Creativity and Resilience in Art Students During COVID-19
Experiences of teaching online art during the pandemic and shifting pedagogy to prioritize student well-being within projects and assignments.
Reflecting on practice of teaching online through a narrative approach
Art Education, Experiences in Distance and Isolation: Art Stories From the Pandemic. 17-18.
Surveying and resonating with teacher concerns during COVID-19 pandemic
Research from the Teaching & Learning in COVID-19 times study
ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic jolted teachers to the front line of complex,under resourced negotiation of quality distance learning, whilst also being key communicators with students and families about how to be COVID safe. Media reports debated preschool and school closures and child safety, but scarcely considered teachers. Motivated by the silencing of teachers and extraordinary changes to education, we gathered as a group of nine educational researchers located in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and U.S.A to create a survey platform for teachers’ lived experiences of the impact of COVID-19. Our survey asked 22 questions and attracted 624 responses. This article focuses on question 12: What are the issues you are struggling with and need support with? Drawing from Latour’s provocation we distill key ‘matters of concern’ from the data, illustrated by excerpts from teacher responses and echoed by the authors’ COVID lived experiences as interwoven blackout poetry. Our collated experiences highlight struggles with online learning, connectivity/communication with students and families, quality of teaching, and workload, and the need to value and invest in education and the professionalism of teachers to address these struggles.
Louise Gwenneth Phillips, Melissa Cain, Jenny Ritchie, Chris Campbell, Susan Davis, Cynthia Brock, Geraldine Burke, Kathryn Coleman, Esther Joosa
Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice
Early childhood education in Aotearoa in a post-Covid world
This article draws on recent research on the impact of Covid-19 on the early childhood education (ECE) sector in Aotearoa. It discusses the innovative ways that ECE services found to communicate with families and children and maintain an education programme during lockdowns, the essential role they played in childcare for children of essential workers, and the approaches some took to “working in solidarity” with children, families, and community. The article discusses crucial issues that need attention at policy and organisational levels. These include new issues that arose during lockdowns, and enduring issues that have intensified. The consequences of three decades of neoliberalism, privatisation and marketisation are briefly discussed and a reimagined vision is put forward.
Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington
The Pandemic as a Portal : On Transformative Ruptures and Possible Futures for Education
Reflection inspired by Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca
Bank Street College of Education Occasional Papers Series
Children’s informal learning at home during COVID-19 lockdown
The New Zealand national COVID-19 lockdown during school Term 1 2020 provided a unique context to investigate children’s experiences of informal, everyday learning in their household bubble. In Terms 3 and 4, 178 children in Years 4–8 from 10 primary schools agreed to participate in a group art-making activity and an individual interview about their experiences. The research adopted a strengths-based approach on the basis that most children are capable actors in their social worlds. This report documents children’s accounts of the multiple ways in which they negotiated the novel experience of forced confinement over a period of several weeks with family and whānau.
Roseanna Bourke, John O’Neill, Sue McDowall, Maria Dacre, Nicole Mincher, Vani Narayanan, Sinead Overbye, Renee Tuifagalele
Learning in a Covid-19 World: The Impact of Covid-19 on Early Childhood Education
Evaluation by Education Review Office of impact of COVID-19 on ECE
Children’s working theories about Covid-19 in Aotearoa New Zealand
Early childhood education, young children's working theories about COVID-19
ABSTRACT As the COVID-19 virus has spread worldwide, much attention has been paid to its impact on the health and wellbeing of adults, with less attention to how the virus has impacted on young children. This article draws on documentation and video data from a kindergarten in Aotearoa New Zealand. It discusses the working theories of 4 year-old children whose teachers encouraged them to draw, construct images, explain and tell stories about their experiences, ideas and feelings about the virus. A main argument is that children’s working theories about the virus, knowledge of the virus and sense of personal control over keeping themselves safe developed over time. Arts-based and storytelling pedagogy were central in enabling children to communicate with others, to be understood themselves and to extend their own understanding.
Raella Kahuroa, Linda Mitchell, Olivia Ng, Terina Johns
European Early Childhood Education Research Journal
COVID-19 and the exacerbation of educational inequalities in New Zealand
ABSTRACT New Zealand’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was “to go fast and go hard”. This directive meant closing the borders, requiring returning New Zealanders to go into two-week self-isolation and, on 25 March 2020, putting the entire country into full lockdown. Schools had a short period of time to get ready to offer online learning. The move highlighted the country’s social, economic and educational divide. On television we were shown children with laptops working at home in their designer living rooms, talking to their teachers through Zoom with their parents hovering around supportively. However, this was not the reality for all. There are parts of the country with limited or no Internet connectivity. There are high poverty areas where households do not have basic materials, let alone computers or other devices suitable for use as learning platforms. A survey of schools showed that only half the schools in the country felt that their students would be able to access online learning. The Ministry of Education had to quickly organise the delivery of learning packs of printed materials to outlying areas, laptops and modems to low-income communities and set up a home-learning television channel with programmes in English and te reo Māori (the indigenous language). Studies are now revealing that despite these efforts, and as the COVID-19 economic impacts begin to bite, New Zealand’s at-risk students have fallen even further behind. This article discusses these research findings and highlights what was learnt from the COVID-19 experience in order to begin to redress these disparities.
He Whānau Manaaki kindergartens, Aotearoa New Zealand: a pandemic outreach in new political times
Early childhood education in kindergartens in Aotearoa New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic
ABSTRACT This article is an early commentary on a kindergarten story from Aotearoa – New Zealand during the COVID-19 nationwide lockdown in 2020; detailing community outreach and new ways of providing a kindergarten experience for children at home. A backdrop to this commentary is the political context of a popular Labour-led government managing a pandemic with the intent to eliminate the virus, which few other countries considered possible. The onset of the pandemic coincided with a reinvigorated early childhood policy environment with the release in December 2019 of a ten-year action plan for the sector. Its future is unfolding in uncertain times.
Are we being inclusive enough of children in our pandemic response?
news article on consulting with children about COVID-19 public communications.
The Spinoff. https://thespinoff.co.nz/covid-19/24-11-2021/are-we-being-inclusive-enough-of-children-in-our-pandemic-response