Beyond Human: Learning in the Time of COVID-19

My classmate, Kadia, tells the story. Her son decided to be a pilot, so he is so obsessed with this idea that he wants to learn nothing but the science of aviation. As it is COVID-19, he has enough time and space to do his research and learn on his own, and Kadia says it is ok. Maybe it’s the right time to pursue his real interests.

This story makes me think that COVID-19, while shedding the light on many current troubles we are facing (inequality of opportunity, poverty, etc), also creates the space to pause and think. What are the values of education? What is the essence of learning? Is school about learning or it’s only about credentials today?

We can’t deny that we have lots of anxieties and problems facing students in this time, but what we can do is to stay with troubles and figure out how to adjust our behavior, at least, to do less harm, at most, to create a better environment for learning.  And maybe, instead of romanticizing or denying reality, we should evaluate the situation as it is and engaged with the World as it really is. 

So what we can do? Instead of brainstorming, I surfed the internet to see what educators have already been doing and what might be relevant for us to learn. 

Changing Student-Teachers Relations

We know from research that students’ achievements depend heavily on teachers (Hattie, 1993). Besides teachers' preparedness and experience, such an intangible factor as teachers’ expectations towards students and their feedback are playing a major role. The shift to mentorship and stewardship instead of knowledge delivery might be something to experiment with during remote learning.  

One of the experiments by Gupta, School in The Could, which is based on the idea of self-discovery and experiential learning, is an example of how students, even in very impoverished areas, may organize a self-learning environment with a little guidance from teachers. However, it requires a shift in thinking on what is learning and how to bridge the gap between the role of schools and the outcomes of education. 

While we are thinking about it, retired teachers association from Illinois have started to act offering students mentorship, or the Boston Partners team is providing mentorship for high-school students. Small good news that makes a difference. 

Besides, many teachers at schools and universities, I think, have consent to do less. This time might be challenging for every student, their family members may suffer, their regular routines have changed due to the overwhelming stress. So, the safety and health of the students must have, everything else is nice to have. 

Examine What We Teach

More and more educators are working towards moving from the paradigm of human exceptionalism to more-than-human thinking (Manasi and Karthik, 2017). For many decades, we had built our thinking on the notion that humans are the pinnacle of evolution and our role is to conquer the resources and nature, the neoliberal discourse moved us even further in the direction of economic success and consumption by any means possible. However, COVID-19, global warming, an environmental change made us pause and reflect. Do we really teach students how to be engaged with the World as it is? Are we really that exceptional? What else lays beyond economic success?

There are some projects, Persephone,  using theater to build community and spark environmental justice, and climate change activism. Or, Common World Research Collective, providing educators with ideas about how to integrate everything surrounding us into the learning process. 

Perhaps, there are many more things we can do: how about integrating contemporary writers, who are working to eco-consciousness, into school programs? How about learning geography through tracking plastic bottle from raw materials to recycling? What history can teach us about pandemics and sustainable development? 

Institutional Practices

Of course, one might say, that all of these changes depend on self-agency of the individual. Teachers are facing lot of pressure to deliver expected outcomes. However, we cannot deny the fact that there are already teachers who are working in this direction, who are already mentoring students, engaging them in real-world problems, making education relevant. It’s already happening. We just need to create a space for them and hear their voices, and, perhaps, learn from them. My biggest hope is that we will take this time to listen, to experiment and incorporate this small, very often, individual efforts, into institutional practices. If not now, when?

Hattie, J. A. (1993b, July). What works: A model of the teaching-learning interaction. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Teacher Education Association, Fremantle. 

Menon, A, & Karthik, M (2017) Beyond human exceptionalism: Political ecology and the non-human world. Geoforum 79: 90–92. Google Scholar | Crossref

Liliya Borovets, Lehigh University