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IntroductionDue to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruption of education systems worldwide, secondary schools in Malaysia have shifted to online classes to ensure educational continuity. Therefore, it was necessary to investigate the various effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on secondary school students. MethodsA self-reported survey with closed and open-ended questions was used to collect data involving 1,067 secondary school students from eight schools in Sabah, Malaysia. The participants were mostly male (53.4%), with a mean age of 14.8 (SD = 1.64). The study involved students from various levels/grades, including transition class, forms 1-5, lower six, and upper six. ResultsStudents faced a variety of school-related stressors, including academic failure due to a poor online course;general mental health issues;a poor internet connection;a lack of in-person interaction;a SOP restriction;an inability to focus;too many homework assignments;burnout;becoming lazier;home conditions;and financial difficulties. DiscussionThe implications for classroom practice, policy formulation, and future research are examined.
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This paper deals with the results of students during the preparing courses of mathematics for entrance exams at an university. These courses take place every year and since the Covid-19 period, they are not only face-to-face, but also online. The study involves students of secondary schools who apply to the university of economics. This report compares results of tests of two different classes of these students and from different parts of mathematics. These tests are in the form of online quizzes. We do not prove if there are differences between the scores of students of short-time or long-time courses. In addition, we compare the results with the students from the year before. We also emphasize the more problematic topics of mathematics.
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This qualitative study analyzed pedagogical effects of multilayer mitigation in a Thai classroom. The triangulated data set were confidential, comprising teachers' voluntary anonymous information, pedagogical views and opinions, respectively. First, pupils' low absence rates enabled pedagogical focus on learning losses, which were mainly skills. The second effect was related to assessment. None of the teachers mentioned test results as learning loss indicators but regarded learning and qualified assessment as dynamic processes. An interesting dilemma was the learning loss measurements by non-pedagogical experts. Mostly those were presented as test scores, working hour counts, or annual formalities. However, optimized learning strategies' research had existed for decades, being responded better by these pupils. The third effect was the improved resilience of pupils and caretakers. Initially worried parents turned relieved. Resilience fostered the intrinsic motivation of all. When compared to some countries, firmer resilience made the difference in learning loss endurance for this group. "All-inclusive" mitigation had given families meaningful support. They shared visions of community roles, mediated by teachers and school management. The latter were backed by epidemiologists and medical experts. Further studies should discuss schools in a longer timeframe. External, quantified test scores without in-depth pedagogical analyses seem outdated by the early fourth pandemic year.
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BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has led to changes in dietary and lifestyle habits among children and adolescents. This study investigated the prevalence and factors associated with unhealthy dietary habits among 1,475 primary and secondary school students from 2021 to 2022.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in randomly selected primary and secondary schools participating in a project promoting online health education and promotion named GoSmart using self-administered questionnaires. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to investigate the demographic and lifestyle habits associated with various unhealthy dietary habits. This study was approved by Survey and Behavioural Research Ethics (SBRE) [Reference No.: SBRE-21-0052] and funded by Quality Education Fund (QEF#2019/0883).ResultsThe prevalence of inadequate consumption of vegetables and fruits was high among both primary (81.5%) and secondary school students (89.5%) and associated with physical inactivity in both primary (aOR=3.35, 95%CI: 1.41-7.97, p=0.006) and secondary students (aOR=4.30, 95%CI: 1.51-12.25, p=0.006). A substantial prevalence of breakfast skipping was observed among primary students (22.9%) who spent two or more hours on video games or social media (aORs=1.84-2.27);and among secondary students (23.7%) who consumed two or more hours on social media, alcohol consumption, and consumption of unhealthy food (aORs=1.42-2.79). Consumption of unhealthy food was reported by 43.9% and 48.2% for primary and secondary students respectively, with primary and secondary students who spent two or more hours on video games or social media (aORs=1.62-2.27) and secondary students who perceived themselves as underweight (aOR=1.79, 95%CI: 1.13-2.83, p=0.012) having a higher frequency of consumption.ConclusionsThere was a high prevalence of unhealthy dietary habits among schoolchildren in Hong Kong. Alarming results were observed with physical inactivity being associated with a higher risk of unhealthy dietary habits among primary and secondary students, which may increase the risk of obesity. Moreover, the apparent interrelationship between unhealthy habits highlights the need for a comprehensive approach to promoting healthy habits through education in this population.
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Not only do the early pandemic fads of sourdough baking and mushroom foraging make the narrator's frontier-style life now seem less removed from reality, the loneliness, uncertainty, and subdued terror that form the backdrop of her daily routine perhaps for the first time will be relatable to students. [...]their loneliness begets deeper woes: the most recently released Youth Risk Behavior Survey (2023) issued by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shares that almost half of high school students in 2021 reported "persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness," a significant increase from prepandemic times. In a variation of an American Association of Teachers of German sponsored public graffiti event created by my colleague several years ago to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall, I will repeat her prompt: "Which walls hold you back?" Key to her question was the understanding of a "wall" as any kind of social, physical, or mental impediment that prevented students from fully realizing their goals. In particular, the moment at which the narrator encounters the wall is jarring;a comparison of the literary versus cinematic description of this event offers students the opportunity to consider the power and/or limits of the written word.
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The aim of this study is to examine the opinions of secondary school students about mathematics lessons taught with distance education. The research was carried out by taking the opinions of 286 secondary school students from one state school selected from each of the provinces (Manisa, Izmir, Mugla, Antalya, Sirnak, Bitlis). Quantitative and descriptive survey method was used in the study. According to the findings, it was seen that the opinions of female and male students were very close to each other, there was no significant difference according to the variables of the number of siblings and whether they had their own study room, and there was a significant difference between 5th grade students and 8th grade students. Students;It was seen that there was no difference in their views on understanding the lesson better and increasing their success, they did not have any problems in accessing the Mathematics lesson, but they had problems due to internet interruptions during the lesson, they did not have any problems in communicating with their teachers and delivering homework during the lesson, but they still preferred face-to-face education at a high rate. It was observed that the motivation of the 5th grade students during the lesson and their better understanding of the lesson were higher than the 8th grade students.
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At the time of writing, New York City high schools had been working remotely for a year, with educators facing some great challenges. Working remotely marked a significant difference in the way we teach and the way our students learn. Classroom spaces were no longer room numbers on doors;they were virtual meeting room numbers on platforms like Teams or Google Classroom, and they were accessible from anywhere by Wi-Fi. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2020), school closures caused by the Covid-19 pandemic affected over 1.5 billion students and families. The Covid-19 pandemic presented multiple challenges for teaching students with English as a second language in an online instructional environment, but also opportunities for collaboration, training, and communication for inclusive educators to strive to meet the needs of their students. This article addresses the following teacher-researcher questions: 1) What opportunities do I find most rewarding teaching in an online environment to students for whom English is a second language? 2) What do I find to be most challenging teaching English second language (ESL) students in the online context? 3) How can media play a part in online teaching and learning, and how do students respond to online learning with these mixed media platforms? 4) What recommendations can be offered to other inclusive educators who are teaching online? The researcher discusses the methodological approach used to conduct the research, using methods including surveys and field notes. Further research conducted was based on the researcher's journal of field notes kept throughout teaching a unit titled "Beowulf.” An analysis of student assessment data is also provided to show progress, where applicable, for one class of English Second Language students.
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Introduction: With the inevitable technological boom enforced by the COVID-19 lockdowns and online emergency remote teaching practices, the prevalence of nomophobia (NMP) and smartphone addiction (SA) among adolescents has become a pressing issue, which has come under scrutiny. However, the impact of social media tools usage (SMTU) and digital gaming behavior (DGB) on these phenomena remains unclear since there is little research focusing on the complex interplay among these variables. Regarding this context, the present study aimed to explore the parallel mediating role of secondary school students' SMTU and DGB in the relation between NMP and SA. Methods: In line with this aim, we employed a cross-sectional design with a critical case sampling strategy and collected data through an online survey from a total of 427 secondary school students in Istanbul in the 2021-2022 academic year. In order to test the parallel mediation model, we employed multiple linear regression models by utilizing PROCESS models with 5000 BC bootstrap samples and 95% CI. Results and discussion: Results illustrated that there was an increase in the prevalence of NMP and SA during the COVID-19 home confinement as consistent with the previous research. The results also indicated that among the multiple mediators, the mediating role of SMTU was significant in the relation between NMP and SA. This means NMP has direct and indirect significant impact on SA through SMTU. However, the mediating role of DGB was found nonsignificant in this relationship. Our results are robust and hold key contributions to both theoria and praxis in educational psychology research realm by disentangling the complex underlying mechanism between NMP, SMTU, DGB, and SA. On the practical side, our results provide insightful implications for school boards and researchers in the development of effective interventions.
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Stephens uses Shakespeare to address societal problems. Teaching William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet's relevance to struggling readers is challenging. Like Kelly Gallagher's argument that struggling writers do not do enough writing, she thinks struggling readers suffer from similar failures: teachers do not do enough reading with students. Like Gallagher, she believes it is best to focus on what teachers can control. So, when she was required to teach Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to her ninth graders last year, she paused to reflect on undertaking this task with struggling readers while making the text accessible and meaningful. Here she describes her attempt to meet this task.
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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to uncover what the at-home educational environments of low-income Latine adolescents looked like during the COVID-19 pandemic and how these environments influenced students' participation in their online classes. Additionally, the findings highlight students' perspectives on their varied engagement in virtual instruction.Design/methodology/approachData for this study were collected via an online survey that included both open and close-ended questions. Students were able to share about their behaviors and comfort in their online classes, as well as provide photos of the areas from which they joined their online classes. Quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods were used.FindingsMany students in the sample expressed discomfort with themselves and their homes being seen on camera and shared having to juggle multiple responsibilities during online classes. Photos uploaded revealed that at-home educational environments often lacked the resources afforded by in-school instruction, with students joining classes from areas that may not be conducive to learning.Originality/valueResearch has highlighted the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated existing issues of educational equity, but the systemic reasons for these inequities remain understudied. The results from this study highlight the ways in which disparate at-home learning environments may help to explain unequal engagement in online classes.
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The Covid-19 pandemic created an indelible mark on K-12 education - specifically, high school students transitioning to college and career. The global scope of this pandemic presented an opportunity to compare how high school cultures across the world adapted to the emergency. Further, news reports highlighted how communities of color were more susceptible to the pandemic. To better understand how the Black student experience in middle America compared to that of other students from the global community in responding to pandemic-related educational disruption, I used Krippendorffs content analysis procedures (2018) and a phenomenological interview process to gather and analyze data from 17 Black American high school students and 35 teachers. The central research question was: What are the experiences of Black students in middle America regarding educational disruption when compared to the experiences of high school students in other countries? The findings revealed that globally both students and teachers were primarily concerned with educational quality, teacher preparedness and substandard Internet service. Findings from twelve other countries confirmed that diminished Internet access and teacher unpreparedness were essential problems. However, Finnish districts which relied on government support seamlessly progressed through the interruptions in March 2020.
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There is a crisis in higher education. One troublesome issue is the sharp drop in higher education enrollments as well as the decline in the number of colleges in the United States. There is evidence that some college degrees are not worth the time and the money, and students would have earned more had they joined the workforce immediately after graduating high school. The authors discuss some of the problems and posit that some higher education institutions in the United States have done a poor job of teaching crucial skills, including critical thinking, ethical thinking, collaboration skills, and character development. The most vital competency of all might be inculcating in students a passion for lifelong learning, which is necessary to develop the ability to adapt swiftly to changing business conditions. Without these skills, it should be no surprise that there has been a disconnect between higher education and employability.
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In light of the high demand for skilled professionals and talents internationally, STEM skills carry special significance in today's competitive economy. Drawing on the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and insights gleaned from the extant literature, our study sought to investigate the factors that are likely to predict students' interest in a STEM-related career in Qatar. An online survey was administered online via computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI) and paper-and-Pencil Interviewing (PAPI) during the Spring term of 2021. Data was gathered from a sample of 1505 secondary school students, including 278 in grade 11 and 764 in grade 12) students in Qatar. Findings concluded from a two-level mixed-effects logistic regression revealed statistically significant differences based on students' age, nationality, and support from the family. Non-Qatari (expatriate) students attending private schools are significantly more likely to display interest in STEM-related careers. Additionally, taking a STEM course and teachers' use of experiments emerged as additional significant factors that affect student interest in a STEM-related career in Qatar. Our results point to the need for instruction to incorporate and emphasize practical activities to encourage students to engage in real-life STEM learning.
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This study implemented a school-based intervention aimed at improving coping flexibility, and to determine the intervention effects on coping and anxiety in children during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 692 first and second year of junior high school students (347 boys, 320 girls, and 25 neither) participated. Of the 19 classes first and second year of junior high school, 10 participated in the intervention in July 2021 and nine participated in January 2022. The results showed that the intervention program effectively reduced students' anxiety. With regard to coping, there was no change in "seeking support," a decrease in "problem avoidance," and an increase in "positive interpretation and recreation." The current intervention, which aimed at improving coping flexibility, was effective in reducing anxiety and promoting coping among junior high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic. In future it may be necessary discussed to reduce the burden on schools to accept outside experts by using information-technology equipment and other means to conduct the intervention remotely.
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One of the most challenging aspects of the pandemic was the limited ability to gather socially and connect with others in person. This was especially difficult for many of the students, who were isolated and disconnected from others in their rural community. To address this issue, Gilbert designed a project that focused on creating spaces for engagement and conversation, using literature as a lens to explore the human experience. In essence, students were invited to bring their lunches to the school library (it usually isn't used as a place to eat) to join them in conversations. They would weave in books they had in the library, but it was not at all necessary for them to have read the books before the conversations.
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[...]the fourth article is a self-study of one teacher educator's ability to guide and support teacher candidates during the COVID-19 lockdown. Social emotional resiliency is no longer a nice aside but a central component to preventing future learning loss. [...]as the editorial team for Teacher Education Quarterly, we hope that these articles provide you with the opportunity to reflect, connect with the authors' ideas, and utilize their recommendations to support your own efforts to improve your teacher education program, teacher education courses, or to support the various other educator stakeholders that are in partnership with your schools of education. [...]the self-study article by Orit Schwarz-Franco and Oren Ergas, "Links in the Chain-A Self-Study ofEmotional Support in Teacher Education During COVID-19 Lockdown," reflects critically on a chain of emotional support by stakeholders linking a preservice philosophy teacher, a pedagogical instructor, a school counselor, and a high school student during the first COVID-19 lockdown.
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We explored the effect of positive psychological group guidance on the hope and mental health of junior high school students. The experimental group received positive psychological group guidance, while the control group lived and learned as normal. We used the Middle School Students' Hope Trait Scale and the Depression-Anxiety-Stress Scale to evaluate participants (N = 96). Results showed that the experimental group's hope levels were higher and depression, anxiety, and stress levels were lower before (vs. after) the intervention. Further, after the intervention, hope levels were higher and depression, anxiety, and stress levels were lower in the experimental group compared to the control group. Two months after the intervention, the experimental group's levels of hope, depression, anxiety, and stress were maintained. The results show that positive psychological group guidance can improve the mental health of students.
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When I returned to the high school classroom in the fall of 2022 after pursuing doctoral study and teaching college English, much of what I experienced was familiar. As a new teacher, I had to work to earn the trust and respect of my students, who were in grades 10 through 12. With that trust came students' willingness to explore, experiment, and try new things together. And, of course, tenth-grade students were just as rambunctious as I remembered. What was unfamiliar was that my students' high school experience had been severely altered by the COVID pandemic-a pandemic we now know was in no way finished influencing teaching and learning. One constant across my many years of teach...ing is that even students who trust themselves in the English classroom balk when encountering Shakespeare. The anxiety bubbled up when our class embarked on a study of The Taming of the Shrew in the second semester.
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Boehm and Franklin investigate how approaching pedagogy through a framework of playfulness in the secondary English classroom can facilitate joy in teaching and learning. Drawing from sociocultural perspectives of literacy, they define a playful approach to secondary literacy pedagogy as one that involves imagination, responsiveness, and laughter. Decades of research have pointed to play as a valuable classroom practice for young learners. They argue that secondary English teachers can draw on this research to approach literacy learnin playfully. English education scholars have described playful literacy learning in secondary classrooms through multiliteracies and critical literacy.
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In this self-study, I reflect critically on a chain of emotional support linking a preservice philosophy teacher, a pedagogical instructor, a school counselor, and a high school student during the first COVID-19 lockdown. With the help ofa critical friend, I focus on my role as the preservice teacher's pedagogical instructor and examine the particular challenges and new opportunities granted to this profesional and personal chain of response and responsibility under the conditions of remote learning. My interviews with the preservice teacher and a senior counselor revealed two main themes, which are also central objectives of my work in teacher education: integration of social emotional learning into subject matter contents and integration of preservice teachers into school staff during practical training. These two objectives merge in a holistic approach to teacher education. I suggest that teacher-educators should recognize three aspects of teaching in conditions of social distancing: the greater need for emotional support, unique obstacles to giving support, and new ways to overcome these obstacles. Additionally, I argue that we should embrace the new possibilities that digital channels offer us for creating intimacy and accessibility in our relationships with our students.