BACKGROUND: The emergence of COVID-19 resulted in a substantial loss of education because of global school closures. Face masks are a potential measure to restrain the COVID-19 spread; therefore, this paper evaluated the effectiveness of face masks in reducing COVID-19 incidence in school settings. METHODS: A systematic review was conducted by…

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a marked increase in the number of online courses in adult education. However, such courses are viewed ambivalently because, on one hand, they are associated with digitalisation processes and an increased accessibility, reach, and flexibility of learning opportunities, whereas, on the other hand, there are concerns…

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged universities to maintain teaching, leading to online classes becoming the standard teaching mode and accelerating digitalization. Learning from the influence of these developments on students' technology commitment may hold valuable information for various stakeholders. The present study investigated the…

In many studies, school leaders' self-efficacy has been shown to be relevant for the successful development of schools, as well as indirectly for student learning. The current study examines the extent to which leaders' self-efficacy prior to the COVID-19 crisis affected their schools' innovative coping during the first pandemic-related school…

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has brought about significant changes in organizational leadership. However, the accelerated transformation towards digitization was not without the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, the COVID-19 pandemic aided the digital revolution in several organizations across the globe. This paper presents…

With the widespread use of masks in the COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial to understand how emotion recognition is affected by partial face covering. Since individuals with autism spectrum condition often tend to look at the lower half of the face, they are likely to be particularly restricted in emotion recognition by people wearing masks, since…

This research deals with the question of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected discourses on competition in higher education organisations and how other discourses occurred and gained power. Additionally, it focusses on changes which take place in windows of opportunities that occur through discursive change in times of crisis. We show that…

This article presents a ten-item short scale for measuring digital competence. The scale is based on the Digital Competence Framework for Citizens, DigComp2.1 (Carretero et al., 2017). For our surveys, we used five items from the DigCompSat study (Clifford et al., 2020) and created five new ones to address the competence areas defined by…

The present study analyzed the structural and the content complexity of 76 preservice science teachers' socioscientific argumentation in the context of a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination. Data were analyzed within the methodological frame of qualitative content analysis. Concerning the structural complexity, the participants' socioscientific…

This study uses an education in emergencies (EiE) lens and a scientometric approach to examine the educational research landscape during the COVID-19 pandemic by analyzing 95,628 publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection database from 2020 to February 2023. It employed descriptive and network approaches to map growth trajectory,…

This paper examines school management and policies in Germany and Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study, which is comparative and qualitative, explores the interrelationship between different levels of governance and the responses of teacher unions. The inquiry is informed by the perspectives of historical institutionalism and path…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, contact, education, and employment opportunities have fundamentally changed worldwide. However, various studies have pointed out that not everyone is equally affected by the changed circumstances. This paper focuses on the impact of the pandemic on the study situation in German higher education and explores the…

This study investigated through an online survey how sign language practitioners changed their sign language assessment practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey consisted of five sections and 29 questions overall. It was provided in written English and German as well as in International Sign and was administered online between October…

This article casts light on informal caregiving, an essential aspect of the international postgraduate researcher (PGR) experience, but which is often invisible in literature and discourses on international education. Drawing from qualitative semi-structured interviews with international PGRs in a British university, it highlights their dual role…

In higher education and beyond, the COVID-19 pandemic is considered to have accelerated digitalisation. While this acceleration is usually viewed in the context of the digital transformation that is characterised by its longevity, the permanence of pandemic-driven digitalisation requires investigation. Focusing on appointment procedures for…