As a Canadian mathematics educator, I have a vested interest in Canadian mathematics education matters. After all, to me, Canadian mathematics education matters. Knowing this little factoid, imagine my horror when it recently dawned on me that, no matter where I looked during this COVID-19 pandemic, all I saw was flippant treatment towards the…

A dialogue between Taylor, a trans male Turkish-Canadian theatre student and Kathleen, a queer, cis-gendered female Scottish-Canadian theatre researcher considers some questions that queerness and trans identities in the drama classroom invite. Based on their mutual engagement in a virtual drama club in a Toronto high school in the 2020-2021…

In this response, Suzanne Smythe imagines the role of new technologies in community-based education as we settle into a "new normal." This article builds upon and extends Jen Vanek's suggestions in Part 1 by drawing upon research and practice oriented to digital justice. Smythe describes her experiences as an adult literacy researcher in…

Across Australia, COVID-19 has certainly disrupted our lives. For many researchers it has caused us to push the pause button on our activities and rejig our timelines, our methods and our ethics approvals to suit the changed conditions. As an educational researcher in the Northern Territory, my plans between March and July 2020 were thrown out the…

In this reflective writing, the author shares some experiences of learning to teach in higher education, the pathway she has taken on this online adventure, and how her online teaching has been influenced by the pandemic context.

In this article, the authors analyze the current situation in Portugal, in terms of the relationship between basic education and higher education, focusing on the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic in these processes. Moreover, this piece also addresses the quality of student preparation in basic education for a positive and successful experience…

This Forum explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Higher Education (HE) sector through the experiences and perspectives in China, Malaysia and the UK, with schools and universities closed and teaching moved online with very short notice. Authors were given an open brief as to the nature of their contribution, reflecting the still…

In this paper four pre-service teachers share narrative responses to the phenomenon of studying Education degrees at Australian universities during periods of lockdown following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The narratives serve to capture a variety of experiences and emotions of pre-service teachers, with two narratives reflecting the…

After 40 years as a hardworking and productive academic, here I was on a Zoom call fronting two senior colleagues telling me I no longer appeared on the new 'organisational chart'. In short, I was being made redundant. It was no surprise really, as another 40,000 professional and academic staff were to suffer the same fate. And really by then I…

When the pandemic brought life to a screeching halt and forcefully shuttered schools across the country, few were aware that a crisis in public education was already well underway. COVID-19 may have been an unexpected and devastating shock to the system, but a virus had already taken hold, leaving Canada's public-school systems vulnerable at the…

In an attempt to control the spread of COVID-19 in Australia in 2020 state and territory governments mandated the closing of schools for all but vulnerable children and the children of frontline workers in various parts of Australia for various lengths of time. In what follows, five English teachers from across Australia reflect on the everyday…

The COVID-19 pandemic brings to the fore strengths and weaknesses in many public policies, including higher education. There are at least three separate but related areas where institutions of higher learning have been stressed by COVID-19: financing, issues related to the logistics of learning, and inequality. These problems are especially…

In this reflective piece, I consider the degree to which Australian universities have become financially dependent on income from foreign students, the reasons for that dependence, the risks it poses and the potential consequences now that COVID-19 has undermined this revenue stream.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a real -- albeit rare -- test for human and organisational resilience worldwide, including those in the higher education sector. In this paper, I reflect on my observations of the pandemic's impacts that have rippled through the university sector in Australia in the first three quarters of 2020. The pandemic has not…

Dr. Tracey Burns is a Senior Analyst in the OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. She heads a portfolio of projects including Innovative Teaching for Effective Learning, 21st Century Children and Trends Shaping Education. Until recently she was also responsible for the OECD work on Governing Complex Education systems. Previous to…