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…

After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools had to continuously adapt to new pandemic-related regulations and challenges, including the ad hoc transition to remote learning. According to theories on school improvement and professionalisation, sharing knowledge and experiences with digital learning is helpful when dealing with related…

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…

It started with a simple little filler in "USA Today" 25 years ago. It showed a broken student desk with cobwebs on it and offered data on "average yearly absences" in Japan, Germany, and the United States. Assessing my own data, I verified that they were on point and proceeded to discuss why this was a major hurdle for our…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, German early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions had to limit their provision of ECEC, implement protective measures, and handle new organizational tasks. Data from two longitudinal surveys (October 2020 to July 2021) among ECEC managers and pedagogical staff were analysed. Limited staff resources,…

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…

In turbulent environments, schools have to adapt to constantly changing conditions. According to ambidexterity theory, whether they are successful in this primarily depends on their leaders and how they manage the tension between the use of current knowledge (exploitation) and the search for new knowledge (exploration). Through unique top-down and…

Lifelong learning comprises all learning undertaken throughout life, with a view to improving knowledge, qualifications and competences within a personal, civic, social or employment-related perspective. This EU definition, which is still valid today, was laid down in the document 'Creating a European area of lifelong learning in 2001.' Lifelong…

This contribution takes up and discusses topology as a relational approach to better understand and empirically trace policy mobilities in federal education systems. While topology echoes other relational approaches in its simultaneous focus on ongoing change and the "making" of stabilized forms (e.g., policy scales), it also brings…

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…