Abstract:

COVID-19 changed the educational landscape as we know it. Due to the radical transformation of schooling, there is an imminent question of what lessons have been made and which transformations ‘will stick’ and become the ‘new normal’ after the obvious threats of the pandemic subsided [1]. There is a stream of research that addresses experiences from the pandemic [2-4]. In this study, we focus on the experiences of upper secondary schools in Sweden. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize teachers' and school leaders' experiences from the pandemic and, based on that, address implications for practice for future schooling. We conduct a meta-analysis of four studies within a research project in Sweden [5-8] where the data consists of surveys and workshops with teachers and school leaders and explores their experiences of the pandemic. The results show that Sweden has worked well in an international context, at the same time there are distinct differences regarding teachers' and school leaders' perceptions of what work effort was required, the result of the teaching, and its consequences. Contribution includes synthesizing experiences from the pandemic and pointing out its implications for future education.

References:
[1] S. Yıldırım, S. H. Bostancı, D. Ç. Yıldırım, and F. Erdoğan, "Rethinking mobility of international university students during COVID-19 pandemic," Higher Education Evaluation and Development, 2021.
[2] U. Kaden, "COVID-19 school closure-related changes to the professional life of a K–12 teacher," Education Sciences, vol. 10, no. 6, p. 165, 2020.
[3] H. Loeb and S. Windsor, "Online-and-alone (och ofta i sängen)–Elevers berättelser om gymnasietidens sista månader våren 2020. [Online-and-alone (and often in bed) - Students' stories about high school last months in the spring of 2020]." Paideia, vol. 20, pp. 39-52, 2020.
[4] J. P. Carpenter, D. G. Krutka, and R. Kimmons, "# RemoteTeaching &# RemoteLearning: Educator tweeting during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 151-159, 2020.
[5] S. Willermark, "Who’s There? Characterizing Interaction in Virtual Classrooms," Journal of Educational Computing Research, p. 0735633120988530, 2021.
[6] S. Willermark and M. Gellerstedt, "Facing Radical Digitalization: Capturing Teachers’ Transition to Virtual Classrooms Through Ideal Type Experiences," Journal of Educational Computing Research, p. 07356331211069424, 2022.
[7] S. Willermark and K. Högberg, "Two Faces of Radical Digitalization in Education: An Institutional Logics Perspective," 2022: AMCIS.
[8] S. Willermark and A. S. Islind, "Seven educational affordances of virtual classrooms," Computers and Education Open, vol. 3, p. 100078, 2022.

Keywords:

COVID -19, digitalization, school leader, teacher, future schooling, upper-secondary school.