“Super hero” teachers sustained teaching and learning globally during the Covid pandemic, EDUCATE webinar hears

Teachers worldwide produced heroic efforts during the Covid school shutdown, with education systems using varied and often innovative ways to ensure learning continued, an international webinar heard.

Countries also faced similar challenges, regardless of their relative wealth, with shortages of devices and internet connection among sections of the population, and a lack of technological skills among many teachers.

The event, hosted by EDUCATE Ventures and chaired by former Schools Minister Lord Jim Knight, brought together educators, policy makers, tech innovators and academics from several countries across four continents to discuss their experiences of the school shutdown and what lessons can be learned for the future.

International perspectives

As in many countries, including the UK, schools and students in Portugal were hindered by a lack of devices, Huge Fonseca, an EdTech innovator, told the webinar. He said teachers were “heroes” and did what they could to connect with pupils, including distributing work on bicycles.

He said: “In Portugal there is a lack of devices and a lack of teacher training. The profession is among the oldest in Europe, and half of all teachers are more than 50 years old. There is no government support to develop them, and if you leave teachers without learning new skills for 20 years or more then it is hard for them to adapt. We need more young people to go into teaching.”

Ulla Illison, Director General of the Estonian Education and Youth Board, told the webinar that digitalisation of the education system had been a government policy for the past 20 years and that both schools and students were well-prepared for the shutdown, with 95% of parents, teachers and students being connected.

In Uruguay, more coherence was needed between distribution of technology and teacher training. There was a “disconnect” between access to devices and the skills levels of teachers, which made them feel “alone and overwhelmed” Cecilia de la Paz, Founder and Director of educate.uy the bookpack, said.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, one of the countries worst affected by the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of infections and deaths, there was a huge roll-out of technology in recent years but little training for teachers. The result, said Ricardo Prado Schneider, Partner and Chief Scientific Officer of Square Learning Technologies was that technology was “force-fed” on teachers but they were not sufficiently skilled to use it — and there was an expectation they should be “super heroes with without the super powers”.

However, in Zambia, the pandemic offered schools an opportunity for project-based learning to address the problems people face in their communities. An example of this was teaching physics through developing ways of creating an electricity supply — an approach that combined learning with the infrastructure needs of a developing country, Samson Sahmland-Bowling, Director of Open Energy Labs, told the webinar.

But there were also knock-on effects of the pandemic that were rippling through education systems in its aftermath. In Australia, for example, school leaders were considering reforms to end of phase assessment and the use of e-portfolios Jane Hunter, Associate Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Technology, Sydney, said. She added that the pandemic had shone a light on the work of teachers and there was a “shift in perceptions about teachers, and the importance of face-to-face teaching as a valued part of civil society”.

Richard Culatta, CEO of ISTE in the United States, said that his observations of the global response to the pandemic suggested that schools and education networks that prioritised teacher training in technology use showed a more successful educational experience than where there was a focus on “cables and wires”. While this was important, it was often mistakenly expected to solve the challenges of remote learning on its own.

He added: “Every time we have a massive disruption there is a boom in innovation afterwards. The disruption doesn’t cause the innovation but ot creates the conditions for smart people to make things happen. This could be one of the most transformational moments in education and we have a choice whether to take advantage of it. If we don’t, we will go back to the way things were.”

The panel also included Gavin Dykes Programme Director, Education World Forum, James Dalziel, Head of School, NIST International School, Thailand and Udo Wichert, Senior Director Public Sector and Strategic Accounts, Filewave, Germany.

If you missed the webinar, you can catch up here.