More than two years have passed since the first lockdown. There are critical decisions and adjustments that students and teachers had to make to respond to the challenges of the pandemic. In my personal experience, I became part of the committee who developed a primer and a student guidebook for flexible learning for the university where I work as a faculty member.
Today, schools are now gradually opening but not to completely go back to the way things were done before. Like students who go to school to learn, our entire education system is still testing the waters, finding the most effective ways to teach and learn. And moving towards the new normal carries important, often uncomfortable, lessons.
But the pandemic is a different force, something that no one saw coming. Our education system was never designed to address a crisis such as this. Thus, we are forced to let go of these traditional practices and come to terms with the fact that a face-to-face set-up is just one of the options to learn. In this sense, the pandemic seems to be a push to our culture to change the way it educates the people, especially the younger generation.
Flexible learning will define the education landscape in the years to come. But it will take more than flexibility to deliver quality education. Two things are critical for education institutions and other systems as well: adaptability and reflexivity. The first one refers to our openness to the uncertainty of our times. Predictability does not guarantee easy learning.
Source: Education Headlines (educationheadlines.net)