Can Universities Help "Build Back Better” in Education? The Socially Embedded University Responds to the Covid-19 Pandemic

The high impact disruptions in the external environment caused by the Covid-19 pandemic revealed the socially embedded character of many universities around the world. University collaborations with schools during the pandemic suggest that they are institutions open to their external environment, capable of learning from and with their environment, and capable of influencing their external environment, helping to address significant social challenges. Drawing on a non-probabilistic survey administered to a convenience sample of 101 universities in 21 countries, I examine how they built partnerships with schools to sustain educational opportunity during the pandemic. The results are informative of the evolving nature of higher education and its mission. They illustrate the responsiveness of universities to societal needs. The findings show that universities are socially connected to their surrounding context, and that they see themselves as engines of social innovation at a time of great unexpected need. The study found the majority of universities to be engaged with schools supporting education during the pandemic. They see such engagement as part of their mission and strategy, even though they perceive it as challenging. Most of such engagements do not have a formalized "theory of action,” but are evolving as the crisis created by the pandemic itself evolved. While such engagement during the pandemic builds on pre-existing engagements with schools, the response during the pandemic provided an opportunity to integrate different efforts across various units. The majority of the universities in the study had a school of education, and about half have a program of pre-service teacher education and few of the collaborations established during the pandemic were new, most were based on pre-existing collaborations. In two thirds of the cases the collaborations with schools during the pandemic were initiated by University leaders. Most of the collaborations consist of developing alternative delivery channels and supporting teachers in developing new skills to teach remotely. Copyright © 2021 Reimers.

In search of a Twenty-First Century Education Renaissance after a Global Pandemic

The COVID-19 Pandemic renewed interest on the question of what goals should be pursued by schools in a world rapidly changing and uncertain. As education leaders developed strategies to continue to educate during the Pandemic, through alternative education arrangements necessitated by the closure of schools, the question of re-prioritizing curriculum became essential. In addition, the anticipated disruptions and impacts that the Pandemic would cause brought the question of what capacities matter to the fore. This chapter reviews the history of mass education and examines the role of the United Nations and other international organizations advocating for schools to educate the whole child and to cultivate the breath of skills essential to advance individual freedoms and social improvement. The chapter makes the case that the aspiration to cultivate a broad range of competencies is not only necessary to meet the growing demands of civic and economic participation, but also critical to close opportunity gaps. The development of a science of implementation of system level reform to educate the whole child is fundamental to close the growing gap between more ambitious aspirations for schools and the learning opportunities that most children experience and that are at the root of their low levels of knowledge and skills as demonstrated in international comparative assessments. Implementation strategies need to take into account the stage of institutional development of the education system, and align the components and sequence of the reform to the existing capacities and structures, while using the reform to help the system advance towards more complex forms of organization that enable it to achieve more ambitious goals. The chapter makes the case for examining the implementation of large scale reforms in countries at varied stages of educational development in order to overcome the limitations of the current knowledge base that relies excessively on the study of a narrow range of countries at similar levels of development, many of them with stagnant or declining performance of their students in international assessments of knowledge and skills. Effective implementation requires also coherence across the various levels of governance of the education system and good communication and collaboration across a wide spectrum of stakeholders. Such communication can be facilitated by a good theory of mind of how others view reform. A reform can be viewed through five alternative frameworks: cultural, psychological, professional, institutional and political, or through a combination of those, and each reform is based on elements reflecting one or several of those frames. Understanding these frames, can help better understand how others view change, thus facilitating communication and the development of a shared theory of change. The chapter concludes describing the methods of this study and introducing the six large scale reforms examined in the book. © The Author(s) 2021. All rights reserved.

Learning from Teaching Graduate Students How to Design Climate Change Education Programs

This chapter discusses lessons learned engaging my graduate students in education policy analysis at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in designing climate change education curricula in partnership with educational institutions around the world. Studying those programs developed by my students, I draw out seven cross-cutting themes about what such an approach yields for students, for the educational institutions they partnered with and for my own institution, while drawing parallels between those curricula and the graduate course in comparative education policy analysis in which these curricula were developed. In addressing those themes the chapter revisits some of the central arguments presented in the introductory chapter about the urgency and the challenges of enhancing the effectiveness of climate change education, and some of the key conclusions of critical reviews of the literature on education and climate change about the limitation of existing approaches to the subject. Those themes are:Educating students to address climate change is about engaging them in active problem solving, not contemplation.While learning from doing is valuable, to advance the field of climate change education, it is necessary to conceptualize and theorize practice.The need to think broadly about learning outcomes in climate change educationThe power of contextually situated learningA Signature project-based pedagogy to Change Climate through EducationAugmenting the capacity for climate change education among teachers and schoolsThe limitations of infusing climate change education in existing courses The chapter concludes examining some blind spots in the climate change curricula presented in the book and drawing parallels between the education response to the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020 and the education response to Climate Change. © 2021, The Author(s).

How can the university contribute to building a better future during the COVID-19 pandemic?

This article examines the educational impact of COVID-19, highlighting the role of the university in promoting innovation that contributes to not just mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic but to build back better. The author argues that the integration of the university's outreach, research and educational functions, aligned with the aspiration to build back better, will make it possible to increase the relevance of the university, as an institution that helps society face successfully the super complex challenges created by the pandemic.