with high voting rates and high Census response rates—indicators of what sociologists call “institutional trust.” Moreover, remote learning was less harmful in such places. Living in a community where more people trusted the government appears to have been an asset to children during the pandemic.
• The average U.S. public school student in grades 3-8 lost the equivalent of a half year of learning in math and a quarter of a year in reading.

The researchers also looked at data from the decade prior to the pandemic to see how students bounced back after significant learning loss due to disruption in their schooling. The evidence shows that schools do not naturally bounce back: Affected students recovered 20-30% of the lost ground in the first year, but then made no further recovery in the subsequent 3-4 years.  

“Schools were not the sole cause of achievement losses,” Kane said. “Nor will they be the sole solution. As enticing as it might be to get back to normal, doing so will just leave the devastating increase in inequality caused by the pandemic in place.   We must create learning opportunities for students outside of the normal school calendar, by adding academic content to summer camps and after-school programs and adding an optional 13th year of schooling.”

The Education Recovery Scorecard is supported by funds from Citadel founder and CEO Kenneth C. Griffin , Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Walton Family Foundation.

About the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University The Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, seeks to transform education through quality research and evidence. CEPR and its partners believe all students will learn and thrive when education leaders make decisions using facts and findings, rather than untested assumptions. Learn more at cepr.harvard.edu.

Contact: Jeff Frantz, [email protected] , 614-204-7438 (mobile)

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Students’ online learning challenges during the pandemic and how they cope with them: The case of the Philippines

Jessie s. barrot.

College of Education, Arts and Sciences, National University, Manila, Philippines

Ian I. Llenares

Leo s. del rosario, associated data.

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Recently, the education system has faced an unprecedented health crisis that has shaken up its foundation. Given today’s uncertainties, it is vital to gain a nuanced understanding of students’ online learning experience in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although many studies have investigated this area, limited information is available regarding the challenges and the specific strategies that students employ to overcome them. Thus, this study attempts to fill in the void. Using a mixed-methods approach, the findings revealed that the online learning challenges of college students varied in terms of type and extent. Their greatest challenge was linked to their learning environment at home, while their least challenge was technological literacy and competency. The findings further revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic had the greatest impact on the quality of the learning experience and students’ mental health. In terms of strategies employed by students, the most frequently used were resource management and utilization, help-seeking, technical aptitude enhancement, time management, and learning environment control. Implications for classroom practice, policy-making, and future research are discussed.

Introduction

Since the 1990s, the world has seen significant changes in the landscape of education as a result of the ever-expanding influence of technology. One such development is the adoption of online learning across different learning contexts, whether formal or informal, academic and non-academic, and residential or remotely. We began to witness schools, teachers, and students increasingly adopt e-learning technologies that allow teachers to deliver instruction interactively, share resources seamlessly, and facilitate student collaboration and interaction (Elaish et al., 2019 ; Garcia et al., 2018 ). Although the efficacy of online learning has long been acknowledged by the education community (Barrot, 2020 , 2021 ; Cavanaugh et al., 2009 ; Kebritchi et al., 2017 ; Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006 ; Wallace, 2003 ), evidence on the challenges in its implementation continues to build up (e.g., Boelens et al., 2017 ; Rasheed et al., 2020 ).

Recently, the education system has faced an unprecedented health crisis (i.e., COVID-19 pandemic) that has shaken up its foundation. Thus, various governments across the globe have launched a crisis response to mitigate the adverse impact of the pandemic on education. This response includes, but is not limited to, curriculum revisions, provision for technological resources and infrastructure, shifts in the academic calendar, and policies on instructional delivery and assessment. Inevitably, these developments compelled educational institutions to migrate to full online learning until face-to-face instruction is allowed. The current circumstance is unique as it could aggravate the challenges experienced during online learning due to restrictions in movement and health protocols (Gonzales et al., 2020 ; Kapasia et al., 2020 ). Given today’s uncertainties, it is vital to gain a nuanced understanding of students’ online learning experience in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, many studies have investigated this area with a focus on students’ mental health (Copeland et al., 2021 ; Fawaz et al., 2021 ), home learning (Suryaman et al., 2020 ), self-regulation (Carter et al., 2020 ), virtual learning environment (Almaiah et al., 2020 ; Hew et al., 2020 ; Tang et al., 2020 ), and students’ overall learning experience (e.g., Adarkwah, 2021 ; Day et al., 2021 ; Khalil et al., 2020 ; Singh et al., 2020 ). There are two key differences that set the current study apart from the previous studies. First, it sheds light on the direct impact of the pandemic on the challenges that students experience in an online learning space. Second, the current study explores students’ coping strategies in this new learning setup. Addressing these areas would shed light on the extent of challenges that students experience in a full online learning space, particularly within the context of the pandemic. Meanwhile, our nuanced understanding of the strategies that students use to overcome their challenges would provide relevant information to school administrators and teachers to better support the online learning needs of students. This information would also be critical in revisiting the typology of strategies in an online learning environment.

Literature review

Education and the covid-19 pandemic.

In December 2019, an outbreak of a novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19, occurred in China and has spread rapidly across the globe within a few months. COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a new strain of coronavirus that attacks the respiratory system (World Health Organization, 2020 ). As of January 2021, COVID-19 has infected 94 million people and has caused 2 million deaths in 191 countries and territories (John Hopkins University, 2021 ). This pandemic has created a massive disruption of the educational systems, affecting over 1.5 billion students. It has forced the government to cancel national examinations and the schools to temporarily close, cease face-to-face instruction, and strictly observe physical distancing. These events have sparked the digital transformation of higher education and challenged its ability to respond promptly and effectively. Schools adopted relevant technologies, prepared learning and staff resources, set systems and infrastructure, established new teaching protocols, and adjusted their curricula. However, the transition was smooth for some schools but rough for others, particularly those from developing countries with limited infrastructure (Pham & Nguyen, 2020 ; Simbulan, 2020 ).

Inevitably, schools and other learning spaces were forced to migrate to full online learning as the world continues the battle to control the vicious spread of the virus. Online learning refers to a learning environment that uses the Internet and other technological devices and tools for synchronous and asynchronous instructional delivery and management of academic programs (Usher & Barak, 2020 ; Huang, 2019 ). Synchronous online learning involves real-time interactions between the teacher and the students, while asynchronous online learning occurs without a strict schedule for different students (Singh & Thurman, 2019 ). Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning has taken the status of interim remote teaching that serves as a response to an exigency. However, the migration to a new learning space has faced several major concerns relating to policy, pedagogy, logistics, socioeconomic factors, technology, and psychosocial factors (Donitsa-Schmidt & Ramot, 2020 ; Khalil et al., 2020 ; Varea & González-Calvo, 2020 ). With reference to policies, government education agencies and schools scrambled to create fool-proof policies on governance structure, teacher management, and student management. Teachers, who were used to conventional teaching delivery, were also obliged to embrace technology despite their lack of technological literacy. To address this problem, online learning webinars and peer support systems were launched. On the part of the students, dropout rates increased due to economic, psychological, and academic reasons. Academically, although it is virtually possible for students to learn anything online, learning may perhaps be less than optimal, especially in courses that require face-to-face contact and direct interactions (Franchi, 2020 ).

Related studies

Recently, there has been an explosion of studies relating to the new normal in education. While many focused on national policies, professional development, and curriculum, others zeroed in on the specific learning experience of students during the pandemic. Among these are Copeland et al. ( 2021 ) and Fawaz et al. ( 2021 ) who examined the impact of COVID-19 on college students’ mental health and their coping mechanisms. Copeland et al. ( 2021 ) reported that the pandemic adversely affected students’ behavioral and emotional functioning, particularly attention and externalizing problems (i.e., mood and wellness behavior), which were caused by isolation, economic/health effects, and uncertainties. In Fawaz et al.’s ( 2021 ) study, students raised their concerns on learning and evaluation methods, overwhelming task load, technical difficulties, and confinement. To cope with these problems, students actively dealt with the situation by seeking help from their teachers and relatives and engaging in recreational activities. These active-oriented coping mechanisms of students were aligned with Carter et al.’s ( 2020 ), who explored students’ self-regulation strategies.

In another study, Tang et al. ( 2020 ) examined the efficacy of different online teaching modes among engineering students. Using a questionnaire, the results revealed that students were dissatisfied with online learning in general, particularly in the aspect of communication and question-and-answer modes. Nonetheless, the combined model of online teaching with flipped classrooms improved students’ attention, academic performance, and course evaluation. A parallel study was undertaken by Hew et al. ( 2020 ), who transformed conventional flipped classrooms into fully online flipped classes through a cloud-based video conferencing app. Their findings suggested that these two types of learning environments were equally effective. They also offered ways on how to effectively adopt videoconferencing-assisted online flipped classrooms. Unlike the two studies, Suryaman et al. ( 2020 ) looked into how learning occurred at home during the pandemic. Their findings showed that students faced many obstacles in a home learning environment, such as lack of mastery of technology, high Internet cost, and limited interaction/socialization between and among students. In a related study, Kapasia et al. ( 2020 ) investigated how lockdown impacts students’ learning performance. Their findings revealed that the lockdown made significant disruptions in students’ learning experience. The students also reported some challenges that they faced during their online classes. These include anxiety, depression, poor Internet service, and unfavorable home learning environment, which were aggravated when students are marginalized and from remote areas. Contrary to Kapasia et al.’s ( 2020 ) findings, Gonzales et al. ( 2020 ) found that confinement of students during the pandemic had significant positive effects on their performance. They attributed these results to students’ continuous use of learning strategies which, in turn, improved their learning efficiency.

Finally, there are those that focused on students’ overall online learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. One such study was that of Singh et al. ( 2020 ), who examined students’ experience during the COVID-19 pandemic using a quantitative descriptive approach. Their findings indicated that students appreciated the use of online learning during the pandemic. However, half of them believed that the traditional classroom setting was more effective than the online learning platform. Methodologically, the researchers acknowledge that the quantitative nature of their study restricts a deeper interpretation of the findings. Unlike the above study, Khalil et al. ( 2020 ) qualitatively explored the efficacy of synchronized online learning in a medical school in Saudi Arabia. The results indicated that students generally perceive synchronous online learning positively, particularly in terms of time management and efficacy. However, they also reported technical (internet connectivity and poor utility of tools), methodological (content delivery), and behavioral (individual personality) challenges. Their findings also highlighted the failure of the online learning environment to address the needs of courses that require hands-on practice despite efforts to adopt virtual laboratories. In a parallel study, Adarkwah ( 2021 ) examined students’ online learning experience during the pandemic using a narrative inquiry approach. The findings indicated that Ghanaian students considered online learning as ineffective due to several challenges that they encountered. Among these were lack of social interaction among students, poor communication, lack of ICT resources, and poor learning outcomes. More recently, Day et al. ( 2021 ) examined the immediate impact of COVID-19 on students’ learning experience. Evidence from six institutions across three countries revealed some positive experiences and pre-existing inequities. Among the reported challenges are lack of appropriate devices, poor learning space at home, stress among students, and lack of fieldwork and access to laboratories.

Although there are few studies that report the online learning challenges that higher education students experience during the pandemic, limited information is available regarding the specific strategies that they use to overcome them. It is in this context that the current study was undertaken. This mixed-methods study investigates students’ online learning experience in higher education. Specifically, the following research questions are addressed: (1) What is the extent of challenges that students experience in an online learning environment? (2) How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact the online learning challenges that students experience? (3) What strategies did students use to overcome the challenges?

Conceptual framework

The typology of challenges examined in this study is largely based on Rasheed et al.’s ( 2020 ) review of students’ experience in an online learning environment. These challenges are grouped into five general clusters, namely self-regulation (SRC), technological literacy and competency (TLCC), student isolation (SIC), technological sufficiency (TSC), and technological complexity (TCC) challenges (Rasheed et al., 2020 , p. 5). SRC refers to a set of behavior by which students exercise control over their emotions, actions, and thoughts to achieve learning objectives. TLCC relates to a set of challenges about students’ ability to effectively use technology for learning purposes. SIC relates to the emotional discomfort that students experience as a result of being lonely and secluded from their peers. TSC refers to a set of challenges that students experience when accessing available online technologies for learning. Finally, there is TCC which involves challenges that students experience when exposed to complex and over-sufficient technologies for online learning.

To extend Rasheed et al. ( 2020 ) categories and to cover other potential challenges during online classes, two more clusters were added, namely learning resource challenges (LRC) and learning environment challenges (LEC) (Buehler, 2004 ; Recker et al., 2004 ; Seplaki et al., 2014 ; Xue et al., 2020 ). LRC refers to a set of challenges that students face relating to their use of library resources and instructional materials, whereas LEC is a set of challenges that students experience related to the condition of their learning space that shapes their learning experiences, beliefs, and attitudes. Since learning environment at home and learning resources available to students has been reported to significantly impact the quality of learning and their achievement of learning outcomes (Drane et al., 2020 ; Suryaman et al., 2020 ), the inclusion of LRC and LEC would allow us to capture other important challenges that students experience during the pandemic, particularly those from developing regions. This comprehensive list would provide us a clearer and detailed picture of students’ experiences when engaged in online learning in an emergency. Given the restrictions in mobility at macro and micro levels during the pandemic, it is also expected that such conditions would aggravate these challenges. Therefore, this paper intends to understand these challenges from students’ perspectives since they are the ones that are ultimately impacted when the issue is about the learning experience. We also seek to explore areas that provide inconclusive findings, thereby setting the path for future research.

Material and methods

The present study adopted a descriptive, mixed-methods approach to address the research questions. This approach allowed the researchers to collect complex data about students’ experience in an online learning environment and to clearly understand the phenomena from their perspective.

Participants

This study involved 200 (66 male and 134 female) students from a private higher education institution in the Philippines. These participants were Psychology, Physical Education, and Sports Management majors whose ages ranged from 17 to 25 ( x ̅  = 19.81; SD  = 1.80). The students have been engaged in online learning for at least two terms in both synchronous and asynchronous modes. The students belonged to low- and middle-income groups but were equipped with the basic online learning equipment (e.g., computer, headset, speakers) and computer skills necessary for their participation in online classes. Table ​ Table1 1 shows the primary and secondary platforms that students used during their online classes. The primary platforms are those that are formally adopted by teachers and students in a structured academic context, whereas the secondary platforms are those that are informally and spontaneously used by students and teachers for informal learning and to supplement instructional delivery. Note that almost all students identified MS Teams as their primary platform because it is the official learning management system of the university.

Participants’ Online Learning Platforms

Informed consent was sought from the participants prior to their involvement. Before students signed the informed consent form, they were oriented about the objectives of the study and the extent of their involvement. They were also briefed about the confidentiality of information, their anonymity, and their right to refuse to participate in the investigation. Finally, the participants were informed that they would incur no additional cost from their participation.

Instrument and data collection

The data were collected using a retrospective self-report questionnaire and a focused group discussion (FGD). A self-report questionnaire was considered appropriate because the indicators relate to affective responses and attitude (Araujo et al., 2017 ; Barrot, 2016 ; Spector, 1994 ). Although the participants may tell more than what they know or do in a self-report survey (Matsumoto, 1994 ), this challenge was addressed by explaining to them in detail each of the indicators and using methodological triangulation through FGD. The questionnaire was divided into four sections: (1) participant’s personal information section, (2) the background information on the online learning environment, (3) the rating scale section for the online learning challenges, (4) the open-ended section. The personal information section asked about the students’ personal information (name, school, course, age, and sex), while the background information section explored the online learning mode and platforms (primary and secondary) used in class, and students’ length of engagement in online classes. The rating scale section contained 37 items that relate to SRC (6 items), TLCC (10 items), SIC (4 items), TSC (6 items), TCC (3 items), LRC (4 items), and LEC (4 items). The Likert scale uses six scores (i.e., 5– to a very great extent , 4– to a great extent , 3– to a moderate extent , 2– to some extent , 1– to a small extent , and 0 –not at all/negligible ) assigned to each of the 37 items. Finally, the open-ended questions asked about other challenges that students experienced, the impact of the pandemic on the intensity or extent of the challenges they experienced, and the strategies that the participants employed to overcome the eight different types of challenges during online learning. Two experienced educators and researchers reviewed the questionnaire for clarity, accuracy, and content and face validity. The piloting of the instrument revealed that the tool had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.96).

The FGD protocol contains two major sections: the participants’ background information and the main questions. The background information section asked about the students’ names, age, courses being taken, online learning mode used in class. The items in the main questions section covered questions relating to the students’ overall attitude toward online learning during the pandemic, the reasons for the scores they assigned to each of the challenges they experienced, the impact of the pandemic on students’ challenges, and the strategies they employed to address the challenges. The same experts identified above validated the FGD protocol.

Both the questionnaire and the FGD were conducted online via Google survey and MS Teams, respectively. It took approximately 20 min to complete the questionnaire, while the FGD lasted for about 90 min. Students were allowed to ask for clarification and additional explanations relating to the questionnaire content, FGD, and procedure. Online surveys and interview were used because of the ongoing lockdown in the city. For the purpose of triangulation, 20 (10 from Psychology and 10 from Physical Education and Sports Management) randomly selected students were invited to participate in the FGD. Two separate FGDs were scheduled for each group and were facilitated by researcher 2 and researcher 3, respectively. The interviewers ensured that the participants were comfortable and open to talk freely during the FGD to avoid social desirability biases (Bergen & Labonté, 2020 ). These were done by informing the participants that there are no wrong responses and that their identity and responses would be handled with the utmost confidentiality. With the permission of the participants, the FGD was recorded to ensure that all relevant information was accurately captured for transcription and analysis.

Data analysis

To address the research questions, we used both quantitative and qualitative analyses. For the quantitative analysis, we entered all the data into an excel spreadsheet. Then, we computed the mean scores ( M ) and standard deviations ( SD ) to determine the level of challenges experienced by students during online learning. The mean score for each descriptor was interpreted using the following scheme: 4.18 to 5.00 ( to a very great extent ), 3.34 to 4.17 ( to a great extent ), 2.51 to 3.33 ( to a moderate extent ), 1.68 to 2.50 ( to some extent ), 0.84 to 1.67 ( to a small extent ), and 0 to 0.83 ( not at all/negligible ). The equal interval was adopted because it produces more reliable and valid information than other types of scales (Cicchetti et al., 2006 ).

For the qualitative data, we analyzed the students’ responses in the open-ended questions and the transcribed FGD using the predetermined categories in the conceptual framework. Specifically, we used multilevel coding in classifying the codes from the transcripts (Birks & Mills, 2011 ). To do this, we identified the relevant codes from the responses of the participants and categorized these codes based on the similarities or relatedness of their properties and dimensions. Then, we performed a constant comparative and progressive analysis of cases to allow the initially identified subcategories to emerge and take shape. To ensure the reliability of the analysis, two coders independently analyzed the qualitative data. Both coders familiarize themselves with the purpose, research questions, research method, and codes and coding scheme of the study. They also had a calibration session and discussed ways on how they could consistently analyze the qualitative data. Percent of agreement between the two coders was 86 percent. Any disagreements in the analysis were discussed by the coders until an agreement was achieved.

This study investigated students’ online learning experience in higher education within the context of the pandemic. Specifically, we identified the extent of challenges that students experienced, how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their online learning experience, and the strategies that they used to confront these challenges.

The extent of students’ online learning challenges

Table ​ Table2 2 presents the mean scores and SD for the extent of challenges that students’ experienced during online learning. Overall, the students experienced the identified challenges to a moderate extent ( x ̅  = 2.62, SD  = 1.03) with scores ranging from x ̅  = 1.72 ( to some extent ) to x ̅  = 3.58 ( to a great extent ). More specifically, the greatest challenge that students experienced was related to the learning environment ( x ̅  = 3.49, SD  = 1.27), particularly on distractions at home, limitations in completing the requirements for certain subjects, and difficulties in selecting the learning areas and study schedule. It is, however, found that the least challenge was on technological literacy and competency ( x ̅  = 2.10, SD  = 1.13), particularly on knowledge and training in the use of technology, technological intimidation, and resistance to learning technologies. Other areas that students experienced the least challenge are Internet access under TSC and procrastination under SRC. Nonetheless, nearly half of the students’ responses per indicator rated the challenges they experienced as moderate (14 of the 37 indicators), particularly in TCC ( x ̅  = 2.51, SD  = 1.31), SIC ( x ̅  = 2.77, SD  = 1.34), and LRC ( x ̅  = 2.93, SD  = 1.31).

The Extent of Students’ Challenges during the Interim Online Learning

Out of 200 students, 181 responded to the question about other challenges that they experienced. Most of their responses were already covered by the seven predetermined categories, except for 18 responses related to physical discomfort ( N  = 5) and financial challenges ( N  = 13). For instance, S108 commented that “when it comes to eyes and head, my eyes and head get ache if the session of class was 3 h straight in front of my gadget.” In the same vein, S194 reported that “the long exposure to gadgets especially laptop, resulting in body pain & headaches.” With reference to physical financial challenges, S66 noted that “not all the time I have money to load”, while S121 claimed that “I don't know until when are we going to afford budgeting our money instead of buying essentials.”

Impact of the pandemic on students’ online learning challenges

Another objective of this study was to identify how COVID-19 influenced the online learning challenges that students experienced. As shown in Table ​ Table3, 3 , most of the students’ responses were related to teaching and learning quality ( N  = 86) and anxiety and other mental health issues ( N  = 52). Regarding the adverse impact on teaching and learning quality, most of the comments relate to the lack of preparation for the transition to online platforms (e.g., S23, S64), limited infrastructure (e.g., S13, S65, S99, S117), and poor Internet service (e.g., S3, S9, S17, S41, S65, S99). For the anxiety and mental health issues, most students reported that the anxiety, boredom, sadness, and isolation they experienced had adversely impacted the way they learn (e.g., S11, S130), completing their tasks/activities (e.g., S56, S156), and their motivation to continue studying (e.g., S122, S192). The data also reveal that COVID-19 aggravated the financial difficulties experienced by some students ( N  = 16), consequently affecting their online learning experience. This financial impact mainly revolved around the lack of funding for their online classes as a result of their parents’ unemployment and the high cost of Internet data (e.g., S18, S113, S167). Meanwhile, few concerns were raised in relation to COVID-19’s impact on mobility ( N  = 7) and face-to-face interactions ( N  = 7). For instance, some commented that the lack of face-to-face interaction with her classmates had a detrimental effect on her learning (S46) and socialization skills (S36), while others reported that restrictions in mobility limited their learning experience (S78, S110). Very few comments were related to no effect ( N  = 4) and positive effect ( N  = 2). The above findings suggest the pandemic had additive adverse effects on students’ online learning experience.

Summary of students’ responses on the impact of COVID-19 on their online learning experience

Students’ strategies to overcome challenges in an online learning environment

The third objective of this study is to identify the strategies that students employed to overcome the different online learning challenges they experienced. Table ​ Table4 4 presents that the most commonly used strategies used by students were resource management and utilization ( N  = 181), help-seeking ( N  = 155), technical aptitude enhancement ( N  = 122), time management ( N  = 98), and learning environment control ( N  = 73). Not surprisingly, the top two strategies were also the most consistently used across different challenges. However, looking closely at each of the seven challenges, the frequency of using a particular strategy varies. For TSC and LRC, the most frequently used strategy was resource management and utilization ( N  = 52, N  = 89, respectively), whereas technical aptitude enhancement was the students’ most preferred strategy to address TLCC ( N  = 77) and TCC ( N  = 38). In the case of SRC, SIC, and LEC, the most frequently employed strategies were time management ( N  = 71), psychological support ( N  = 53), and learning environment control ( N  = 60). In terms of consistency, help-seeking appears to be the most consistent across the different challenges in an online learning environment. Table ​ Table4 4 further reveals that strategies used by students within a specific type of challenge vary.

Students’ Strategies to Overcome Online Learning Challenges

Discussion and conclusions

The current study explores the challenges that students experienced in an online learning environment and how the pandemic impacted their online learning experience. The findings revealed that the online learning challenges of students varied in terms of type and extent. Their greatest challenge was linked to their learning environment at home, while their least challenge was technological literacy and competency. Based on the students’ responses, their challenges were also found to be aggravated by the pandemic, especially in terms of quality of learning experience, mental health, finances, interaction, and mobility. With reference to previous studies (i.e., Adarkwah, 2021 ; Copeland et al., 2021 ; Day et al., 2021 ; Fawaz et al., 2021 ; Kapasia et al., 2020 ; Khalil et al., 2020 ; Singh et al., 2020 ), the current study has complemented their findings on the pedagogical, logistical, socioeconomic, technological, and psychosocial online learning challenges that students experience within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, this study extended previous studies and our understanding of students’ online learning experience by identifying both the presence and extent of online learning challenges and by shedding light on the specific strategies they employed to overcome them.

Overall findings indicate that the extent of challenges and strategies varied from one student to another. Hence, they should be viewed as a consequence of interaction several many factors. Students’ responses suggest that their online learning challenges and strategies were mediated by the resources available to them, their interaction with their teachers and peers, and the school’s existing policies and guidelines for online learning. In the context of the pandemic, the imposed lockdowns and students’ socioeconomic condition aggravated the challenges that students experience.

While most studies revealed that technology use and competency were the most common challenges that students face during the online classes (see Rasheed et al., 2020 ), the case is a bit different in developing countries in times of pandemic. As the findings have shown, the learning environment is the greatest challenge that students needed to hurdle, particularly distractions at home (e.g., noise) and limitations in learning space and facilities. This data suggests that online learning challenges during the pandemic somehow vary from the typical challenges that students experience in a pre-pandemic online learning environment. One possible explanation for this result is that restriction in mobility may have aggravated this challenge since they could not go to the school or other learning spaces beyond the vicinity of their respective houses. As shown in the data, the imposition of lockdown restricted students’ learning experience (e.g., internship and laboratory experiments), limited their interaction with peers and teachers, caused depression, stress, and anxiety among students, and depleted the financial resources of those who belong to lower-income group. All of these adversely impacted students’ learning experience. This finding complemented earlier reports on the adverse impact of lockdown on students’ learning experience and the challenges posed by the home learning environment (e.g., Day et al., 2021 ; Kapasia et al., 2020 ). Nonetheless, further studies are required to validate the impact of restrictions on mobility on students’ online learning experience. The second reason that may explain the findings relates to students’ socioeconomic profile. Consistent with the findings of Adarkwah ( 2021 ) and Day et al. ( 2021 ), the current study reveals that the pandemic somehow exposed the many inequities in the educational systems within and across countries. In the case of a developing country, families from lower socioeconomic strata (as in the case of the students in this study) have limited learning space at home, access to quality Internet service, and online learning resources. This is the reason the learning environment and learning resources recorded the highest level of challenges. The socioeconomic profile of the students (i.e., low and middle-income group) is the same reason financial problems frequently surfaced from their responses. These students frequently linked the lack of financial resources to their access to the Internet, educational materials, and equipment necessary for online learning. Therefore, caution should be made when interpreting and extending the findings of this study to other contexts, particularly those from higher socioeconomic strata.

Among all the different online learning challenges, the students experienced the least challenge on technological literacy and competency. This is not surprising considering a plethora of research confirming Gen Z students’ (born since 1996) high technological and digital literacy (Barrot, 2018 ; Ng, 2012 ; Roblek et al., 2019 ). Regarding the impact of COVID-19 on students’ online learning experience, the findings reveal that teaching and learning quality and students’ mental health were the most affected. The anxiety that students experienced does not only come from the threats of COVID-19 itself but also from social and physical restrictions, unfamiliarity with new learning platforms, technical issues, and concerns about financial resources. These findings are consistent with that of Copeland et al. ( 2021 ) and Fawaz et al. ( 2021 ), who reported the adverse effects of the pandemic on students’ mental and emotional well-being. This data highlights the need to provide serious attention to the mediating effects of mental health, restrictions in mobility, and preparedness in delivering online learning.

Nonetheless, students employed a variety of strategies to overcome the challenges they faced during online learning. For instance, to address the home learning environment problems, students talked to their family (e.g., S12, S24), transferred to a quieter place (e.g., S7, S 26), studied at late night where all family members are sleeping already (e.g., S51), and consulted with their classmates and teachers (e.g., S3, S9, S156, S193). To overcome the challenges in learning resources, students used the Internet (e.g., S20, S27, S54, S91), joined Facebook groups that share free resources (e.g., S5), asked help from family members (e.g., S16), used resources available at home (e.g., S32), and consulted with the teachers (e.g., S124). The varying strategies of students confirmed earlier reports on the active orientation that students take when faced with academic- and non-academic-related issues in an online learning space (see Fawaz et al., 2021 ). The specific strategies that each student adopted may have been shaped by different factors surrounding him/her, such as available resources, student personality, family structure, relationship with peers and teacher, and aptitude. To expand this study, researchers may further investigate this area and explore how and why different factors shape their use of certain strategies.

Several implications can be drawn from the findings of this study. First, this study highlighted the importance of emergency response capability and readiness of higher education institutions in case another crisis strikes again. Critical areas that need utmost attention include (but not limited to) national and institutional policies, protocol and guidelines, technological infrastructure and resources, instructional delivery, staff development, potential inequalities, and collaboration among key stakeholders (i.e., parents, students, teachers, school leaders, industry, government education agencies, and community). Second, the findings have expanded our understanding of the different challenges that students might confront when we abruptly shift to full online learning, particularly those from countries with limited resources, poor Internet infrastructure, and poor home learning environment. Schools with a similar learning context could use the findings of this study in developing and enhancing their respective learning continuity plans to mitigate the adverse impact of the pandemic. This study would also provide students relevant information needed to reflect on the possible strategies that they may employ to overcome the challenges. These are critical information necessary for effective policymaking, decision-making, and future implementation of online learning. Third, teachers may find the results useful in providing proper interventions to address the reported challenges, particularly in the most critical areas. Finally, the findings provided us a nuanced understanding of the interdependence of learning tools, learners, and learning outcomes within an online learning environment; thus, giving us a multiperspective of hows and whys of a successful migration to full online learning.

Some limitations in this study need to be acknowledged and addressed in future studies. One limitation of this study is that it exclusively focused on students’ perspectives. Future studies may widen the sample by including all other actors taking part in the teaching–learning process. Researchers may go deeper by investigating teachers’ views and experience to have a complete view of the situation and how different elements interact between them or affect the others. Future studies may also identify some teacher-related factors that could influence students’ online learning experience. In the case of students, their age, sex, and degree programs may be examined in relation to the specific challenges and strategies they experience. Although the study involved a relatively large sample size, the participants were limited to college students from a Philippine university. To increase the robustness of the findings, future studies may expand the learning context to K-12 and several higher education institutions from different geographical regions. As a final note, this pandemic has undoubtedly reshaped and pushed the education system to its limits. However, this unprecedented event is the same thing that will make the education system stronger and survive future threats.

Authors’ contributions

Jessie Barrot led the planning, prepared the instrument, wrote the report, and processed and analyzed data. Ian Llenares participated in the planning, fielded the instrument, processed and analyzed data, reviewed the instrument, and contributed to report writing. Leo del Rosario participated in the planning, fielded the instrument, processed and analyzed data, reviewed the instrument, and contributed to report writing.

No funding was received in the conduct of this study.

Availability of data and materials

Declarations.

The study has undergone appropriate ethics protocol.

Informed consent was sought from the participants.

Authors consented the publication. Participants consented to publication as long as confidentiality is observed.

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Digging deeper on the pandemic learning loss

Editor’s note:  On May 11, 2023, the researchers released data for an additional 12 states that were unavailable when this story was published, as well as findings on the influence of additional community factors. The implications of the  new findings  were explored in  an op-ed  in the  New York Times .

On the heels of new evidence of a nationwide decline in student achievement during the pandemic, a team of researchers at Stanford and Harvard released a detailed analysis that brings the findings closer to home.

The Education Recovery Scorecard , published Oct. 28 by researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) and the Center for Education Policy and Research (CEPR) at Harvard, combines local and national test score data to map changes in student performance over the past three years within individual school districts.

Their analysis is the first clear picture of pandemic learning loss at the school district level, revealing differences in the pandemic’s impact across U.S. communities.

Test scores released earlier in the week from the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – widely known as the nation’s report card – showed, on average, a drop in math and reading scores between 2019 and 2022. But the analysis by Stanford and Harvard researchers shows how the losses varied from one school district to the next.

“In some school districts, students fell behind by as much as a grade level or more. In other school districts, the difference between the 2019 and 2022 test scores was essentially zero,” said Sean Reardon , the Professor in Poverty and Inequality at the GSE and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), who led the data analysis behind the Education Recovery Scorecard. “There was enormous variability in the pandemic’s impact on kids’ academic performance.”

In addition to creating interactive maps detailing the variability among districts, the researchers identified patterns in the relationship between student performance and the extent of remote learning in each district, as well as trends among racial and economic groups.

The Education Recovery Scorecard also provides a forecast of the likely long-term implications for students and research on interventions that school districts could undertake to help students catch up.

“The pandemic was like a band of tornadoes that swept across the country. Some communities were left relatively untouched, while neighboring schools were devastated,” said Thomas J. Kane, a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and faculty director of CEPR, who co-led the analysis. “The Education Recovery Scorecard is the first high-resolution map of the tornadoes’ path, to help district leaders ascertain the magnitude of the damage and guide local recovery efforts.”

Identifying patterns and differences

The district-level analysis indicates that the pandemic exacerbated educational inequalities based on income, showing the most pronounced learning losses among students in low-income communities and school districts.

The analysis also showed that test scores declined more, on average, in school districts where students were learning remotely than where learning took place in person. But the extent to which a school district was in person or remote was a minor factor in the change in student performance, the researchers found.

“Even in school districts where students were in person for the whole year, test scores still declined substantially on average,” said Reardon, noting the toll that pandemic-related disruptions took on students’ routines, family and social support, and mental health. “A lot of things were happening that made it hard for kids to learn. One of them seems to be the extent to which schools were open or closed, but that’s only one among many factors that seems to have driven the patterns of change.”

The data analysis was conducted by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University (EOP), an initiative launched by Reardon in 2019. The EOP houses the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), a comprehensive national database of academic performance first made available online in 2016. Since then, researchers have used the massive data set, which contains standardized reading and math test scores from students in every public school in the nation, to study variations in educational opportunity by race, gender, and socioeconomic conditions.

To generate a district-level analysis of pandemic learning loss, Reardon’s team applied an approach they developed to produce estimates of student performance that are comparable across places, grades, and years – a challenge given the discrepancy between assessments used in different states from year to year.

In addition to administering the NAEP every two years, all states are required to test students in third through eighth grades each year in math and reading, and to make the aggregated results of those tests public. Because most states use their own annual test (and define “proficiency” in different ways), researchers generally can’t compare these yearly test results from one state directly with results from another.

Reardon’s team developed a research method to overcome that challenge: By aligning the annual statewide test results with scores from the biennial NAEP, his team produces data that can be compared across states. “We use state tests to measure district-level changes in academic skills, and the NAEP test serves as a kind of Rosetta stone that lets us put these changes on the same scale,” Reardon said. “Once we equate the tests from different states, we can make apples-to-apples comparisons among districts all over the country.”

Using demographic data also housed in SEDA, the researchers can estimate how scores within an individual district compare with statewide and national averages. They can also identify trends among various subgroups of students, including racial/ethnic and socioeconomic.

For the Education Recovery Scorecard, the research team obtained annual test scores from 30 states – all that have, to date, reported their districts’ proficiency rates for their spring 2022 assessments. The remaining states will be added to the analysis as their data becomes public.

Recalibrating targets for recovery funds

The Education Recovery Scorecard also reports how much money each school district has received through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund, along with a summary of evidence on interventions that districts might implement, such as high-dose tutoring, summer school programs, extended school years, or even an optional 13th year of schooling.

The researchers hope the analysis will help policymakers and educators determine how best to direct pandemic relief funds and other efforts to support students who fell behind the most during the pandemic.

“Kids’ educational opportunities were really harmed in the past few years, and that damage was most pronounced in high-poverty communities,” Reardon said. “School districts are the first line of action to help children catch up. The better they know about the patterns of learning loss, the more they’re going to be able to target their resources effectively.”

Additional collaborators on this project include Erin Fahle, Andrew Ho, Ben Shear, Demetra Kalogrides, Jim Saliba, Julia Paris, Sadie Richardson, and Thalia Ramirez (Educational Opportunity Project); Tyler Patterson (Center for Education Policy Research); and Douglas Staiger (Dartmouth College). The Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA) and the Education Recovery Scorecard are based on research funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Some of the data used in constructing the SEDA files were provided by the National Center for Education Statistics.

This story was originally published by Stanford News.

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4 Questions to Boost Algebra Gains for Middle Schoolers

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More than 1 in 3 public school students now take Algebra 1 before high school. For those students to succeed, schools must adjust middle school programs to better match student readiness to class support, experts warn.

New federal civil rights data show that more than 931,000, or 36 percent, of U.S. public school students took Algebra 1 in middle school as of 2021.

However, students who are ready to tackle algebra don’t get equal access to the course.

A separate study of nearly 4.4 million students in grades 3-8 during the pandemic found among students with above-average math scores, 55 percent of Black, Hispanic, and Native American students enrolled in algebra by 8th grade, compared to 63 percent of white students and 72 percent of Asian students. The disparities highlight gaps in both the course offerings in middle schools and how students get placed in challenging math courses.

Similarly, the civil rights data show that while 85 percent of students who took algebra by 8th grade passed it , that ranged from 89 percent of Asian students to 78 percent of Black students.

While efforts to promote universal access to algebra by 8th grade have gained traction in states and districts, studies find they have produced mixed results both in boosting students’ math progress and closing racial , gender, and socioeconomic gaps in higher math course-taking.

To ensure middle school math programs serve a wide array of students well, experts say administrators should ask key questions.

1. What are our long-term goals for students?

Algebra 1 is a graduation requirement in every state, and a necessary prerequisite to higher math in high school and beyond. Studies show that for students interested in a two- or four-year postsecondary degree, completing that content before high school provides a huge boost.

Federal data show students who took Algebra 1 in middle school were 24 percentage points more likely to enroll in a four-year degree than students who took the course just a year later. Moreover, students who waited until 10th grade or later to take Algebra 1 were more than twice as likely as those who took middle school algebra to forgo postsecondary education at all.

School district leaders should ensure middle school programs align with overall college-readiness needs at high school and at area postsecondary requirements.

2. How quickly do your students learn?

Beyond just math achievement, schools should consider the pace of student learning when identifying which students participate in algebra before high school, said Scott Peters, the director of research partnerships at the testing group NWEA and author of a new guide to identifying student algebra readiness .

Using data from a multi-grade computer-adaptive test and state assessments in Ohio, Georgia, and Texas, Peters and his colleagues compared students’ math learning growth in grades 6 and 7 to their likelihood of scoring at the proficient level in their state’s 8th grade Algebra 1 test (That threshold is associated with a score of 238 on the adaptive tests, which uses a scale score of 100 to 350).

“By most of our research, 30 to 40 percent of 8th graders are ready for Algebra I and have a good chance of being successful,” Peters said. “We should probably stop the binaries of either the top 2 percent or 100 percent” of middle school students taking algebra.

“It completely comes down to this question of, what level of growth can you reasonably expect?” Peters said.

On average, students grow more slowly from year to year in math as they progress in grades. For example, in 6th grade, the average student improved by about 5 points a year (on a scale of 100 to 350) on the NWEA’s test, and students in the top 30 percent improved by 8 points. By 8th grade, students on average saw only 2 points of growth in math, with the students in the top 30 percent growing only 6 points.

“If the school is set up in such a way that there are lots of supports—there’s peer mentoring, there’s tutoring, lots of technology resources, the algebra curriculum is designed with lots of scaffolding built in—then you can let in students with a lot lower level of readiness because you can leverage that higher level of growth,” he said. “But if you have a stereotypical, hardcore ‘sink-or-swim’ math teacher and there’s no extra help, ... you really can’t let in those lower-scoring students, because they’re going to struggle and be much less likely to be successful.”

For example, Karen Rambo-Hernandez, an associate professor of education at Texas A&M University and former algebra teacher, suggested schools may consider allowing a broad range of students to take algebra, but creating a one-hour algebra class for advanced students and a two-hour class for those who learn at average or slower rates, to give them more time to process the content.

3. What should the class makeup be?

There’s little consensus on what makes for the most effective mix of student abilities in math class, but it is clear that teachers cope with a widening array of student needs.

Across U.S. 8th grade classrooms, 35 percent of students scored at or below the lowest benchmark on the 2019 Trends in International Math and Science assessment for math, while 14 percent met or exceeded the advanced math benchmark, according to a recent study .

More than a third of 8th grade classrooms included students across all four achievement levels. Nearly 40 percent of the variance in math performance on the TIMSS happened among students within the same classroom. In practical terms, this means the same 8th grade Algebra 1 class could include students who are comfortable solving multivariable linear equations, while others have an elementary-grade understanding of whole numbers.

“So many districts are either saying [8th grade algebra] has got to be everybody, you know, universal enrollment, or else it’s only for the uber-mathematically gifted kids,” Peters said. “I just think both of those really ignore like human diversity. ... The whole point is to try to remove those biases, provide more relevant criteria, and much more proactively align kids with the curriculum they’re ready for.”

4. How interested are students?

While prior student achievement and growth are the strongest predictors of success in middle school algebra, Rambo-Hernandez suggested schools also consider students’ individual interests and motivation toward math. For example, “kids who have stronger self-efficacy may not get intimidated when they get to algebra as much as someone who has lower self-efficacy.”

For one thing, students are more likely to read for pleasure than to pursue algebra practice outside of class and homework. Schools can use extracurricular activities, such as math or robotics teams, to boost interest in challenging math in younger middle school grades.

“In reading, you can just pick up a harder book if you want it once you’ve got the basics of decoding, without the direct instruction of a teacher,” said Rambo-Hernandez. “Whereas in math, you kind of need a teacher to say, okay, you’ve mastered this skill, so we’re gonna move on to this next skill.”

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Students fell behind during the pandemic. How 1 educator is closing the learning gap

This article is sponsored by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative as part of TODAY’s effort to highlight reporting on teachers, students and education in the United States.

In 2020, as classrooms across the country shifted to remote and hybrid learning, millions of students nationwide fell behind academically. By the fall of 2021, almost all students were back in school full-time, according to the National Center for Education Statistics . Still, closing the COVID gap is taking time.

According to NWEA , by the end of the 2023 school year, the average student needed 4.1 more months to catch up in reading and 4.5 more months in math. Students in high-poverty school districts lost more ground than others, reports the Harvard Graduate School of Education .

Alberto Carvalho  is looking to change that for the more than 420,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), where he came on board as superintendent in 2022.

According to reporting from the New York Times , Los Angeles, the second-biggest public school district in the US, had less learning loss than many other big city districts and has had a better recovery rate than other districts in California.

Here are some of the strategies Carvalho and his team have put in place that are making a difference.

1. Getting kids into the classroom

The challenge: Kids can’t learn if they aren’t in class. Nationwide, chronic absenteeism — kids missing at least 10% of a school year — was 75% higher in 2023 than before the pandemic, according to the American Enterprise Institute .

It’s not just a problem for the kids who miss school — when kids aren’t in school consistently, it disrupts the classroom flow for everyone.

The strategy: Tech-based solutions weren’t getting solid results. “We have platforms that can conduct virtual outreach to parents and students, but that was falling a bit short of the mark,” Carvalho tells TODAY. Instead, the district is using an old-fashioned method — knocking on doors.

A team that can include a counselor, social worker and principal or assistant principal meets with an absent child’s caretakers. The team has data about the student, so they can connect with the caretaker. “We are meeting students and parents where they are, and we’re bringing solutions after really understanding the root cause behind the chronic absenteeism,” Carvalho says.

The outcome: The district is back to its pre-pandemic average daily attendance levels of 92 to 93%.

Still, there’s room for improvement. “With every knock on the door, we learn new circumstances or reasons [for absenteeism],” Carvalho says. For example, parents worry about immigration consequences, or older kids stay home with babies and toddlers while their parents work two or three jobs.

For those issues, the district needs help. “Solving for that requires a new adaptation to a host of social services and supports that transcend the school system,” he says. “It requires the city, the county and community-based organizations to step in and step up.”

2. Looking beyond the limits of the school calendar

The challenge: Schools need to create opportunities for learning outside of the 7.5-hour, 180-day traditional classroom schedule.

The strategy: The district helps kids close their gaps by offering outside-the-school-day options like:

• Before- and after-school programming
• Saturday, spring break and winter break academies
• A summer of learning

Speaking more broadly about these types of changes, Carvalho says, “This is in part the response to the crisis that started with the pandemic, but honestly, this is a response to the failures of many systems for many decades prior to the pandemic. Returning our students back to pre-pandemic status is insufficient. We have a golden opportunity to really transform educational systems as we know them.”

Carvalho recognizes that you can’t simply saturate kids with core subject instruction, though: “If all you do is provide them with more reading and more math, you’re probably going to reach a level of fatigue that will disengage them.”

Along with core subjects, his district is bringing in a portfolio of enrichment activities in the arts, including field trips to plays and concerts. They’re inviting artists to schools. “It’s how you package it,” he says.

The outcome: More than 30% of the student body has participated in summer programs, and other programs are showing solid participation as well. Carvalho says that so far, data is showing significant improvements in state assessments. And the district is posting its highest graduation rates in its history.

3. Closing the gaps for underserved students

The challenge: The students in the 100 lowest-performing schools in the LAUSD are disproportionately Black and brown. These schools have huge numbers of students who have disabilities, are English language learners, are experiencing homelessness or are in the foster care system.

The strategy: The district is using data to build equitable support and accountability. “Data is our superpower in Los Angeles Unified,” Carvalho says. They adjust funding based on each school’s demographics. They are also building strategies that improve the performance of subgroups of students. For example, they’ve allocated $120 million toward the Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP).

The outcome: The BSAP is still ongoing, and it’s showing solid gains in improving attendance, math and literacy, and students enrolled in advanced placement or honors classes.

4. Connecting parents with their power

The challenge: Parents and communities have often historically sent their kids to school and expected them to behave. After that, they viewed education as the job of the schools and the teachers. Carvalho wants to change that.

“I want to show parents how they can become powerful voices of disruption in their own schools by empowering them with information,” he says. That way, they know the important questions to ask teachers, principals, superintendents and board members.

The strategy: The district launched Family Academy , a virtual platform for parents, two years ago. It gives parents a better understanding of their children’s education and performance and shows them how to be change agents in the classroom and the school.

The outcome: Thousands of parents have gone through training programs. They understand budgets and proficiency levels. “Once parents understand that, they can become more active voices,” Carvalho says. 

5. Recognizing that closing gaps will always be a focus

The challenge: “I don’t think we will ever close the gaps,” Carvalho says. “The reason for that is that our school systems have wide-open doors. As much as we can improve the conditions for learning and performance of the students we have today, each and every day, we bring in new students.”

Babies are born already falling into gaps. Some immigrant students are dealing with language barriers, trauma from warfare or from a treacherous journey to the U.S.

“One of the things that frustrates me as an educator of many years in this country is that all of a sudden, the nation woke up to the fact that there were gaps, and a lot of people assigned the gaps 100% to the pandemic,” Carvalho said. “Gaps have existed. The systems of education as we know them have perpetuated gaps.”

The solution: Parents got a front-row seat to their kids’ educational environment during the pandemic, and they aren’t going back to the old way of doing things. Transparency helps. The district publicly shares data on everything from kindergarten literacy benchmarks to trends in graduation rates through its open data portal .

The outcome: Carvalho references a famous quote from Maya Angelo: “‘When you know better, do better.’ That’s where we are right now.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com

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‘Harvard Thinking’: How far has COVID set back students?

In podcast, an economist, a policy expert, and a teacher explain why learning losses are worse than many parents realize

Samantha Laine Perfas

Harvard Staff Writer

We’re now three academic years beyond the pandemic. A lot of families think things are back to normal. Thomas Kane disagrees.

“A lot of parents misperceive how much students have lost,” said the faculty director for the Center for Education Policy Research . “That has been one of the biggest things hampering the recovery, parents thinking things are fine now that kids are back in school.”

According to Kane’s research , on average students have lost about a half a grade level in math and a quarter of a grade level in reading. But that’s on average; individually, some schools are doing even better than before the pandemic, while others have lost as much as two grade levels in education.

Heather Hill , a co-director of the teacher education program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, said one thing she noticed was that students forgot how to “student.” Gone were skills in studying, sitting in classrooms, and taking notes.

“When teachers came back they said, ‘Wow, these kids have forgotten how to be students,’ and one of the things we saw pretty immediately was a rise in behavior issues,” Hill said. While a lot of those issues have been addressed, she said, others — like the rising absenteeism rates that are nearly double pre-pandemic levels — have not.

Stephanie Conklin, Ed.M.’06, a New York State Master Teacher who teaches math at Colonie Central High School, said educators are facing higher expectations than ever.

“We’re asked to be counselors, social workers, teach math, teach writing, and teach students how to be students,” Conklin said, pointing to rising rates of turnover and burnout. Guests talked about the need to better support teachers and what that might look like beyond pay raises.

In this episode, host Samantha Laine Perfas talks with Kane, Hill, and Conklin about post-pandemic challenges in the classroom and how to fix them.

Thomas Kane: A lot of parents misperceive how much students have lost. They see kids are back in school and they’re thinking everything’s back to normal. And honestly, that has been one of the biggest things hampering the recovery: parents thinking things are fine now that kids are back in school.

Samantha Laine Perfas: American schools took a big hit during the pandemic. On average, they lost half a grade level in math and a little less than that in reading. Some schools have come back, but many others have not, and some are in even worse shape. Other problems have also cropped up, like a surprising rise in absenteeism that spans geography and income. So what happens now?

Welcome to Harvard Thinking, a podcast where the life of the mind meets everyday life.

Today, I’m joined by:

Kane: Tom Kane. I’m a faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research here at Harvard.

Laine Perfas: He works with school districts and state agencies to help them evaluate programs and policies. Since the pandemic, a lot of his research has focused on gains and losses in education. Then:

Heather Hill: Heather Hill. I am at Harvard GSE. My research focuses on mathematics teaching. I spend a lot of time in classrooms, which is one of my favorite things to do.

Laine Perfas: She also co-directs the teacher education program at GSE, Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and helps prepare teachers for the classroom. And finally:

Stephanie Conklin: Stephanie Conklin. I’m a math teacher at Colonie Central High School.

Laine Perfas: She’s also a New York State Master Teacher and a graduate of GSE. She serves on the faculty at the University of Albany.

And I’m Samantha Laine Perfas, your host and a writer for The Harvard Gazette. And in this episode, we’ll explore what’s happening in our schools as they try to regain pandemic learning losses.

It’s not a surprise that education took a big hit during the pandemic, but I think there’s been some surprise regarding its lingering effects. I’d love to start the conversation with where things stand now. Maybe, Tom, you can start by talking a little bit about your research in this area.

Kane: Sam, as you said, it was not surprising that students lost ground during the pandemic. But I think many were surprised by just the magnitudes of the losses, especially in many high-poverty school districts in the U.S. Remember March of 2021, when the American Rescue Plan passed, people were sort of hoping that online learning was, maybe, 80 percent as good as in-person learning. We learned subsequently that many districts lost much more than 20 percent of their typical learning during that school year. Now, as a country, we lost about half of a grade level in math and we made up about a third of that. We lost about a quarter of a grade level in reading and we made up about one quarter of that. So we still have a ways to go, and that is on average. There are many districts that are much farther behind than that, like more than a grade level behind.

Laine Perfas: Yeah. I actually wanted to ask you about how the average somewhat hides the greater gaps that are at play. Because when I was looking at some of your research, I was seeing that some school districts are pretty much back to where they were, if not doing even better than before the pandemic. But other areas are significantly worse than pre-pandemic. What’s happening there and what districts seem to be recovering in a way that we would hope, and which districts are being left behind?

Kane: There was a lot of variation in the magnitude of losses, but two factors did play a role. One was high-poverty schools in every state were more likely to stay closed for longer. For instance, in Florida the average school went back sooner than the average school in Massachusetts. But still, even in Florida, the higher-poverty districts stayed closed for longer. And that was true in most other states. The second reason is that when schools closed the losses were larger for higher-poverty schools. Interestingly, in the places where schools did not close for long — like practically every school was closed in the spring of 2020 — but among those places that came back quickly in the fall of 2020, there wasn’t as much increase in inequality. High-poverty and low-poverty schools lost about the same amount of ground. It was in the places where schools were closed for half of the 2021 year or more, that’s where we really saw big differences in the magnitude of the losses.

Unfortunately, an untold story is that the higher-poverty districts in Massachusetts did the opposite of catching up between ’22 and ’23. They lost more ground. So Lynn, Massachusetts, is now basically two grade levels behind where they themselves were in 2019. Those gaps that existed before the pandemic are bigger now and all of the recovery in Massachusetts has been limited to the higher-income districts like Newton, Wellesley, Lexington. The higher-poverty districts like Lynn, Fall River, fell further behind between ’22 and ’23.

Hill: I think one of the issues about being home for a full year, which is what a lot of kids were in some cases in some of these urban districts, is that they forgot how to “student,” if you think about student as a verb. “Studenting” means paying attention, being engaged with your peers, being engaged with your teacher. When teachers came back they said, “Wow, these kids have forgotten how to be students,” and one of the things we saw pretty immediately was a rise in behavior issues on the part of kids. I would say from what I can tell, and I’d be curious what Stephanie thinks about this, I think those are worked out. But what teachers are also saying at this point is that the student engagement is not back yet.

Conklin: As Heather mentioned, when students came back to the classroom, besides just learning how to student, we also noticed that a lot of students’ skills in learning had really suffered. So for example, just students’ ability to retain facts and retain information, that is a real skill that we teach in schools. And then the other piece, too, to learning how to be a student, is being organized. Keeping track of eight classes for many of our students is a real struggle at the middle- and high-school level. And then not having had to do that for a year really made it even harder for students to access the curriculum. So many of us in education had to take a step back, not only reteach academic skills, we also have to teach, OK, how do you take notes in a math classroom? How do you use a calculator if you haven’t used it for a year?

Laine Perfas: It sounds like a big challenge has just been transitioning kids back to school. But another challenge that we’re seeing is actually getting kids back in the classroom in the first place. Can you talk about that and how absenteeism rates are really high right now?

Kane: Basically, chronic absenteeism rates have almost doubled from before the pandemic. By the way, when you yourself miss class, you miss more than a day. Obviously you miss that day you were gone, but the first day you’re back you’re maybe picking up 75 percent of what the teacher is saying. The second day you’re back you’re maybe picking up 80 percent of what the teacher is saying. But when you’re a teacher where 5 percent of kids are missing one day, but it’s a different 5 percent the next day, it’s a different 5 percent the next day. And then you’re trying to juggle and keep everybody going. It really becomes disruptive.

Laine Perfas: Are people still getting sick or is it just not seeing the value of attending school? What exactly is causing that huge increase in absenteeism?

Kane: I don’t think anybody really knows yet. At least part of it is likely due to the fact that I think parents are more aware of communicable diseases, whereas we might have sent our kid to school when they were coughing, now we might hesitate. But I think that is a small share of it. It’s more likely to be things like families have gotten out of their routines, kids, they’re more accustomed to being at home during a weekday of school.

Hill: I think parents are home more often as well at work from home, which takes the burden off of sending your kids to school because you’re like, “It’s not a big deal for you to be home.”

Conklin: For my students I take a picture of all my notes. I post my assignments online. Many of us educators got into a routine of making everything accessible for students, whether they’re in or out of the classroom. Now the positives to that are tremendous. I have students who will follow my notes on their iPad while taking notes with me in class, I have students if they’re absent a day here or there, they can catch up. However, I think that what that’s done is, if we have students who maybe are like, “Well, I’m not feeling great, I’m going to just stay home because Dr. Conklin always puts her notes online and I can catch up tomorrow.” I think families also have the same issue, but I did want to take Tom’s comment like a little bit farther about when a kid misses one day. In the educator perspective, we are not only trying to catch kids up for that day, teach them the content, but also from past things. Three years ago, they missed that content. So what I’m finding is it’s almost like whack-a-mole teaching. “OK, these five kids were out on Thursday. I need to catch them up on today’s lesson, but they still don’t know how to do these four topics.” But then I also have kids who I want to extend the lesson because they already know it. So we’re finding that teachers are not only scaffolding, differentiating lessons, it’s almost like too much for one human being to do, to have two to three different classrooms running in one classroom setting.

Hill: One of the things I think about teaching, which was already pre-pandemic a really difficult job for a lot of reasons, it’s become 20 percent harder. And that may not sound like, “Oh, it’s insurmountable.” But 20 percent harder day in, day out becomes really unsustainable. And I think one of the things that we’ve been seeing is increased teacher absence rates as well, which, paired with teacher shortages and sub shortages, puts schools in this really difficult position. So many of the schools that I’m in, it just feels very tenuous to be there because it erodes the social contract a little bit between students and teachers when you get that level of everybody’s absent and relationships can suffer.

Kane: So for all these reasons, it’s remarkable that between 2022 and 2023 kids did make up some of the ground. Students gained about .17 grade level in math, so that means that students learned roughly about 117 percent of what they would typically learn in math, which is remarkable. But a lot of that was paid for with federal dollars. People had extra resources to hire teachers’ aides or to hire tutors or expand summer school, and that federal money is expiring at the end of September.

Laine Perfas: I wanted to ask a little bit more about the relief dollars, because it seems like they helped. One, did they help, and was that a consistent benefit across the country? And then also, why is it ending in September if there’s clearly still pretty huge gaps that need to be bridged?

Kane: Remember, the American Rescue Plan, which provided this pot of federal money to school districts around the country, was passed in March of 2021; many schools were still closed. So that was before anybody knew how big the losses were going to be. And 90 percent of the money was sent directly to school districts. So basically 13,000 different school districts around the country were making up their own recovery plan. Some came up with better plans than others.

Unfortunately, the federal guidance on this was downright misleading because the federal law only required them to spend 20 percent on academic recovery. But a lot of districts like Lynn or Fall River that lost more than a grade level, there was no way they were going to be able to recover spending 20 percent of those federal dollars on academic recovery. There was simply no way. Imagine if at the beginning of the pandemic, the federal government said, “We’re not even going to try to come up with a vaccine. We’re going to send all the money out to local public health authorities and say, ‘You come up with your own solution.’” And that’s exactly what we did in education, is we put out $190 billion, 90 percent of it, directly to school districts. And then had them all figure out their own plans and some have made progress and some haven’t.

Conklin: I know, on the ground in my district, we’re spending a lot of money focusing on more teachers in classrooms. I teach an at-risk population. I’m math certified, but also special-ed certified, and I have a co-teacher. So there are two adults in my classroom at all times to support our special-ed students, all of our learners who are struggling, and so, at least in my district, I think we’ve been able to spend the money wisely, and we’ve been able to justify keeping those positions by changing how we’re funding other things. Now, when we talk about Lynn and other school districts in Massachusetts, they were probably underfunded to begin with. And so now they’re having to go back and figure out where can we put this money if it’s toward staffing, it’s toward students’ needs, in our high-poverty schools. How are we then going to justify keeping extra staff, which we know works? I’m in New York and high schools that I’m in touch with, our special-ed students who are consistently attending school because they have supports, they’re being really successful and they are catching up.

Kane: This is one place where I feel like both the federal government and states really dropped the ball during the pandemic. We had an opportunity to learn more about the efficacy of different strategies. The problem was we blew the opportunity to learn which of those strategies were most effective. So like in Stephanie’s school district, choosing to have a couple of teachers in a given classroom, that’s one strategy. Other districts did things like, they said, “We’re going to hire math coaches,” and other places said, “Oh, we’re going to really try to expand summer learning,” or, “We’re going to hire tutors.” And even if each of those has some positive effect, I don’t think we have a good sense now, a better sense than we did before the pandemic, of what is the bang for the buck for these different strategies. School districts weren’t tracking which kids got what, so we didn’t learn nearly as much as we could have and should have learned over the last two or three years.

Laine Perfas: Stephanie, you mentioned that, at least in your school district, just staffing up was a really wise investment of resources. How do you do that when there’s so much teacher turnover and burnout right now? Heather, I think you actually mentioned that earlier in the conversation, that teachers are exhausted. It’s a really hard job. It was hard before, and now it’s even harder. I just want to create some space to talk about that a little bit because teachers are such a vital part of the solution and yet they’re struggling as well.

Conklin: It’s a great question. I have so many thoughts. I guess I would say I am on staff at University of Albany, teaching folks how to become teachers. I know in the past three years, pre-COVID, we had about 50 students in our teacher-ed program. And now I think I have 24 this semester. So we’re certainly seeing a huge hit.

I think what teachers are being asked to do is tremendously different than what I was asked to do during my teacher training 15 years ago. We’re asked to be counselors, social workers, teach math, teach writing, and teach students how to be students. I know that our program at University of Albany, we’re always seeking to change it, amend it, but a lot of the state requirements for teachers are not aligned. Two six-week student teaching opportunities I don’t feel is enough — that’s the state requirements right now — in order to really prepare someone for a lifelong career in education. We really should be looking at programs where student teachers are placed for an entire school year in a district and or in a placement and working with a mentor teacher on how to deal with this. OK, when you have a student in crisis, how do you deal with it? How do you deal with it the day after spring break when no student wants to do any work? Which can be very stressful when you have 30 kids in front of you and everyone still wants to be on spring break, yourself included. All these nuances of teaching really need to be taught and modeled for new teachers. I think the current system and the current programs that we’re offering may not necessarily yield themselves to creating teachers who have that resiliency, that ability to sort of push through this much more challenging time.

Hill: OK, so number one, just pay teachers more. If the job is 20 percent harder in any other profession, we’d be like, and you pay people more. Instead, what we see is many states saying, “Oh, we can’t find teachers at the wage that we’re willing to pay. Let’s let people into classrooms who have no training.” There is some weird way in which the public governance of teaching as a profession has stood in the way of actually paying teachers the money that is needed to do the job that they have.

The next thing would be to take a look at teachers’ overall working conditions. There is an enormous amount of stuff that we’re asking teachers to do on top of just teaching students. Looking at that level of workload and paring back what is not necessary would be step two for me, which is to say, how can we get teachers more time to prepare for and to teach students? End of story. Number three is schools need to be better places for teachers to work. Teachers leave schools that are not well-managed, and not all schools are well-managed right now for various reasons. Helping schools get over shortage of subs, helping principals establish common disciplinary policies across the school, establish common routines in classrooms, so as kids are moving around they’re very familiar with this is how we do things at the school; that can make a big difference to getting teachers to stay in the profession.

Laine Perfas: Why do we put all that pressure on teachers? There are so many needs that students have. I’m wondering if there’s space for other people who are not teachers to be part of this solution as well. And what that could look like, engaging an entire community on a broader level to help with some of these challenges.

Kane: We had an event here where the governor of Rhode Island was talking about what they’re doing; you know, very few mayors can teach Algebra I. But mayors can help with the attendance issue, with public information campaigns, with maybe lowering bus fares or handing out transportation cards to students or providing more transportation options. That is one area where public organizations outside of schools could really help.

But the other area is, so here in Boston, there’s an organization called Boston After School and Beyond that helps organize summer learning opportunities. Rather than having the school try to plan both the enrichment activities for summer learning and the academic content, what Boston is doing is saying, “OK, so we got a bunch of organizations here in the city that run enrichment opportunities during the summer: summer camps or museums or other organizations. And why don’t we have them organize the enrichment, but then have the Boston Public Schools provide teachers to teach on site?” So it’s splitting up that task and saying, “Hey, look, we don’t have to solve all of this. Why don’t we let the nonprofits who were already doing a great job recruiting kids and getting kids to show up for summer and just inserting some summer learning into that.”

Conklin: We are finding that summertime, where we have the 10 weeks of students not doing anything, does need to be filled. And the idea that someone else could take that on besides a school? Those opportunities really would benefit students. One of the things I wanted to agree with you wholeheartedly on is giving teachers more time. Tom mentioned algebra. I’ve been teaching algebra for 17 years. I have been rewriting everything the past three years. The time with my colleagues, the time to prepare for my students that are in front of me, is critical. And I know a lot of things we’re talking about relate to funding, but that is one very tangible thing: teachers having more time. And going along with that, I think one of my biggest stressors is dealing with families who have a really challenging time understanding why their students are behind, why their students aren’t being successful. And having support from administrators, which I do have at my school, who are willing to say, “Hey, we need to support your child. Here’s what we’re going to do.” And it’s not just on the teacher.

Hill: The solutions that you’re suggesting are the right set of solutions. I don’t know how to do a hard reset on teachers’ working conditions. The way that the bureaucracy has grown in American education is that teachers need this, and teachers need that. But that takes teachers’ time, and it takes time away from preparing to teach students, and from, in many cases, actually teaching students. One of the things that is the most robust in this literature on the production function for kids — meaning like what produces student achievement — is literally, like, time on task: Are kids in classrooms? This comes back to the absence issue. Are kids there? Are teachers there providing instruction?

Kane: One of the barriers is that a lot of parents misperceive how much students have lost. They see kids are back in school and they’re thinking, everything’s back to normal. If parents are misperceiving the amount of loss, it’s going to be hard for school districts to ask for the bigger things like major increases in funding for teachers or big increases in summer learning and honestly, that has been one of the biggest things, I think, hampering the recovery, is parents thinking things are fine now that kids are back in school.

Laine Perfas: How might parents get a better understanding of how bad things are in some of the school districts?

Kane: I wish more schools would just tell parents, before school’s out, when their child is below grade level in math or reading or any other subject so the parents actually have time to sign up for summer learning. Instead, there’s been a lack of honesty with parents on just where kids are. And part of that is on schools. I can understand, if you’re already overwhelmed, like, who wants to get parents riled up? But I do think that lack of parent awareness of the magnitude of the losses is meaning that parents are pushing back on things like extending the school year or signing their kid up for summer learning.

Conklin: I would agree with Tom. I think, too, in the past two to three years, many students have been given a literal pass in courses because of COVID. You know, during the 2020, 2021 years, many students were passed on, whether through social promotion or because of policies related to COVID. So I think families have become accustomed to, well, they’re struggling, but they’ll get through. But now that we’re three years post-pandemic, three academic years, many of those supports to pass students are going away so students are going to be expected to pass exams that do have graduation requirements.

Hill: Can I ask Stephanie, what you were saying about students feeling like they can get by past their classes without having to really put in full effort is really interesting because I feel like from what I have seen anecdotally it’s certainly the case. One of the things I like to recommend is homework, but I know that is a fraught issue, so I’m curious how you’re thinking about this and whether that is part of a solution.

Conklin: I think the issue is, is that if kids don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t know what they’re doing at home. So I know that, for many of the teachers, what we talk about is having an assignment that is reasonable to do at home and that is started in class. So I always, the last five minutes of class, “OK, let’s get a jump start. Let’s read the directions together. Let’s do a couple problems.” For my middle and high school kids, you know, we’re really suggesting no more than 10 to 15 minutes of homework. And that’s actually probably all the practice they need to get that specific skill down.

Laine Perfas: We’ve been talking a little bit about solutions that could happen at the local or community level, but what policies need to change to create a healthier education ecosystem long term?

Kane: Sam, that is a great question. I wish it was a much more lively debate right now going on in states, because as I said, the federal money is about to run out. For the last three years, we’ve just been watching districts spend down the federal money without thinking about, “OK, so what’s going to happen when the federal money runs out?” Here are a few just very concrete things that states could be doing. You know, number one, they could be providing extra resources for students who are behind, so targeted benefits either to kids or to districts. A second thing, and this is something that Texas has been doing, they said, “OK, we, the state, will pay half the cost for additional days of learning time that you provide.” A number of districts have extended the school year beyond 180 days in Texas, as a result of this. And a third area, states could set aside some money for funding pilot programs for lowering absenteeism rates and then evaluating those. So a state could say, here’s a pot of money if a district out there has an idea or a pilot program they would like to launch to try to help lower absenteeism rates. If the state were to fund those and then fund evaluations of them, we could be learning much faster than we are about how we’re going to lower the absenteeism problem.

Hill: One of the things that I was thinking, this was a few years ago, back at the beginning of the pandemic, is just to say, everything is on the table. There’s a lot that I think we can do to increase academic learning time without changing structures within the schools to that much of an extent. There’s actually already programs that address student absentee rates. What they look like is they look very relational. So it’s working with the parents, having somebody from the school, sometimes a guidance counselor, somebody whose job is it to go and try to coordinate and reduce chronic absenteeism on the part of students. They can be very successful when they are able to form relationships with parents and really engage parents in solving the problem.

Conklin: To recruit the best teachers we need to offer a higher pay, and I think that people would be willing to work more for a higher pay. I have a doctorate in education and I can’t tell you how many of my students say, “Why are you a teacher if you have a Ph.D.? You went to Harvard and you have a Ph.D. and you’re teaching here?” I think we need to change that perspective. We need to pay teachers well, we need to treat teachers well. So if we talk about policy, every school for every certain number of kids having a social worker, having a counselor so that those SEL (social emotional learning) needs, which we know have been huge concern for teachers, students, families, are met. I think those are some of the issues that really would attract more teachers.

Kane: We’ve been talking mostly about academic recovery and what it’s going to take. I think we need to take a step back and realize what drove this. The learning loss to some extent is a result of public health measures, that were taken on behalf of all of us. I know there are people who disagree with those public health decisions that were made, but they were on our behalf by duly elected or appointed officials. Basically, what we’re doing now is deciding who’s going to pay for that. Right now, in a lot of communities, we’ve said, OK, kids are going to pay for that. That we’re not going to do what’s necessary to help students catch up. Framed that way, I think most people would say, “Gosh, of course, we need to continue the recovery beyond September. We’ve got to figure out some way to make sure these losses are made up because these were losses that were caused by public health measures intended to benefit all of us. It’s on us to make sure kids are made whole.” That’s what this is all about.

Laine Perfas: Thank you for joining me and for talking about this really important issue.

Hill: Thanks, Sam, for having me.

Conklin: Thank you for having me.

Kane: Thanks, Sam.

Laine Perfas: Thanks for listening. For a transcript of this episode and to see all of our other episodes, visit harvard.edu/thinking. This episode was hosted and produced by me, Samantha Laine Perfas. It was edited by Ryan Mulcahy, Paul Makishima, and Simona Covel. Original music and sound design by Noel Flatt. Produced by Harvard University.

Recommended reading

• For students still feeling pandemic shock, clock is ticking by The Harvard Gazette
• Parents Don’t Understand How Far Behind Their Kids Are in School by The New York Times
• Turning Around Teacher Turnover by the Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Combatting Chronic Absenteeism with Family Engagement by The Harvard EdCast

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How Biden Adopted Trump’s Trade War With China

The president has proposed new barriers to electric vehicles, steel and other goods..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise, and this is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Donald Trump upended decades of American policy when he started a trade war with China. Many thought that President Biden would reverse those policies. Instead, he’s stepping them up. Today, my colleague, Jim Tankersley, explains.

It’s Monday, May 13.

Jim, it’s very nice to have you in the studio.

It’s so great to be here, Sabrina. Thank you so much.

So we are going to talk today about something I find very interesting and I know you’ve been following. We’re in the middle of a presidential campaign. You are an economics reporter looking at these two candidates, and you’ve been trying to understand how Trump and Biden are thinking about our number one economic rival, and that is China.

As we know, Trump has been very loud and very clear about his views on China. What about Biden?

Well, no one is going to accuse President Biden of being as loud as former President Trump. But I think he’s actually been fairly clear in a way that might surprise a lot of people about how he sees economic competition with China.

We’re going after China in the wrong way. China is stealing intellectual property. China is conditioning —

And Biden has, kind of surprisingly, sounded a lot, in his own Joe Biden way, like Trump.

They’re not competing. They’re cheating. They’re cheating. And we’ve seen the damage here in America.

He has been very clear that he thinks China is cheating in trade.

The bottom line is I want fair competition with China, not conflict. And we’re in a stronger position to win the economic competition of the 21st century against China or anyone else because we’re investing in America and American workers again. Finally.

And maybe the most surprising thing from a policy perspective is just how much Biden has built on top of the anti-China moves that Trump made and really is the verge of his own sort of trade war with China.

Interesting. So remind us, Jim, what did Trump do when he actually came into office? We, of course, remember Trump really talking about China and banging that drum hard during the campaign, but remind us what he actually did when he came into office.

Yeah, it’s really instructive to start with the campaign, because Trump is talking about China in some very specific ways.

We have a $500 billion deficit, trade deficit, with China. We’re going to turn it around. And we have the cards. Don’t forget —

They’re ripping us off. They’re stealing our jobs.

They’re using our country as a piggy bank to rebuild China, and many other countries are doing the same thing. So we’re losing our good jobs, so many.

The economic context here is the United States has lost a couple of million jobs in what was called the China shock of the early 2000s. And Trump is tapping into that.

But when the Chinese come in, and they want to make great trade deals — and they make the best trade deals, and not anymore. When I’m there, we turn it around, folks. We turn it around. We have —

And what he’s promising as president is that he’s going to bring those jobs back.

I’ll be the greatest jobs president that God ever created. I’ll take them back from China, from Japan.

And not just any jobs, good-paying manufacturing jobs, all of it — clothes, shoes, steel, all of these jobs that have been lost that American workers, particularly in the industrial Midwest, used to do. Trump’s going to bring them back with policy meant to rebalance the trade relationship with China to get a better deal with China.

So he’s saying China is eating our lunch and has been for decades. That’s the reason why factory workers in rural North Carolina don’t have work. It’s those guys. And I’m going to change that.

Right. And he likes to say it’s because our leaders didn’t cut the right deal with them, so I’m going to make a better deal. And to get a better deal, you need leverage. So a year into his presidency, he starts taking steps to amass leverage with China.

And so what does that look like?

Just an hour ago, surrounded by a hand-picked group of steelworkers, President Trump revealed he was not bluffing.

It starts with tariffs. Tariffs are taxes that the government imposes on imports.

Two key global imports into America now face a major new barrier.

Today, I’m defending America’s national security by placing tariffs on foreign imports of steel and aluminum.

And in this case, it’s imports from a lot of different countries, but particularly China.

Let’s take it straight to the White House. The president of the United States announcing new trade tariffs against China. Let’s listen in.

This has been long in the making. You’ve heard —

So Trump starts, in 2018, this series of tariffs that he’s imposing on all sorts of things — washing machines, solar panels, steel, aluminum. I went to Delaware to a lighting store at that time, I remember, where basically everything they sold came from China and was subject to the Trump tariffs, because that’s where lighting was made now.

Interesting.

Hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods now start falling under these Trump tariffs. The Chinese, of course, don’t take this lying down.

China says it is not afraid of a trade war with the US, and it’s fighting back against President Trump with its own tariffs on US goods.

They do their own retaliatory tariffs. Now American exports to China cost more for Chinese consumers. And boom, all of a sudden, we are in the midst of a full-blown trade war between the United States and Beijing.

Right. And that trade war was kind of a shock because for decades, politicians had avoided that kind of policy. It was the consensus of the political class in the United States that there should not be tariffs like that. It should be free trade. And Trump just came in and blew up the consensus.

Yeah. And Sabrina, I may have mentioned this once or 700 times before on this program, but I talk to a lot of economists in my job.

Yeah, it’s weird. I talk to a lot of economists. And in 2018 when this started, there were very, very, very few economists of any political persuasion who thought that imposing all these tariffs were a good idea. Republican economists in particular, this is antithetical to how they think about the world, which is low taxes, free trade. And even Democratic economists who thought they had some problems with the way free trade had been conducted did not think that Trump’s “I’m going to get a better deal” approach was going to work. And so there was a lot of criticism at the time, and a lot of politicians really didn’t like it, a lot of Democrats, many Republicans. And it all added up to just a real, whoa, I don’t think this is going to work.

So that begs the question, did it?

Well, it depends on what you mean by work. Economically, it does not appear to have achieved what Trump wanted. There’s no evidence yet in the best economic research that’s been done on this that enormous amounts of manufacturing jobs came back to the United States because of Trump’s tariffs. There was research, for example, on the tariffs on washing machines. They appear to have helped a couple thousand jobs, manufacturing jobs be created in the United States, but they also raised the price of washing machines for everybody who bought them by enough that each additional job that was created by those tariffs effectively cost consumers, like, $800,000 per job.

There’s like lots of evidence that the sectors Trump was targeting to try to help here, he didn’t. There just wasn’t a lot of employment rebound to the United States. But politically, it really worked. The tariffs were very popular. They had this effect of showing voters in those hollowed-out manufacturing areas that Trump was on their team and that he was fighting for them. Even if they didn’t see the jobs coming back, they felt like he was standing up for them.

So the research suggests this was a savvy political move by Trump. And in the process, it sort of changes the political economic landscape in both parties in the United States.

Right. So Trump made these policies that seemed, for many, many years in the American political system, fringe, isolationist, economically bad, suddenly quite palatable and even desirable to mainstream policymakers.

Yeah. Suddenly getting tough on China is something everyone wants to do across both parties. And so from a political messaging standpoint, being tough on China is now where the mainstream is. But at the same time, there is still big disagreement over whether Trump is getting tough on China in the right way, whether he’s actually being effective at changing the trade relationship with China.

Remember that Trump was imposing these tariffs as a way to get leverage for a better deal with China. Well, he gets a deal of sorts, actually, with the Chinese government, which includes some things about tariffs, and also China agreeing to buy some products from the United States. Trump spins it as this huge win, but nobody else really, including Republicans, acts like Trump has solved the problem that Trump himself has identified. This deal is not enough to make everybody go, well, everything’s great with China now. We can move on to the next thing.

China remains this huge issue. And the question of what is the most effective way to deal with them is still an animating force in politics.

Got it. So politically, huge win, but policy-wise and economically, and fundamentally, the problem of China still very much unresolved.

Absolutely.

So then Biden comes in. What does Biden do? Does he keep the tariffs on?

Biden comes to office, and there remains this real pressure from economists to roll back what they consider to be the ineffective parts of Trump’s trade policy. That includes many of the tariffs. And it’s especially true at a time when almost immediately after Biden takes office, inflation spikes. And so Americans are paying a lot of money for products, and there’s this pressure on Biden, including from inside his administration, to roll back some of the China tariffs to give Americans some relief on prices.

And Biden considers this, but he doesn’t do it. He doesn’t reverse Trump’s tariff policy. In the end, he’s actually building on it.

We’ll be right back.

So Jim, you said that Biden is actually building on Trump’s anti-China policy. What exactly does that look like?

So Biden builds on the Trump China policy in three key ways, but he does it with a really specific goal that I just want you to keep in mind as we talk about all of this, which is that Biden isn’t just trying to beat China on everything. He’s not trying to cut a better deal. Biden is trying to beat China in a specific race to own the clean-energy future.

Clean energy.

Yeah. So keep that in mind, clean energy. And the animating force behind all of the things Biden does with China is that Biden wants to beat China on what he thinks are the jobs of the future, and that’s green technology.

Got it. OK. So what does he do first?

OK. Thing number one — let’s talk about the tariffs. He does not roll them back. And actually, he builds on them. For years, for the most part, he just lets the tariffs be. His administration reviews them. And it’s only now, this week, when his administration is going to actually act on the tariffs. And what they’re going to do is raise some of them. They’re going to raise them on strategic green tech things, like electric vehicles, in order to make them more expensive.

And I think it’s important to know the backdrop here, which is since Biden has taken office, China has started flooding global markets with really low-cost green technologies. Solar panels, electric vehicles are the two really big ones. And Biden’s aides are terrified that those imports are going to wash over the United States and basically wipe out American automakers, solar panel manufacturers, that essentially, if Americans can just buy super-cheap stuff from China, they’re not going to buy it from American factories. Those factories are going to go out of business.

So Biden’s goal of manufacturing jobs in clean energy, China is really threatening that by dumping all these products on the American market.

Exactly. And so what he wants to do is protect those factories with tariffs. And that means increasing the tariffs that Trump put on electric vehicles in hopes that American consumers will find them too expensive to buy.

But doesn’t that go against Biden’s goal of clean energy and things better for the environment? Lots of mass-market electric vehicles into the United States would seem to advance that goal. And here, he’s saying, no, you can’t come in.

Right, because Biden isn’t just trying to reduce emissions at all costs. He wants to reduce emissions while boosting American manufacturing jobs. He doesn’t want China to get a monopoly in these areas. And he’s also, in particular, worried about the politics of lost American manufacturing jobs. So Biden does not want to just let you buy cheaper Chinese technologies, even if that means reducing emissions.

He wants to boost American manufacturing of those things to compete with China, which brings us to our second thing that Biden has done to build on Trump’s China policy, which is that Biden has started to act like the Chinese government in particular areas by showering American manufacturers with subsidies.

I see. So dumping government money into American businesses.

Yes, tax incentives, direct grants. This is a way that China has, in the past decades, built its manufacturing dominance, is with state support for factories. Biden is trying to do that in particular targeted industries, including electric vehicles, solar power, wind power, semiconductors. Biden has passed a bunch of legislation that showers those sectors with incentives and government support in hopes of growing up much faster American industry.

Got it. So basically, Biden is trying to beat China at its own game.

Yeah, he’s essentially using tariffs to build a fortress around American industry so that he can train the troops to fight the clean energy battle with China.

And the troops being American companies.

Yes. It’s like, we’re going to give them protection — protectionist policy — in order to get up to size, get up to strength as an army in this battle for clean energy dominance against the Chinese.

Got it. So he’s trying to build up the fortress. What’s the third thing Biden does? You mentioned three things.

Biden does not want the United States going it alone against China. He’s trying to build an international coalition, wealthy countries and some other emerging countries that are going to take on China and try to stop the Chinese from using their trade playbook to take over all these new emerging industrial markets.

But, Jim, why? What does the US get from bringing our allies into this trade war? Why does the US want that?

Some of this really is about stopping China from gaining access to new markets. It’s like, if you put the low-cost Chinese exports on a boat, and it’s going around the world, looking for a dock to stop and offload the stuff and sell it, Biden wants barriers up at every possible port. And he wants factories in those places that are competing with the Chinese.

And a crucial fact to know here is that the United States and Europe, they are behind China when it comes to clean-energy technology. The Chinese government has invested a lot more than America and Europe in building up its industrial capacity for clean energy. So America and its allies want to deny China dominance of those markets and to build up their own access to them.

And they’re behind, so they’ve got to get going. It’s like they’re in a race, and they’re trailing.

Yeah, it’s an economic race to own these industries, and it’s that global emissions race. They also want to be bringing down fossil-fuel emissions faster than they currently are, and this is their plan.

So I guess, Jim, the question in my mind is, Trump effectively broke the seal, right? He started all of these tariffs. He started this trade war with China. But he did it in this kind of jackhammer, non-targeted way, and it didn’t really work economically. Now Biden is taking it a step further. But the question is, is his effort here going to work?

The answer to whether it’s going to work really depends on what your goals are. And Biden and Trump have very different goals. If Trump wins the White House back, he has made very clear that his goal is to try to rip the United States trade relationship with China even more than he already has. He just wants less trade with China and more stuff of all types made in the United States that used to be made in China. That’s a very difficult goal, but it’s not Biden’s goal.

Biden’s goal is that he wants America to make more stuff in these targeted industries. And there is real skepticism from free-market economists that his industrial policies will work on that, but there’s a lot of enthusiasm for it from a new strain of Democratic economists, in particular, who believe that the only chance Biden has to make that work is by pulling all of these levers, by doing the big subsidies and by putting up the tariffs, that you have to have both the troops training and the wall around them. And if it’s going to work, he has to build on the Trump policies. And so I guess you’re asking, will it work? It may be dependent upon just how far he’s willing to go on the subsidies and the barriers.

There’s a chance of it.

So, Jim, at the highest level, whatever the economic outcome here, it strikes me that these moves by Biden are pretty remarkably different from the policies of the Democratic Party over the decades, really going in the opposite direction. I’m thinking of Bill Clinton and NAFTA in the 1990s. Free trade was the real central mantra of the Democratic Party, really of both parties.

Yeah, and Biden is a real break from Clinton. And Clinton was the one who actually signed the law that really opened up trade with China, and Biden’s a break from that. He’s a break from even President Obama when he was vice president. Biden is doing something different. He’s breaking from that Democratic tradition, and he’s building on what Trump did, but with some throwback elements to it from the Roosevelt administration and the Eisenhower administration. This is this grand American tradition of industrial policy that gave us the space race and the interstate highway system. It’s the idea of using the power of the federal government to build up specific industrial capacities. It was in vogue for a time. It fell out of fashion and was replaced by this idea that the government should get out of the way, and you let the free market drive innovation. And now that industrial policy idea is back in vogue, and Biden is doing it.

So it isn’t just a shift or an evolution. It’s actually a return to big government spending of the ‘30s and the ‘40s and the ‘50s of American industrialism of that era. So what goes around comes around.

Yeah, and it’s a return to that older economic theory with new elements. And it’s in part because of the almost jealousy that American policymakers have of China and the success that it’s had building up its own industrial base. But it also has this political element to it. It’s, in part, animated by the success that Trump had making China an issue with working-class American voters.

You didn’t have to lose your job to China to feel like China was a stand-in for the forces that have taken away good-paying middle-class jobs from American workers who expected those jobs to be there. And so Trump tapped into that. And Biden is trying to tap into that. And the political incentives are pushing every future American president to do more of that. So I think we are going to see even more of this going forward, and that’s why we’re in such an interesting moment right now.

So we’re going to see more fortresses.

More fortresses, more troops, more money.

Jim, thank you.

You’re welcome.

Here’s what else you should know today. Intense fighting between Hamas fighters and Israeli troops raged in parts of Northern Gaza over the weekend, an area where Israel had declared Hamas defeated earlier in the war, only to see the group reconstitute in the power vacuum that was left behind. The persistent lawlessness raised concerns about the future of Gaza among American officials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the return of Hamas to the North left him concerned that Israeli victories there would be, quote, “not sustainable,” and said that Israel had not presented the United States with any plan for when the war ends.

And the United Nations aid agency in Gaza said early on Sunday that about 300,000 people had fled from Rafah over the past week, the city in the enclave’s southernmost tip where more than a million displaced Gazans had sought shelter from Israeli bombardments elsewhere. The UN made the announcement hours after the Israeli government issued new evacuation orders in Rafah, deepening fears that the Israeli military was preparing to invade the city despite international warnings.

Today’s episode was produced by Nina Feldman, Carlos Prieto, Sidney Harper, and Luke Vander Ploeg. It was edited by M.J. Davis Lin, Brendan Klinkenberg, and Lisa Chow. Contains original music by Diane Wong, Marion Lozano, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.

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• May 14, 2024   •   35:20 Voters Want Change. In Our Poll, They See It in Trump.
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• May 10, 2024   •   27:42 Stormy Daniels Takes the Stand
• May 9, 2024   •   34:42 One Strongman, One Billion Voters, and the Future of India
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Hosted by Sabrina Tavernise

Produced by Nina Feldman ,  Carlos Prieto ,  Sydney Harper and Luke Vander Ploeg

Edited by M.J. Davis Lin ,  Brendan Klinkenberg and Lisa Chow

Original music by Diane Wong ,  Marion Lozano and Dan Powell

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

Donald Trump upended decades of American policy when he started a trade war with China. Many thought that President Biden would reverse those policies. Instead, he’s stepping them up.

Jim Tankersley, who covers economic policy at the White House, explains.

On today’s episode

Jim Tankersley , who covers economic policy at the White House for The New York Times.

Background reading

Mr. Biden, competing with Mr. Trump to be tough on China , called for steel tariffs last month.

The Biden administration may raise tariffs on electric vehicles from China to 100 percent .

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