ACADEMIA Letters

Reflections on Educational Practice: COVID-19

Influences
Andree’ Robinson-Neal

The purpose of this paper is to encourage research at the primary, secondary, and post-
secondary 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 ed-
ucational 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 in-
structor 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 ed-
ucational 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, re-

Academia Letters, January 2021 ©2021 by Academia Inc. — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Andree’ Robinson-Neal, [email protected]

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, grad-
uate, 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 en-
acted 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 logis-
tic 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 oppor-
tunity 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 rec-
ommended 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, in-
structors, 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 Academia Inc. — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Andree’ Robinson-Neal, [email protected]

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, in-
cluding 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 re-
search specific to the educational environ:

• In what ways has the pandemic influenced pre-K through grade 12 academic achieve-
ment: 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 men-
tal 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, sec-
ondary, 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 Academia Inc. — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Andree’ Robinson-Neal, [email protected]

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 eco-
nomically disadvantaged or otherwise marginalized populations, for those without ac-
cess 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 in-
stitution 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 develop-
ers, 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.

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Academia Letters, January 2021 ©2021 by Academia Inc. — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Andree’ Robinson-Neal, [email protected]

Citation: Robinson-Neal, A. (2021). Reflections on Educational Practice: COVID-19 Influences. Academia
Letters, Article 176. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL176.

4
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Academia Letters, January 2021 ©2021 by Academia Inc. — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Andree’ Robinson-Neal, [email protected]

Citation: Robinson-Neal, A. (2021). Reflections on Educational Practice: COVID-19 Influences. Academia
Letters, Article 176. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL176.

5
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Academia Letters, January 2021 ©2021 by Academia Inc. — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Andree’ Robinson-Neal, [email protected]

Citation: Robinson-Neal, A. (2021). Reflections on Educational Practice: COVID-19 Influences. Academia
Letters, Article 176. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL176.