Less learned but still good grades (for some) What impact had school closures on social inequality of educational opportunity?

Several studies have tried to estimate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on student learning and the learning differences between social groups. Few studies have looked at the effects on other aspects of students' educational achievement, especially grades. Institutionally, grades are essential for evaluating students' ability, for tracking, for graduation, and as a signal for the labor market. However, grades are subject to many non-performance-based factors, e.g., students' characteristics such as gender or social origin. Based on previous research and theoretical arguments, we expected grades during school closures to be less correlated with cognitive competencies and higher correlated with social origin than previous cohorts. We analyzed the effect of the pandemic on students' grades in mathematics and German at the end of Grade 8. The pandemic can be seen as a natural experiment that can be exploited when analyzing two cohorts of the German National Educational Panel Study. The grades of the younger cohort (n = 4,069 students) who were in Grade 8 during the pandemic (2020) were compared to the grades of the older cohort (n = 6,861 students in 2014). Our results show no systematic increase in educational inequality based on the social origin of students. However, students in the treatment group reported higher grades which might be a result of pro-social grading by teachers. © 2023 Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH und Co. All rights reserved.

Advancing child health and educational equity during the COVID-19 pandemic through science and advocacy.

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the changing role of scientists, clinicians, ethicists, and educators in advocacy as they rapidly translate their findings to inform practice and policy. Critical efforts have been directed towards understanding child well-being, especially with pandemic-related educational disruptions. While school closures were part of early widespread public health measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, they have not been without consequences for all children, and especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. In a recent Isr J Health Policy Res perspective, Paltiel and colleagues demonstrate the integral role of academic activism to promote child well-being during the pandemic by highlighting work of the multidisciplinary academic group on children and coronavirus (MACC). In this commentary, we explore parallels to MACC's work in an international context by describing the efforts of a multidisciplinary team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, to aggregate data, conduct analyses, and offer training tools intended to minimize health and educational inequities for children throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. As both MACC and our work collectively demonstrates, multidisciplinary partnerships and public-facing data-driven initiatives are crucial to advocating for children's equitable access to quality health and education. This will likely not be the last pandemic that children experience in their lifetime. As such, efforts should be made to apply the lessons learned during the current pandemic to strengthen multidisciplinary academic-public partnerships which will continue to play a critical role in the future.

The relationship between the willingness to mobile learning and educational achievements in health-care professional students.

BACKGROUND: The relationship between willingness to mobile learning (m-learning) and educational achievement was examined in health-care professional students. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a descriptive correlative study that was conducted from January 2020 to February 2020. A total of 295 students in Saveh University of Medical Sciences in Iran were selected through census method. The data were collected using the standard willingness to m-learning questionnaire. The data collected were analyzed statistically using Pearson's correlation coefficient and concurrent regression analysis. RESULTS: The mean score of willingness to m-learning was 165.55 ± 13.4, which is an indicative of a higher willingness level in the health-care professional students for m-learning. There was a positive and significant relationship between willingness for m-learning and educational achievement (r = 0.77, P < 0.01). The predictive variable, i.e., willingness to m-learning, predicted 53.8% of the variance of educational achievement (F = 58.801, P = 0.00). Among the variables of willingness to m-learning, the regression coefficients of perceived ease, attitude, self-management in learning, educational use, and efficiency of m-learning were significant (P < 0.05). This means that these variables are direct predictors of educational achievement. CONCLUSIONS: Willingness to m-learning had a positive and significant relationship with educational achievement. Although this study was performed just before the corona outbreak, paying attention to the results of this study can be helpful for students, faculty members, and policymakers in filling the educational gap during the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak.