Editorial

Post-COVID 19 Education?

What will the future look like Post-COVID 19 Education? Since the turn of the 21st century, with the rapid increase in the use of digital technologies impacting every conceivable enterprise on the globe, online instruction has likewise grown gradually and sought to exist with the current educational structures. We are, however, reaching a point where something has to give. Either schools can stay the same and leave online efforts at a standstill or paddling on the sideline, or our concept of school will change and allow online instruction to move from an ad hoc survival clutch to an integral thriving educational tool.

One of the primary obstacles to growth in the educational field is our unwillingness to experiment outside the traditional confines of schools. Schools continued their attempts to fit new information technology into centuries-old molds for learning that are based on the primacy of location – campus and classroom. As reflective practitioners, educators are always keen to use instructional technology in the most efficient and effective ways – and for this reason, I believe there is hope for us all. One critical outcome of the age of information technology (computers, Internet and Internet of Things) is the removal of time and space barriers to learning. It takes a global health crisis in the year 2020 for us to appreciate the fact that location is an arbitrary barrier and that education can be far more dynamic when liberated from the walls and gates of

Siew Fong Yap

school, and allowed to flourish in the brave new world of cyberspace curriculum delivery.

As schools all over the world grapple with the onslaught of an elusive and infectious virus, this very crisis is showing signs as a catalyst for a change. Online curriculum delivery is ushered in rapidly to overcome the physical limits of space and to defy the constraints of time; simultaneously offering a wealth of flexible schedules and virtual learning opportunities. The former linear industrial model of education was overnight replaced with a “fuzzy” electronic model. This begs the question `Are we on the brink of a new era?’ Do we see in the foreseeable future a revolutionised model of education that will bring in a new sense of freedom, creativity and empowerment for both teachers and students?

User empowerment is the granting of unprecedented decision-making powers to the primary agents in education – teachers and students, who are most directly affected by the decisions. In schools and universities today, empowerment is the exception rather than the rule. Where empowerment is present, real change has the opportunity to occur. How will Post-COVID 19 education look like if the institutional climate of this new era provides teachers and students with technology that maximises options for webbased instruction and empowers them to determine how they will function? How are the contexts for

teaching and learning redefined? Given new learning environments, how can our next generation of teachers be empowered to redefine and expand their roles to include many different functions? In the use of digitalisation of education, the role of the teacher may be fostered by a more much flexible and sophisticated approach to current technologies of learning. How will students, in their roles as learners, break out of the traditional passive molds cultivated by traditional schools and empowered to play a greater role in their own education? Transcending the limits of human contact, these evolving new environments will present nearly limitless opportunities for life-long learning and growth.

“While we, as educators, want to see what the future holds for schools and colleges, we automatically turn inward toward the concrete and grass that make up our campuses. We try to imagine what the buildings and grounds will look like, how the classrooms will be equipped, what types of resources will be available, and what roles the current staff will play. When we introduce new technology, we force them into the existing configurations. When the face-face class was the only viable technology available, this in-the-box approach made sense. The fact that this process is producing little if any real change, however, should tell us something is amiss. One of the signals that we should hear, loud and clear, is that the world is changing very rapidly, and yet we are still bogged down in a tired, broken system that is becoming increasingly alienated from the rest of the world.” (Technology, Colleges & Community Worldwide Online Conference, April 2004).

Perhaps, amongst the many admirable qualities of resilience, courage and unity that have emerged from this crisis that has upended our way of life in practically every aspect, we can anticipate with some optimism that post COVID-19 may also usher in a new era of education reform where digitalisation and information technology takes the central stage in our task of education, transforming from within and without, a powerful education revolution that brings an exciting new world of unlimited possibilities.

Siew Fong Yap

About the Editor

Dr Siew Fong Yap is the Head of Science at Perth’s Kingsway Christian College and a sessional teaching academic at Curtin University, Western Australia. She is the co-author of Oxford Science Western Australia Curriculum Year 7 – 10 textbooks. Her recent chapter book publications are `A Teacher’s Guide to Teaching Science and Religion in the Classroom’ (2018), `The Art of Teaching Science’ (2019) and Springer `Contemporary Trends and Issues in Science Education – Science and Religion in Education’ (2020).