ACADEMIA Letters Reflections on Educational Practice: COVID-19 Influences Andree’ Robinson-Neal, Grand Canyon University The purpose of this paper is to encourage research at the primary, secondary, and postsecondary levels to further explore the ramifications on educational practice due to the most recent pandemic. While a body of global research has developed that includes discussions of preparation, teacher experiences, and barriers, there will be a growing need to identify the ways in which local and national conditions have precipitated continuous change by educational leaders and providers. In addition to a brief discussion about learning, education provision, and a short overview of existing research, potential questions and areas for future research to guide such inquiries have been offered. Learning and Teaching Practices Throughout the centuries, researchers have studied the ways people learn and how instructors teach. Learning is dialogic, and as Skidmore (2008) suggested, involves four typical forms: dialogic instruction (student to instructor knowledge exchange), dialogic inquiry (student to student collaborative processes), dialogical pedagogy (what Hamer et al., 2008, describe as contributing student pedagogy), and dialogical teaching (collective process whereby the instructor incorporates all forms of dialogic to repackage educational components as needed). Despite all the effort to provide training and support to educators, there remains a school resistance (McFadden & Munns, 2002), where students are reluctant to buy into what educational institutions are selling. McFadden and Munns (2002) focused on disadvantaged students and the implications of cultural dynamics on how much they resisted school. More current research indicates that culture, regardless of its situation in race, space, or place, reAcademia Letters, January 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Andree’ Robinson-Neal, drarneal1@protonmail.com Citation: Robinson-Neal, A. (2021). Reflections on Educational Practice: COVID-19 Influences. Academia Letters, Article 176. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL176. 1 mains at issue within classrooms across the educational diaspora (see for example Andrews, 2017; Ellis, 2018; Gunn, 2017; Krishnan, et al., 2019; Mutasov & Marjanovic-Shane, 2017). Primary and secondary school leaders, as well as those responsible for undergraduate, graduate, professional, and doctoral studies programs are increasingly working to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion as related to curriculum development and delivery, hiring practices, training, and teaching practices. As the education modality moved from exclusively brick-and-mortar to distance delivery, the need for instructors, course developers, subject matter experts, and others did not shift away from the cultural priority. However, the pandemic, COVID-19, created new stressors on education institution resources as the need to shift to more exclusive forms of distance delivery presented itself. As states, provinces, and countries shut down and governmental leaders enacted legislation to restrict movement and gathering, education leaders pressed toward online forms of teaching and learning. Pre-K through University: Pandemic Education Provision Schools and colleges have been wrestling with distance education for decades (see for example Farrell, 1999). While technology has enabled provision of education across various virtual platforms, not all school levels or institutions have used them. There are financial and logistic implications to a governmental shutdown, as well as psychological ones. DeWitt (2020) offered several reflective comments: To be clear, virtual learning takes place when teachers, leaders, and students can reflect on the best options to engage virtually and then go through a process where they learn what works and what does not. There is a great deal of planning and preparation that goes into virtual learning. Pandemic learning is when the opportunity for virtual learning is created overnight. The luxury of time to reflect on what works and what doesn’t work is nonexistent. (para. 1) Because schools in many countries operate under a mandate to provide some basic form of education (see Potential Areas for Research later in the paper), various think tanks recommended the swift ramp-up to virtual learning to help mitigate possible achievement gaps (Harris, 2020). Yet, research shows there have been challenges with the processes being used in schools, colleges, and universities to stay ahead of the health issue for their students, instructors, and administrators (see for example Aguilera-Hermida, 2020; Aliyyah, et al., 2020; Bacher-Hicks, Goodman, & Mulhern, 2020; Day, et al., 2021; Kaden, 2020). Academia Letters, January 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Andree’ Robinson-Neal, drarneal1@protonmail.com Citation: Robinson-Neal, A. (2021). Reflections on Educational Practice: COVID-19 Influences. Academia Letters, Article 176. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL176. 2 Potential Areas for Future Research News headlines from the last weeks of 2020 and the initial weeks of 2021 suggested a vaccine to combat COVID-19. However, development of enough vaccines for the populace is still some time off. There are concerns about its safety, efficacy, and questions bubble about the influence of culture on who will take it (see for example Al-Mohaithef, & Padhi, 2020; Hanif, Ali, Patel, & Khunti, 2020; Salali, & Uysal, 2020). There is a continuing emergent need for further research in the educational sphere as well. Haleem et al. (2020) identified 18 different areas that would benefit from further research, including Industry 4.0/IoT (Internet of Things), psychological issues, importance of home life, social, the emergence of new workplaces and work cultures. While Haleem and colleagues’ work focused more on the workplace, the following four questions could serve to launch research specific to the educational environ: • In what ways has the pandemic influenced pre-K through grade 12 academic achievement: Longitudinal research to capture numeric information over a span of years could offer a way to record general outcomes, such as test achievement, graduation rates, and college admission for seniors could add voluminous data sets, for example to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in the United States or the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, which maintains various databases on the state of education in global society. Further, qualitative research could eventually gather the descriptions and perceptions of educators and students regarding what they see as opportunities and challenges that arose during this period. • What are the psychological influences of the pandemic on students and instructors in primary, secondary, and post-secondary classrooms: Similar to the previous point and to Haleem et al.’s (2020) recommendation, there would be a benefit to community mental health and school counselor practitioners to understand the ways students describe the effect of the pandemic on their educational self-efficacy and morale. Valuable to the institutions writ large would be exploration of the psychological influences on teachers and faculty as well. • In what ways has the pandemic guided changes in classroom practice in primary, secondary, and post-secondary classrooms: Instructors across the educational spectrum have had to adjust the ways they teach. Quantitative researchers might develop a tool to measure practical shifts in teaching pedagogy-in-practice, which could then be used to compare between those instructors who have traditionally taught in-person and made Academia Letters, January 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Andree’ Robinson-Neal, drarneal1@protonmail.com Citation: Robinson-Neal, A. (2021). Reflections on Educational Practice: COVID-19 Influences. Academia Letters, Article 176. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL176. 3 the ‘instant’ switch to virtual teaching and those instructors whose primary modality has been distance or virtual teaching. • In what ways has the pandemic created greater teaching and learning chasms for economically disadvantaged or otherwise marginalized populations, for those without access to technology, and in nations where there is no governmental mandate for certain levels of education for children or adults: the pandemic creates an opportunity to further explore the notion of student resistance to learning (building on the work of McFadden and Munns, 2002) and to expand the dialog into areas such as the ways education institution leaders and instructors worked to address existing and new inequities at such a time. Researchers might also examine the platforms schools, colleges, and universities took to during the pandemic to compare delivery outcomes from the perspectives of course developers, IT professionals, and finance personnel. The body of research would benefit from more narrative and quantification on general DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) outcomes across all levels of education during the pandemic as well. References Aguilera-Hermida, A. P. (2020). College students’ use and acceptance of emergency online learning due to Covid-19. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 1, 100011. Aliyyah, R. R., Rachmadtullah, R., Samsudin, A., Syaodih, E., Nurtanto, M., & Tambunan, A. R. S. (2020). The perceptions of primary school teachers of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic period: A case study in Indonesia. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies, 7(2), 90-109. Al-Mohaithef, M., & Padhi, B. K. (2020). 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Academia Letters, January 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Andree’ Robinson-Neal, drarneal1@protonmail.com Citation: Robinson-Neal, A. (2021). Reflections on Educational Practice: COVID-19 Influences. Academia Letters, Article 176. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL176. 6