Vol. 14 no. 2 / December 2020 / Special Issue: The Impact of COVID-19 on Teaching and Learning

The infectious potential of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19) has demanded radical responses from world leaders in attempt to minimise the outbreak. One such measure has been school closure, which impacted children and adults globally. Schools in Malta have closed on March 13th, 2020. Physical distancing has become a key component in determining a safe reopening of schools. This paper focuses on early childhood education and care (ECEC) within the context of COVID-19 and outdoor learning as a potential response for the reopening of schools amidst the pandemic. Any study released prior to mid-October 2020 that reported on literature related to outdoor learning and COVID-19 was systematically reviewed using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systemic review and Meta-Analysis) statement. This paper suggests outdoor learning as a tentative plan to help with the implementation of the curriculum in ECEC while reducing the risk of virus transmission via
physical distancing in outdoor spaces. As a result, some suggestions are made. It concludes with offering potential directions for future research.

Engaging with the ethics of care as developed by Nel Noddings, this paper unpacks the perceptions of three primary teachers working in Scotland during COVID-19 lockdown. Noddings constructs her ethics of care as relational. This focus on the ‘relation’ is central to the paper and the three themes that emerged from analysing the in-depth interviews conducted with the teachers show different facets of the relations teachers were engaged in during the lockdown. The first theme looks at the teachers’ work during COVID-19 lockdown as embedded within a larger Scottish discourse that has care as central to its formation. The second theme discussed the idea of reciprocity – care ethics focuses on acknowledgment of the relation between the carer and the cared for. The third theme focuses on parents as being intermediary between the teachers and students. The paper suggests that the experience of lockdown offered primary school teachers new possibilities of caring, thus giving teachers the possibility to go beyond the ‘norm’ of care established within their classrooms and schools.

It has become the norm for primary classrooms in Maltese state schools to host a primary school teacher and one or more Learning Support Educators. Although these two roles are distinct in their nature and description, they are equally important for effective classroom management. The most successful and inspiring scenarios, enabling all students to succeed, occur when both roles within the teaching team collaborate successfully (Mulholland & O’Connor, 2016). Following the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020, schools in Malta were closed until the end of the scholastic year. Teaching and learning processes saw a shift from the four walls of the physical classroom to remote classrooms in the online world. The purpose of this study was to explore remote teacher collaboration during the physical closure of schools in Malta through the lens of a model which was identified for the purposes of this work – the COACTION Model. This model was developed through a systematic literature review grounded in evidence-based exemplar characteristics for teacher collaboration. A qualitative study based on the experience of six teaching teams was conducted through semi-structured interviews. A deductive thematic analysis followed the interviews. This paper discusses the experiences of teachers and Learning Support Educators working remotely, and shows whether and how they implemented the elements outlined in the COACTION Model.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the eventual closing of schools in March 2020 throughout the world caused major disruptions to the educational experience of all learners. Teaching and learning began to be organised and delivered from within the homes of educators. With little time to prepare and make the necessary arrangements to transfer devices from schools to teachers’ homes, technological investment financed over several years remained largely idle behind the closed doors of school buildings. This paper looks at the experiences of teachers in primary and secondary schools in Malta as they rapidly shifted their work to online modes of teaching and learning during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic. Data gathered through an online questionnaire captured the views of 407 Maltese educators, working with learners aged five to sixteen years. Through a series of open and closed-ended questions, interesting data was yielded on the approaches they were adopting to deliver learning. Findings indicate teachers used both real time and asynchronous approaches. Benefits and disadvantages of both systems emerged from their responses. Rich insights into the challenges educators faced with both modes of remote online instruction are outlined. Maltese teachers’ voices on the support they received from their leaders and school authorities, and the ways they kept track of learning and learners during the times of COVID-19 are presented. The implications of how teachers and schools responded to the emergency shift to technology-mediated schooling, the influence of previous investment and training in the use of digital technologies and the impact on learners and learning are also explored.

COVID-19 has shaken up the definition and perception of normality. Overnight, educators within the compulsory education sector in Malta had to change their modus operandi from face-to-face to online modality, this despite limited training on remote teaching and learning. This change shifted to a considerable degree the responsibility of learning onto the learners, something which, perhaps, Maltese students were not much accustomed to. Hence, the pandemic has fast-tracked the slow change that the Ministry for Education and Employment (MEDE) (2012) had been trying to bring about – that of having learners as partners in the learning and assessment processes.

Assessment for Learning (AfL) is by far the only evidence-based research which has proven to be the most cost-effective benefit for student achievement when practiced well (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam, 2004; Black & Wiliam, 1998). The Directorate for Learning and Assessment Programmes (DLAP) within Malta’s centralized education system, while making efforts to include formative assessment as part of the teaching and learning process, had not considered using it during online teaching and learning practices, as there never was the need to teach compulsory school students remotely. Hence, it was relevant to investigate whether this assessment modality was being used during online teaching and learning, especially when the digital tools had in-built FA tools. This study presents insights from four-hundred responses received to an online questionnaire about the use of formative assessment by Maltese educators across the different providers and levels of education pr i o r t o and during school closure. Results reflect teachers’ use of a combination of strategies, which declined significantly when learning was transferred online. The highest number of combinations of four strategies, followed by a set of three remained consistent in terms of being the mostly preferred modes of formative assessment used by teachers. The decline has been laterally spread onto other group combinations. Effective Questioning was the most used strategy in a set of combinations during physical classes, while both oral and written feedback were the most used, albeit to a different degree, when teaching online. Teachers who used a blended approach used both types of feedback, however, those who adopted an asynchronous approach relied on written feedback. The change in teaching approach has witnessed a four-type practice variation in the use of FA strategies: no change, slight, moderate and major change.

The study raised the issue of teachers needing to work outside their comfort zone as they had to adapt to the new circumstances, misconceptions about what online teaching and learning entails, knowledge of the possibilities of FA in this modality, and the need for further training as part of professional development.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted millions of people’s lives around the world. This included the lives of teachers and learners in educational institutions because schools were thought to be hotbeds of infection, and shutting them down between March and June 2020 was therefore deemed to be inevitable. Educational facilities, private tutoring, and lifelong learning centres all have had to comply with the government’s directive at the time to suspend, postpone, and/or cancel in-person classes. One group particularly impacted were non-native adults living in Malta, many of whom were learning Maltese as a second language (ML2). Like other educators, many teachers offering ML2 instruction to adults had to shift to an online mode (from mid-March through to the last week of May) in order to complete the 2019–20 ML2 programme. The current study reports on the benefits and challenges encountered by 17 ML2 teachers while teaching online during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and physical school closure. The research applied a qualitative method consisting of one-on-one interviews with 17 ML2 adult educators conducted online. Using the adaptability theory, the researcher sought to investigate the appropriateness of adaptions of ML2 teachers to distance learning approaches during the school shutdown.

The magnitude of the COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented; it has impacted millions of students around the world. Among these impacted students are participants in adult education. Adult education centres have engaged in a series of online activities that have enabled adults who had never used ICT resources before, to interact with other participants. In response to this challenge, this research provides scientific insight regarding the impact of the actions by one adult education centre in Spain, the participants’ association Ágora, whose scope of responsibility is to service the entire neighbourhood of La Verneda (Barcelona). Its objective is to enable adults to acquire abilities and to develop initiative through participation in a broad and high- quality educational programme. Ágora offers the entire neighbourhood a range of cultural and educational activities. This article provides knowledge about how to help people minimize the negative consequences of confinement, and uses a communicative methodology to provide a dialogical re-creation of knowledge which enables researchers to contribute to dismantling myths and false assumptions in identifying the benefits adult education can provide to participants. The field work was carried out online through semi-structured interviews with a number of adult participants between the ages of 30 and 90 who were engaged in adult education activities. The research revealed that participation improved the individuals’ situation by enabling them to overcome loneliness or isolation.

The world is currently experiencing the unimaginable impact of a pandemic. From one day to the other, academics at the University of Malta were forced to shift to working remotely as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Maltese islands. This paper uncovers the lived shared experiences of eight female academics (authors of this paper) who, despite the perceived challenges, considered it also as an opportunity to explore how to conduct research together through online collaboration. This paper thus presents a qualitative study grounded in a narrative inquiry of this collective experience. The collaborative work is informed by: social learning theories influenced by Vygostky; elements from feminist thinking; and literature on collaborative research, online collaboration and academic identity. Our recorded views, as participant-researchers and part of the narrative inquiry, focus on the birth and growth of what we now refer to as the ‘Early Childhood and Primary Education (ECPE) research team’. A thematic analysis of the accounts on our experiences have led to the development of a six-tier framework, the ‘SKRIPT’ framework, for collaborative work in academia. The progressive six concepts identified refer to trust, philosophy, identity, relationships, knowledge and skills. They underpin the inception and course of our online collaborative research experience. The shared stories from which the framework emerged, aim to inspire and encourage other academics to be part of research teams and share their ‘SKRIPT’ of collaborative experiences within online spaces and beyond. Implications for future research are discussed.