ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on schools and schoolchildren across the globe. There is still a dearth of studies that investigate this recent phenomenon in a developing country context, and this is true of Pakistan. Much of the population in Pakistan resides in rural settings and a lack of technology and of online provision of teaching for more than one year must have had huge negative impacts on students' learning. The school dropout rate was already high in rural settings (Geven & Hasan, 2020) and, with school closures, this will likely have increased further, and cause some schoolchildren to lose interest in going back to school. However, no current data appear to exist to corroborate this. Due to the lack of available current quantitative and qualitative data, this study seeks to explore the impact of COVID-19 on schoolchildren's education in Pakistan by examining recently published related studies. This study employs a literature review technique that gathers data to ascertain the potential overall impact on schoolchildren during the pandemic. The findings reveal that there remains a lack of detailed studies on this important topic and that urgent attention is needed from researchers to assess the scale of the impact. In addition, the review found that many children from rural communities had little to no school engagement due to technology poverty and their families being unable to support home-schooling, either due to family and/or work constraints or a lack of prior education and/or skills. Themes that emerged were that families, especially mothers, struggled to balance both caring and home-schooling duties, pupils from private schools had a better experience than those from public school backgrounds, and many of these reported that online provisions helped students develop new skills. This study may help to improve the understanding of the impact on the lost learning of schoolchildren during the pandemic by guiding practitioners as well as policymakers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
This rapid systematic review aims to examine emerging evidence on the effects of COVID-19 on educational institutions and assess the prevalence of e-learning changes in the sector. This paper reviews literature on learning, teaching, and assessment approaches adopted since the COVID-19 outbreak, and assesses the impact on the sector, staff, and students, summarizing findings from peer-reviewed articles. It categorizes these into five key themes: (1) digital learning, (2) e-learning challenges, (3) digital transition to emergency virtual assessment (EVA), (4) psychological impact of COVID-19, and (5) creating collaborative cultures. This represents the first systematic review of COVID-19’s impact on education, clarifying current themes being investigated. The author suggests that the term ‘emergency virtual assessment’ (EVA) is now added for future research discussion. Finally, the paper identifies research gaps, including researching the impact on lesser developed countries, the psychological impact of transition, and the important role of leadership and leadership styles during the transition and handling of the pandemic.