Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Schooling, Teachers and Students: Well-Being, Teaching and Learning

The main purpose of this project is to investigate the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological, social and emotional well-being of 8th grade students and teachers in Slovenia. The project will use the data from the Response to Educational Disruption Survey (REDS) conducted by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). REDS is a large-scale survey conducted 2020 and 2021 in 11 educational systems, including Slovenia. Given the pressing issues of the pandemic on the schooling processes, the secondary purpose of the project is to investigate the difficulties, as well as the resources the schools and teachers sought for addressing them, and the coping strategies they used to adjust the instruction. To date, it is also unknown how well Slovenian students performed academically during the pandemic, concomitant with the social isolation of youth. Thus, investigating the changes in academic performance during closures is the third purpose of the project. This is not the first study on the topic for the Slovenian education system, but is the first one providing data from representative samples on schools, teachers and students. The isolation and detachment from school and friends in childhood and adolescence can have long-term consequences on mental health. Policy decisions on how the school closures and distant learning took place varied greatly across countries. However, it is not known how profound were the problems with both mental health issues for students and teachers, the trends in student achievement, and the experienced difficulties for schools and teachers in Slovenia because no comprehensive empirical study was conducted in Slovenia on these matters. Thus, the objectives of the project are as follows: 1. Identify which are the most common psychological, social and emotional issues Slovenian students and teachers experienced during the school closures. 2. Identify which are the most pressing issues for schools and teachers to ensure high-quality teaching and learning during school closures. 3. Estimate to what extent the teachers perceive changes in student achievement, as well as to investigate student’s perceptions on their own learning, during the school closures. 4. Evaluate how the Slovenian educational system is prepared for the possible future lockdown and remote teaching and learning - focused on mental health and academic challenges. The REDS 2021 database is very recent and can provide insights in the aforementioned issues, not only for the near future, but also in the years to come due to other possible threats as well. This makes such research is highly needed. Availability of the Slovenian REDS database permits achieving the objectives of the project and provide input to policymakers for management strategy for well-being during school closures, as well as for the organization and implementation of teaching and learning in possible future crisis situations. The project team will be interdisciplinary with a main focus on education and educational research and include young and renowned researchers, from assistants towards research councilor, two of the members are also university professors. Their backgrounds and references are dominantly from the fields of educational and psychological research, as well as research methodology and sociology (of education), and political sciences – always with focus on education. One of the project members has been a member of the working group for evaluation of the national program of mental health (2018) and a project leader of the research project “Development of the model of national mental health services for children and adolescents”. The project is expected to have a long-term policy impact - one of the team members is part of the just established group for reforming the educational system in Slovenia (subgroup for compulsory education).