Understanding Education Workers' Stressors after Lockdowns in Ontario, Canada: A Qualitative Study.

Understanding the experiences and stressors of education workers is critical for making improvements and planning for future emergency situations. Province-specific studies offer valuable information to understand the stressors of returning to the workplace. This study aims to identify the stressors education workers experienced when returning to work after months of school closures. This qualitative data is part of a larger study. Individuals completed a survey including a questionnaire and some open-ended questions in English and French. A total of 2349 respondents completed the qualitative portion of the survey, of which most were women (81%), approximately 44 years of age, and working as teachers (83.9%). The open-ended questions were analyzed using thematic analysis. Seven themes emerged from our analysis: (1) challenges with service provision and using technology; (2) disruption in work-life balance; (3) lack of clear communication and direction from the government and school administration; (4) fear of contracting the virus due to insufficient health/COVID-19 protocols; (5) increase in work demands; (6) various coping strategies to deal with the stressors of working during the COVID-19 pandemic; (7) lessons to be learned from working amid a global pandemic. Education workers have faced many challenges since returning to work. These findings demonstrate the need for improvements such as greater flexibility, training opportunities, support, and communication.

Examining teachers' behavioural intention for online teaching after COVID-19 pandemic: A large-scale survey.

Recently, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to rapid digitalisation in education, requiring educators to adopt several technologies simultaneously for online learning and teaching. Using a large-scale survey (N = 1740), this study aims to construct a model that predicts teachers' extensive technology acceptance by extending the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with their technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) and innovativeness. TAM has been a valuable tool to measure the adoption of new technology in various contexts, including education. However, TAM has been designed and principally applied to assess user acceptance of a specific technology implementation. This study has extended TAM to measure teachers' technology-enabled practice (online teaching) with the adoption of various technologies. The proposed model explains teachers' behavioural intention to teach online with a good fit. Our findings revealed the collective effects of TPACK, perceived usefulness (PU) of technology, and innovativeness on teachers' behavioural intention to teach online post-pandemic. Moreover, the study identified training and support from school as a significant predictor for both teachers' TPACK and PU. The novelty of this study lies in its model conceptualisation that incorporates both information-technology-based constructs and personal-competence-based features, including TPACK and innovativeness. Furthermore, our study contributes to the growing body of literature that addresses the online teaching adoption by schoolteachers in the post-pandemic era.

The impact of compassion fatigue in K-12 teachers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic education return-to-learn process

Throughout the past two years, education has seen a significant number of changes as schools, educators, and students navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. As teachers transitioned between instructional modes, including hybrid and remote instructional practices, they have seen the role of the teacher shift and evolve. Given these changes, teachers have endured a various challenges that contributed to the possibility of compassion fatigue. This study sought to understand the experience of the teacher and the impact of compassion fatigue (specifically looking at burnout and secondary traumatic stress) on teachers, exploring potential predictors of compassion fatigue. This study used the ProQOL path model as a conceptual framework, focusing on the contributing factors experienced in the teacher's work environment, client (or student/classroom) environment, and person environment. Grounded in a pragmatic philosophical approach to research, this study used a survey research methodology. This study included participants who were K-12 teachers from across the United States, with a majority of participants from the mid-western states. Independent samples t-test revealed that females had a higher rate of compassion fatigue than males, as indicated by higher scores for both burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that a participant's years employed in education, gender, resilience, and compassion satisfaction were predictors of compassion fatigue when looking at secondary traumatic stress. Similarly, hierarchical regression analyses indicated that resilience and compassion satisfaction were predictors of compassion fatigue when looking at burnout. Recommendations for teachers (and teacher organizations), school administrators, and school boards are discussed, along with recommendations for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

A systematic review of K-12 education responses to emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Emergency remote teaching (ERT) has potential for transforming future instruction and learning across the K-12 educational domain. The study presented here evaluated empirical evidence from peer-reviewed literature pertaining to the challenges and opportunities experienced by teachers and students during the implementation of ERT prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. To locate relevant reports and research, the authors explored three databases: Web of Science, ScienceDirect and Scopus. Based upon predefined selection criteria, they selected 51 studies for thematic and content analysis. Next, they developed a taxonomy which comprised three categories: (1) K-12 education responses to ERT; (2) educational inequality; and (3) learning outcomes. Using this taxonomy, the authors conducted a deep analysis and critical review to highlight multiple challenges and critical gaps in the literature surrounding ERT in K-12 education settings. Their review reveals innovative strategies for overcoming obstacles to technological readiness, online learning adaptation and teachers' and students' physical and mental health. This knowledge will be valuable to policymakers, researchers, practitioners and educational institutions in reducing the adverse effects of catastrophic situations on childhood education in the future.

Investigating Synchronous & Asynchronous Feedback in an Elementary School Maker Education Classroom

Providing and receiving feedback is a crucial aspect of K-12 education, and is foundational to building a strong student-educator relationship in project-based learning. Previous research has highlighted the importance of student documentation, thus we study the implementation of a mobile application prototype (CoCreator App) that encourages student documentation along with features for asynchronous educator feedback. We observed and analyzed how educators provided synchronous feedback when conversing in-person with students. Our analysis indicates a variety of differences between synchronous and asynchronous feedback. Asynchronous feedback was typically used for praise and encouragement, but also offered additional opportunities for educators to notice student struggles that may not have been visible in class. Synchronous feedback was largely used to provide process-oriented feedback. Looking ahead as the COVID-19 pandemic prevails, we suggest practices and workflows for maker educators to consider as they provide both synchronous and asynchronous feedback in interdisciplinary (and potentially hybrid) learning environments. © ISLS.

Literacy at the Micro, Meso, and Macro Educational Levels

In only two years, COVID-19 has forced the transformation of the educational system with emergency and radical changes concerning the digitalisation and virtualisation of classrooms. A new hybrid teaching-learning context is opening in which learning analytics becomes relevant as teaching support to adapt instruction to the different learning rhythms of connected learners. As well as for students to make decisions in their self-regulated learning. However, for its proper implementation at the micro, meso and macro educational levels, it is necessary to detect and fill those gaps through training to have a sufficient level of data literacy of the roles involved. However, the educational inquiry doesn't provide any data literacy self-assessment tools. This paper aims to provide an instrument for self-assessment of data literacy at micro, meso andmacro levels in the educational context. The methodology of the work has been designed considering two phases. The first is based on the development and validation of the questionnaire through a documentarymethodology with a qualitative approach. The second is based on its implementation, through a descriptive methodology with a quantitative approach. Aiming to precisely determine the wording according to the population of interest, the validity of the banks of items constructed and their content, have been carried out employing the expert consultation method.

The impact of compassion fatigue in K-12 teachers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic education return-to-learn process

Throughout the past two years, education has seen a significant number of changes as schools, educators, and students navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. As teachers transitioned between instructional modes, including hybrid and remote instructional practices, they have seen the role of the teacher shift and evolve. Given these changes, teachers have endured a various challenges that contributed to the possibility of compassion fatigue. This study sought to understand the experience of the teacher and the impact of compassion fatigue (specifically looking at burnout and secondary traumatic stress) on teachers, exploring potential predictors of compassion fatigue. This study used the ProQOL path model as a conceptual framework, focusing on the contributing factors experienced in the teacher's work environment, client (or student/classroom) environment, and person environment. Grounded in a pragmatic philosophical approach to research, this study used a survey research methodology. This study included participants who were K-12 teachers from across the United States, with a majority of participants from the mid-western states. Independent samples t-test revealed that females had a higher rate of compassion fatigue than males, as indicated by higher scores for both burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that a participant's years employed in education, gender, resilience, and compassion satisfaction were predictors of compassion fatigue when looking at secondary traumatic stress. Similarly, hierarchical regression analyses indicated that resilience and compassion satisfaction were predictors of compassion fatigue when looking at burnout. Recommendations for teachers (and teacher organizations), school administrators, and school boards are discussed, along with recommendations for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

K-12 Schooling through Virtual Exchange: Opportunities in a Fractured Context

The study considers the opportunities and barriers facing the implementation of virtual exchange in K-12 education, and the perceptions of access to these opportunities for underrepresented students in the context of the federal US education system. These issues are examined through the lens of a domestic program offered by Empatico known as Empathy Across the US. Our findings point to several of the known barriers in the facilitation of virtual exchange, including technology access and pressing demands facing teachers, both of which impact accessibility. This study offers insights into how teachers in different settings perceive and experience the implementation of a domestic model of virtual exchange. As K-12 virtual exchange programs often rely on the willingness of teachers to implement these kinds of programs outside of the official school curriculum, our research indicated the importance of system-wide investment and structural support for domestic virtual exchange beyond individual champions. © Journal of International Students.

The Digitalization of Teaching Practices in K-12 Education: Insights from Teachers’ Perspective

The reopening of schools and the returning to normal after the emergency experience of online teaching brought to the line new realities in educational practice for both teachers and students. It is now crucial to reflect on the consequences of this experience and rethink the prospects of using digital tools and online learning. The previous remote learning experience could be conceived as an opportunity for the educational community to take advantage of the benefits online teaching offers and adopt those practices that could further develop the teaching experience. This paper examines the reality in K-12 schools after the pandemic investigating the incorporation of seven digital teaching strategies into teachers’ daily routines. The study adopts a mixed methodology approach analysing quantitative data from an online survey of 392 in-service teachers and qualitative data from two focus groups. The results show that an essential percentage of teachers continue to use some practices of the distance learning model to enhance learning and communication in the classroom. The use of these strategies was directly and indirectly affected by teachers’ attitudes towards the distance learning model and their perceptions of the challenges faced during the pandemic. Implications for policy and practice are drawn. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Comparison of CS Middle-School Instruction during Pre-Pandemic, Early-Pandemic and Mid-Pandemic School Years

In 2020, the world confronted an unprecedented event affecting education globally: COVID-19. Events that disrupt education are not new;Homelessness or trauma negatively impact education at an individual level, whereas war stops education completely. This event is unique in that it caused the cessation of in-person instruction for all but with a rapid transition to remote instruction. In this study, we explore how the COVID-19 pandemic affected instruction of Scratch Encore Curriculum, a Scratch curriculum typically used in middle grades with students between 10-14 years old. We analyzed a variety of data sources, including partner classroom-level data as well as anonymous download data. We found that instruction halted abruptly in the United States at the beginning of the March lockdown, with no further instruction that spring. With the introduction of online instructional materials, instruction resumed to normal levels during the 2020-21 school year (which was remote instruction for much of the year). In addition, students completed projects with similar accuracy and completeness during remote instruction as compared with in-person instruction prior to the pandemic. © 2022 ACM.

Food for Thought: Spotlighting Baltimore's Frontline Food Service Workers

This article outlines a collaboration between staff from the Baltimore City Public School district Food and Nutrition Services and the Baltimore Museum of Industry. The Food for Thought project honors the frontline food service workers who nourished Baltimore students throughout the pandemic and inspires action to address food insecurity. A temporary exhibition at the museum is complemented by a permanent installation at the school district headquarters. This project was more than its end product. This partnership required active listening, remaining open to new models of thinking, and evolving expectations. Its structure demanded that we all respect varied expertise within and outside our institutions. While not perfect, this partnership aimed to move beyond collaboration to co-creation by offering multiple opportunities for participants to make decisions. The effort to support community well-being starts with engaging with partners in true collaboration based on mutual respect, shared goals, and building off each other's strengths.

Remote Reach: Innovating K-12 Education in a Time of Social Distancing and Beyond

In the face of the COVID-19 crisis, parents and educators were tasked with the enormous responsibility of creating a dedicated learning environment for their students at home. While shifting to an online medium was challenging, it provided a unique opportunity for AIChE at UCLA to support K-12 students through its new Remote Reach project. In Remote Reach, designing and delivering personalized interactive lessons to students has proved to be a rewarding and enjoyable experience for members involved. The prospect of online education has enabled our chapter to establish several connections with schools and community groups and develop a new approach to outreach. This year, our chapter's Remote Reach, was a year-long project that was dedicated to helping elementary and high school students learn and get excited about STEM topics while learning from home. We partnered with 3 main schools, 2 elementary schools and 1 high school. For each elementary school, we had a team of 5-10 AIChE members make and present a unique STEM module biweekly to 100+ students. Topics were chosen based on teacher, school, and member input and were designed to include demos, videos, and interactive content. The goal was to facilitate learning and discussion amongst the students using different mediums, rather than just our members lecturing them. These biweekly modules gave the elementary students the opportunity to learn new topics on a regular basis and become comfortable with our members. For the high school, we designed modules that would teach them about what ChemE's do and how wide-ranging our careers can be with videos and an interactive Process Flow Diagram activity. At this workshop, we will introduce innovative ways our chapter has served hundreds of students in the Greater Los Angeles community online, and how all student chapters can grow their own outreach programs in this ever-changing climate. Additionally, we will detail how Remote Reach's techniques can be utilized in both an in-person and online format to best serve your community as guidelines change. © 2021 American Institute of Chemical Engineers. All rights reserved.

Augmented Reality in K–12 Education: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Literature from 2000 to 2020

With its capacity to support student-centered learning through digital transformation and shared experience, augmented reality (AR) has received increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners as an emerging technology to achieve innovative and sustainable education. Therefore, this study systematically reviewed the literature on the application of augmented reality in K–12 education settings between 2000 and 2020. After two stages of screening, 129 articles were selected, and the key research results were analyzed and integrated by adopting a coding scheme including basic information, instruction contexts, technical features, instructional design, and research results. The results revealed interesting findings regarding the augmented reality literature in terms of publication patterns, application fields, technological affordances, instructional designs, and methods. Furthermore, a meta-analysis was conducted to examine the effectiveness of augmented reality-based instruction, and the results showed a large overall effect size (g = 0.919) with three significant moderators. Finally, the practical significance of AR-based instruction and a future research agenda are discussed.

How Prepared Was the World for Emergency Distance Learning in K-12 Education? A Literature Review

The present study answers the question of how prepared the world was in school distance education. The situation of primary and secondary education is deepened around experiences in distance education focused on students, in the period that includes the decade between 2010 and 2019. Designs and modalities of distance education, types of interaction, recurring themes, and impact of reported experiences were analyzed. The results reveal a low preparation in distance school education, compared to the high demand for online education that has arisen since the COVID-19 pandemic. The blended learning design appears as the most used modality, while the type of asynchronous interaction was the most frequent before the pandemic. In addition, differences are recognized in the impacts reported in the analyzed literature, which allows establishing a type of impact that includes distance education as its independent variable, and another that considers it as a more contextual element while studying the relationships between other variables. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

An Instrument for Self-assessment of Data Literacy at the Micro, Meso, and Macro Educational Levels

In only two years, COVID-19 has forced the transformation of the educational system with emergency and radical changes concerning the digitalisation and virtualisation of classrooms. A new hybrid teaching-learning context is opening in which learning analytics becomes relevant as teaching support to adapt instruction to the different learning rhythms of connected learners. As well as for students to make decisions in their self-regulated learning. However, for its proper implementation at the micro, meso and macro educational levels, it is necessary to detect and fill those gaps through training to have a sufficient level of data literacy of the roles involved. However, the educational inquiry doesn’t provide any data literacy self-assessment tools. This paper aims to provide an instrument for self-assessment of data literacy at micro, meso and macro levels in the educational context. The methodology of the work has been designed considering two phases. The first is based on the development and validation of the questionnaire through a documentary methodology with a qualitative approach. The second is based on its implementation, through a descriptive methodology with a quantitative approach. Aiming to precisely determine the wording according to the population of interest, the validity of the banks of items constructed and their content, have been carried out employing the expert consultation method. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

What makes online teaching spatial? Examining the connections between K-12 teachers' spatial skills, affect, and their use of spatial pedagogy during remote instruction.

Spatial skills are critical for student success in K-12 STEM education. Teachers' spatial skills and feelings about completing spatial tasks influence students' spatial and STEM learning at both the primary and secondary levels. However, whether spatial skills and spatial anxiety differ or not between these two teacher levels is unknown. Additionally, the relations between teachers' spatial skills, spatial anxiety, and their use of spatial pedagogical practices in remote learning settings is unknown. Here, we investigated if spatial skills and spatial anxiety differ between teachers working at primary versus secondary levels, and examined the relations between their spatial skills and spatial anxiety while accounting for additional influential factors-general reasoning ability and general anxiety. Lastly, we investigated how teachers' spatial skills in conjunction with their spatial anxiety relate to their use of spatial teaching practices for online instruction. Sixty-two K-12 teachers completed measures of spatial skills, spatial anxiety, general anxiety, general reasoning, and a teaching activities questionnaire. Results indicate that spatial skills and spatial anxiety may not vary between teachers working at primary versus secondary levels, but that higher spatial skills in teachers are associated with lower spatial anxiety for mental manipulation tasks. Additionally, teachers with weaker spatial skills and lower mental manipulation anxiety reported more frequently using spatial teaching practices when teaching remotely due to COVID-19. These findings may have broad implications for teacher professional development with regards to developing students' spatial skills during remote learning.

Teaching Artificial Intelligence in K-12 Education: Competences and Interventions

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the strategic importance of artificial intelligence (AI) to all the governments around the world. However, governments do not seem to have understood to the same extent how AI can be implemented, so they are not taking advantage of its potential. Education plays a critical role in efforts to make future workforces AI-ready. It is an emergency the development of digital skills especially in matters of AI and it becomes clear that in order to ensure that a country has the trained and talented workforce needed to implement artificial intelligence in the economy and society, it is essential to invest in STEM and AI education that can give students the skills and opportunities to pursue a career in STEM. As is well known, creating the next generation of scientists, leaders and entrepreneurs takes time and it’s nurtured over many years, starting at an early age in school. The curricular reform efforts outlined in this paper clearly demonstrate the need to define the journey in ‘AI competences’ in K-12 education that incorporates 21st century skills. The paper explores the AI skills and competences that need to be developed in primary and secondary education and presents some implementations of AI-based interventions in the classroom using voice assistants. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Blockchain-Centered Educational Program Embodies and Advances 2030 Sustainable Development Goals

Education is the foundation of basic human rights and the peace of mankind as well as the pursuit of sustainable development. In this article, we have developed a blockchain-centered educational program contributing to Goal 4, Quality Education, among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Education for SD (ESD). The education program featured herein consisted of three lessons in total and has been developed to accommodate gamification techniques. We implemented the education program on 704 elementary school students in Korea for three years from 2019 to 2021. The effectiveness of the education program was primarily analyzed by paired t-test and technical statistics analysis. In a pre-and post-education survey, digital literary, literacy, and numeracy were all significantly improved, with satisfaction level rated at 3.91 out of 5 points. We hope that the blockchain-themed education program proposed herein will provide implications for the promotion of inclusive and equitable quality education.

Analysis of the educational resources used in the course Fundamentals of Informatics in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic

Technology brought several advancements to the Educational area in the past few years, including digital resources such as Open Educational Resources (OER). However, higher demand associated with the lack of platforms that facilitate the search and sharing of these resources is an impeditive factor, often causing the devaluation and loss of these materials. This article presents ReaCloud, a digital repository designed to index OERs, improve the usability of adding OERs, and aligned with Brazilian standards for k-12 education. © 2021 IEEE.

#NotHolidayButDistance Education: a study on social media use for K-12 education during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose: This study aims to explore Twitter posts of Turkish government agencies and the public under a specific hashtag, #NotHolidayButDistanceEducation, specifically related to online distance education during the Covid-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a thematic analysis on 22,547 original tweets posted by 6,970 users during the first month of online distance education in Turkish K-12 schools. Based on like and retweet counts, the study further explored the extent of stakeholders’ engagement with the observed themes. Findings: The findings showed that government agencies and citizens used Twitter to provide technical and psychological support, appreciate and motivate stakeholders, demonstrate sample distance education activities, share information and offer suggestions about the ongoing online distance education. It was also observed that the hashtag has been used for expressing negative views about online distance education and for political purposes. A positive relationship was found between social media engagement and providing technical support or sharing information for online distance education. Practical implications: This study highlights the role of social media in providing practical and emotional support to education stakeholders in times of crisis. Thus, governments can use social media to provide evidence-based psychological and physical health support to their citizens during a pandemic. Social media can serve to improve education practices in schools through the interactions between the public and policymakers. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study can be considered unique because it demonstrates the civic use of social media for educational crisis management. This study highlights the influence of social media in educational policy and practice development in the contemporary era. © 2022, Ismail Celik, Muhterem Dindar and Hanni Muukkonen.