reaction paper about education in the new normal

Reflections on How the Pandemic Is Reshaping Education

In response to the pandemic, educators have rapidly developed practices for remote instruction and fought to address dire inequities. Our goal is not to get back to normal, but to build a better society. How can schools and communities reimagine curriculum and instruction? What supports do educators need to strengthen relationships between families and schools?

These are among the questions that “Teaching and Learning During a Pandemic,” a blog series published by the Albert Shanker Institute , seeks to answer. In more than 15 posts, educators and researchers reflect on how the pandemic is reshaping education. Their pieces range from the scholarly, “School Organizational Practices and the Challenges of Remote Teaching During a Pandemic,” to the personal, “Have We Found Héctor, Yet?” Here, we share excerpts from the series; to read more, visit here .

When schools suddenly closed in March and moved to online instruction, I wondered how I would have responded if I’d still been a high school English teacher. I imagined having to prepare a series of engaging Ted Talks with follow-up Q&As. But having talked with many administrators and teachers, I’ve realized that good online schooling during the pandemic is a team sport not a solo performance. It calls for careful preparation and coordination among many players. Just as COVID-19 has revealed hidden shortcomings in our society, it has exposed the limitations of compartmentalized schools that continue to rise or fall on the skills, autonomy and self-reliance of individual teachers.

– Susan Moore Johnson , “Teaching During School Shutdowns Should Be a Team Sport,” May 28

Across the country, everyone is asking one question, “When will we get back to normal?” A cry similar to that of previous generations who often beckon back to the “good ole’ days.” If we are honest, the desire to get back to a place called “normal” is not because the past was better, but simply because it was familiar. The very fact that our past “normal” included a system where, in most school districts, you could identify by race and ethnicity which students were more likely to be suspended, expelled, or less likely to graduate says it all. Our past “normal” was actually abnormal (unless, for some reason which defies all science, you believe that intellect is distributed by race and ethnicity).

In America, the “good ole’ days” meant prevalent systemic racism, a widening achievement gap, and scarce resources for our students and teachers. Rather than longing for “back to normal,” our public school system has the opportunity to once again move us forward towards creating a more equitable and just “new normal” for students, parents, and families.

– John Jackson , “For Students, The ‘Good Ole’ Days’ Are Not Good Enough,” July 7

As we turn our eye towards next year, there is increasing concern about “catching students up,” particularly those students who are presumed to have done the least learning during quarantine. This might mean summer school, double blocks of reading and math, and high doses of remediation.

We have a different suggestion. Marie Kondo the curriculum.

As everyone now knows, Marie Kondo is the Japanese cleaning expert who showed you how to declutter your home by keeping only the items that bring joy. The curriculum is as overstuffed as most American houses. Curriculums are often decided by committees, who have different views of what is important, and they compromise by giving every faction some of what they want. The result is a curriculum with too many topics and too little depth.

– Jal Mehta and Shanna Peeples , “Marie Kondo The Curriculum,” June 25

During parent-teacher conferences, the most common refrain from parents to their children has been “I work to the bone to make sure that you have everything you need.” Parents stake their lives on assuring their children get opportunities for success that they weren’t afforded.

If parents can invest that much hope in their children, then our education system—including the educators that serve at the behest of the public—can reimagine the operations and principles of schools better now. We can do away with high-stakes standardized testing and other narrow measures of intellectual capacity. We can make internet access and high-capacity devices a public utility for everyone. We can bolster schools that serve as community hubs. We can develop deeper communication with parents about their students’ educational progress, while creating flexible plans for students whose parents have been deemed essential workers from now on.

– José Luis Vilson , “Our Profession Requires Hope, Now and Ever Since,” May 19

[Illustration by Agent Illustrateur / the i spot]

Rethinking Education in the New Normal Post-COVID-19 Era: A Curriculum Studies Perspective

Aquademia, 4(2), ep20018, 2020 https://doi.org/10.29333/aquademia/8315

5 Pages Posted: 12 Oct 2020

Michael B. Cahapay

Mindanao State University, General Santos City

Date Written: 2020

All sectors worldwide, including education, have been devastated by the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic. As we approach the new normal in the post-COVID-19 era, there is a need to consider education anew in the light of emerging opportunities and challenges. Thus, this short article attempts to rethink education in the new normal post-COVID-19 era through the perspectives of curriculum studies. The implications of the continuing crisis to the four elements of curriculum - goal, content, approach, and evaluation - are discussed. Some emerging options may be cogently viewed within the perspectives of these elements. Aside from the lens curriculum studies, this paper suggests that other aspects of education should be explored further to better reconsider education in this new era in human history.

Keywords: education, new normal, COVID-19, curriculum studies

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Michael B. Cahapay (Contact Author)

Mindanao state university, general santos city ( email ).

General Santos, South Cotabato 9500 Philippines

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics, related ejournals, educational administration & leadership ejournal.

Subscribe to this fee journal for more curated articles on this topic

Sources of Innovation eJournal

Cognitive psychology ejournal, climate & environmental psychology ejournal.

Advertisement

COVID-19 causes unprecedented educational disruption: Is there a road towards a new normal?

• Viewpoints/ Controversies
• Published: 03 June 2020
• Volume 49 , pages 11–15, ( 2020 )

Cite this article

• Hans d’Orville 1  

14k Accesses

84 Citations

Explore all metrics

COVID-19 confronts the education system with a new and massive crisis. What should a “new normal” look like for future generations? How can countries use the innovativeness of the recovery period to “build back better”? This Viewpoint highlights the UNESCO-led Global Coalition for Education initiative, which is seeking solutions to support learners and teachers, as well as governments throughout the recovery process, with a principal focus on inclusion, equity, and gender equality. The Viewpoint also argues that the current crisis is an opportunity for stronger international collaboration, which might provide a better focus and deliver solutions, including digital tools. Resilience and adaptability will be crucial for the next generations to navigate through the present—and any future—pandemic.

Similar content being viewed by others

Learning from a Pandemic. The Impact of COVID-19 on Education Around the World

Education as the path to a sustainable recovery from COVID-19

Education and the covid-19 pandemic, explore related subjects.

• Artificial Intelligence

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Even before the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the world was already confronting a “learning crisis” (UNESCO 2013 ; World Bank 2019 ); it was also off track to meet Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, which enjoins all countries to ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable, and quality primary and secondary education (UIS 2019 ). With the spread of the virus, the education system is now facing an entirely new and massive crisis. According to UNESCO ( 2020a ), more than 87% of the world’s student population—over 1.5 billion learners in 165 countries—have been affected by the temporary closure of educational institutions. Not since World War II have so many countries around the world seen schools and educational institutions go into lockdown at around the same time and for the same reason.

Extended school closures may not only cause loss of learning in the short term, but also diminish human capital and economic opportunities for children and youth over the long term. Globally, school closures disproportionately hurt vulnerable and disadvantaged students who rely on schools for a range of social services, including health and nutrition. But their impact on education is likely to be most devastating in countries with already low learning outcomes, high dropout rates, and low resilience to shocks.

Faced with that situation, UNESCO is launching a Global Education Coalition (UNESCO 2020b ). The Coalition is a call for coordinated and innovative action, seeking solutions that will not only support learners and teachers but also governments throughout the recovery process, with a principal focus on inclusion, equity, and gender equality. It comprises multilateral organizations, including the International Labor Organization, the UN High Commission for Refugees, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the World Food Programme, and the International Telecommunication Union, as well as the Global Partnership for Education, Education Cannot Wait, the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the Asian Development Bank.

Private sector companies, including Microsoft, GSMA, Weidong, Google, Facebook, Zoom, KPMG, and Coursera have also joined the Coalition, contributing their resources and expertise. Likewise, philanthropic and non-profit organizations, including the Khan Academy, Dubai Cares, Profuturo, and Sesame Street are also part of the Coalition. Media outlets like BBC World Service have also joined to counter the adverse impact of the global lockdown.

Education could have benefited from better and more digital education solutions during the coronavirus crisis; thus, it is time to reflect on the role digital technology should have in the future of education. Governments and educational authorities have been deploying distance learning solutions: delivering content, supporting teachers, providing guidance to families, and addressing connectivity challenges in order to facilitate online instruction and distribution of learning material. But a danger looms: a new type of digital divide is bound to arise as students need laptops, tablets, or phones, as well as some type of internet access, in order to benefit from access to online material.

The pandemic offers an opportunity for investments in education at all levels, to transform education and “leave no one behind”, as envisaged in the SDGs. The Coalition will endeavor to match needs with free and secure solutions, to provide digital tools and learning management solutions, to upload national digitized educational resources, to curate resources for distance learning, and to strengthen technical expertise. Support to systemic education reform, in particular through effective guidelines and careful plans for reopening, will be equally crucial to ensure that when children do return to school, schools can adapt their classrooms and methods to provide the necessary safe environments for learners.

The return to school and universities is being put in motion in a staggered manner and according to the disinfection protocols of the school buildings. Certain age groups and classes will return earlier than others and significant differences will exist, both within contiguous regions and within individual countries. There is no size that will fit all. But there is also no dispute that schools should reopen in a measured manner. The honorary Inspector-General for Education in France, Jean-Paul Delahaye, supports this policy, calling another five or six months without school an unmitigated catastrophe in waiting (Le Monde 2020 ).

A shift to some online tools could change teachers’ roles, making them more like coaches and mentors. Digital technology has made tremendous progress in the design of “personalized” solutions based on each student’s knowledge and learning styles. Further, digital personalization systems can help teachers and other educators, including parents, accomplish their educational routines by other means.

The coronavirus crisis has made the importance of digitalisation and AI in education more obvious. AI and other digital systems are tools augmenting our human capacity. What we achieve with them really depends on how we use them. There is a risk that educational AI systems and personalisation could increase inequities: after the coronavirus crisis, they could become high-priced commercial services affordable only to a small share of the population. This would induce a new digital divide.

In a report titled “The COVID-19 pandemic: Shocks to education and policy responses”, the World Bank observed: “Before the pandemic, 258 million children and youth of primary- and secondary-school age were out of school and low schooling quality meant many who were in school learned too little. Even worse, the crisis was not equally distributed. The most disadvantaged children and youth had the worst access to schooling, highest dropout rates, and the largest learning deficits” (World Bank 2020 ). The pandemic is now threatening to make these outcomes even worse. In the words of Jaime Saavedra, the Bank’s Global Director for Education, “the pandemic has already had profound impacts on education by closing schools almost everywhere in the planet, in the largest simultaneous shock to all education systems in our lifetimes. The damage will become even more severe as the health emergency translates into a deep global recession” (World Bank 2020 ).

The virus-induced disruption offers an opportunity for all actors in the education sector to rethink the system and discuss how to educate future generations. As educators grapple with new ways of communicating with students away from classrooms and lecture theatres, it is a good time to reflect on how this disruptive crisis can help define what a “new normal” for learning should look like.

Countries should use the focus and innovativeness of the recovery period to “build back better”. The key is not to replicate the apparently vulnerable pre-COVID systems, but instead to build improved systems that allow accelerated learning for all students, drawing on digitized approaches. When people lament “things will never be the same”, they are talking about something deeper—about our habits, norms, and ways of living. Some aspects of schooling may well not go back to the way they were before.

The closure of schools, colleges, and universities does not only interrupt teaching: it also coincides with a key assessment period, and baccalaureate tests and exams have been postponed or cancelled in many countries. In higher education, many universities and colleges are replacing traditional exams with online assessment tools. This is a novel experience for both teachers and students, and as a result such assessments will likely have larger measurement errors than usual.

The careers of this year’s university graduates may likewise be severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. They have experienced major interruptions in the final part of their studies, they are experiencing major interruptions in their assessments, and finally they are likely to graduate at the beginning of a major global recession. Evidence suggests that poor market conditions at labour market entry cause workers to accept lower-paid jobs, which may have permanent negative effects for the careers of some students.

The majority of students in today’s educational institutions are from Generation Z, a generation that has grown up in a truly globalized world and is deeply intertwined with technology. This generation, the oldest of whom are now 25 years old, must reflect on their education in the context of a truly global pandemic, with many students facing cancelled exams, sporting events, and even graduation celebrations. Generation Z students are used to instant communication and feedback, effected through apps like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Zoom. But they also see the power of working collaboratively to solve the world’s biggest challenges: their agenda not only engages COVID-19 but crises in climate change and mental health (World Economic Forum 2020 ).

By comparison, Generation Alpha—the children of millennials—is the most racially diverse generation across the world. For them, technology is simply an extension of their own consciousness and identity, with social media being a way of life. According to a Dell Technologies ( 2017 ) report, 85% of the jobs that Generations Z and Alpha will start in 2030 have not been invented yet. 65% of primary-school children today will be working in job types that do not exist yet. These young pre-schoolers are also the generation with the most non-traditional family structures. While many Alpha learners are likely oblivious to COVID-19’s impact on their education, they will surely feel it for years to come.

Finally, this crisis is a new opportunity for international collaboration. Stronger international cooperation—involving governments at different levels, companies, and international public-private partnerships—might help provide a better focus, deliver solutions and generate common digital goods. The COVID-19 crisis may well change our world and our global outlook; it may also teach us about how education needs to change to be able to better prepare young learners for what the future might hold. This is the challenge for the Global Education Coalition.

Resilience and adaptability will be crucial for the next generations. Future employers will highly value creativity, communication, and collaboration, alongside empathy and emotional intelligence. We also need to train students to work across demographic differences, so as to harness the power of the universal collective through effective teamwork and global collaboration. The corollary of such education is pursuing multilateralism in all fields of human activities, especially in the interconnected world we are inhabiting, as so tragically evidenced by COVID-19. No doubt, these skills are essential to navigate the present pandemic—and to prepare for the next one.

Dell Technologies (2017). Realizing 2030: A divided vision of the future . https://www.delltechnologies.com/content/dam/delltechnologies/assets/perspectives/2030/pdf/Realizing-2030-A-Divided-Vision-of-the-Future-Summary.pdf .

Le Monde (2020). Cinq à six mois sans école, c’est une catastrophe annoncée . https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2020/05/23/cinq-a-six-mois-sans-ecole-c-est-une-catastrophe-annoncee_6040505_3224.html .

UIS [UNESCO Institute for Statistics] (2019). The world is off track to deliver on its education commitments by 2030 . Blog entry by Manos Antoninis, Director of the Global Education Monitoring Report, and Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Montreal: UIS. https://sdg.uis.unesco.org/2019/07/09/the-world-is-off-track-to-deliver-on-its-education-commitments-by-2030/ .

UNESCO (2013). The global learning crisis: Why every child deserves a quality education . Paris: UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000223826 .

UNESCO (2020a). COVID-19 educational disruption and response . Paris: UNESCO. https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse .

UNESCO (2020b). Global education coalition . Paris: UNESCO. https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/globalcoalition .

World Bank (2019). The education crisis: Being in school is not the same as learning . Washington, DC: World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/immersive-story/2019/01/22/pass-or-fail-how-can-the-world-do-its-homework .

World Bank (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic: Shocks to education and policy responses . Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/33696 .

World Economic Forum (2020). 4 ways COVID-19 could change how we educate future generations . https://www.weforum/agenda/2020/03/4-ways-covid-19-education-future-generations .

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Paris, France

Hans d’Orville

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

About this article

d’Orville, H. COVID-19 causes unprecedented educational disruption: Is there a road towards a new normal?. Prospects 49 , 11–15 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09475-0

Download citation

Published : 03 June 2020

Issue Date : October 2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09475-0

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Learning crisis
• School closures
• Digital learning tools
• International cooperation
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

Francis Jim Tuscano

Empowered: transform the education landscape. elevate the teaching profession. celebrate the filipino teacher., it’s not about online learning: a reflection on the “new normal” in education (part 1).

Much has been written about the new normal in the society as the COVID-19 Pandemic continues to spread in different countries around the world. The new normal will involve higher levels of health precautions. Fearing another wave of infections, governments will continue to enforce strict measures to contain the spread of the virus. Digital technology will play a greater role to ensure that essential sectors such as business, banking, health, food services, and communications will continue to run their transactions in order to avoid a possible national economic breakdown. While these are just a few of the possible scenarios that will happen in the new normal, we can, however, definitely say that the new normal is anything but ordinary. 

In the education sector, schools and universities are now scrambling to enable digital and technical infrastructures that will support whatever form of virtual learning that they will most likely to adopt. Right now, online learning has been pushed further and deeper as a solution that addresses the challenges of learning continuity amidst school closure at this time of the pandemic. Video-conferencing, which is being used to replicate face-to-face instruction, has even made Zoom a household name. Access and usage to video-conferencing tools, as well as to learning management systems, have spiked tremendously as teaching and learning continue within the virtual corners of their online classrooms. Online learning has been a great means towards continuous learning. Some schools have done it successfully, while some faced major concerns and issues from students, parents, and even their own teachers. In the end, it seems like the new normal is about online learning and having the digital platforms and tools to support and enable learning. 

Yet, this new normal that is too much focused on technology tools or online learning needs to be reconsidered and evaluated. Can we step back for a moment and think about those who will be marginalized and underserved in the new normal? Can we remind ourselves that our digital and telecommunications infrastructure cannot even decently connect every device in the country to the Internet? Can we wake ourselves up to the reality that not all students, parents, and homes have access to devices at home? Can we pinch ourselves to realize that a lot of Filipino families will undoubtedly use their hard-earned money to buy food and other basic needs that will help them go through the day instead of purchasing data to get online? And the harsh reality is that, even before the pandemic began, this has been the situation for a lot of us in the country. 

As we grapple with and re-imagine the new normal in education alongside the new normal in the bigger society, the following recommendations should definitely be considered as integral parts of the new normal.

• “Maslow before Bloom” should be the new battlecry in education.

This pandemic is a litmus test for schools. A lot of schools rapidly transitioned to online learning due to lockdowns that were enforced in a matter of days. Schools did not have much time to prepare and were caught in the moment as school leaders and teachers went back to their drawing boards to plan out how learning should continue despite the school closures. What was forgotten or considered late was the well-being of students who are now at home learning on their own. The pandemic has brought anxiety to families. It separated parents, who are essential workers, from their children because of the fear of bringing the virus home. Some students are also grieving for family or friends lost due to the pandemic. Some parents might not have enough money to buy food and other necessities for daily living, which the kids see and witness at home. Moreover, the sense of isolation from classmates and teachers has disrupted the normalcy of schooling. With these heavily-charged situations, it’s really hard to imagine and ensure that the students at home are ready for learning. Nothing will enter and stick into their minds if they are hungry, worried, and anxious. 

As a society in the new normal, we need to ensure that the basic physical, social-emotional, and psychological needs of students are meant before they can even start learning. Reach out to and check in with students before starting a class. Check in with parents and see what help their children might need. Schools definitely need more guidance counselors or life coaches to help students navigate their emotions and thoughts. More importantly, give students the time to adjust to the new ways of learning. Build relationships with them.

• Equitable access matters more than ever.

The pandemic has greatly highlighted the digital divide between the haves and the have nots, which we have been experiencing even before this unfortunate episode of our lives. Now more than ever, we realize that those who have access to a learning device and the Internet are the ones who will greatly benefit from the online learning programs that schools are working on. So, if we know that there are families and students who can’t have a decent access to these digital tools and devices, what should we do then? Even if they have devices at home, what if they also need to share that one learning device with their other siblings who also need to study and catch up with the requirements of their class?

The new normal should advocate for equitable access to online learning. If a school chooses to go online, then the school leaders must have a way to ensure that no student is left behind or barred from learning because of a preference to one mode of learning. Can schools explore loaning devices for student and teacher use at home? Can schools work with local government units in acquiring devices for loan to students and teachers? If schools and parents can’t provide learning devices and connection to the Internet, whose social and moral responsibility is it? On another note, why do we wait for a pandemic to happen and then, seriously strive for equitable access? With or without pandemic, equitable access should always be a goal that is constantly acted upon.

• Multiple pathways of learning delivery should be considered in an emergency learning continuity program.

Responding to the pandemic’s effect on schooling, the French Education Minister called for an educational continuity, which ensures that all students, whether with or without access to the Internet, should continue to learn even if they are at home. So, the French ministry of education employed online learning, open education resources, and forged partnership with other key players to ensure that all students are reached. In the same way, Dr. Nadia Lopez, principal in a school in Brooklyn, New York City, in our podcast, shared how learning packets were prepared and given to parents so that their students can continue learning even when they do not have connection to the Internet.

Given the reality of the country, or even schools, in terms of digital divide, the best thing to do is to provide multiple pathways to education continuity. Taking into consideration the context of every student, teacher, and family, those pathways need to address their teaching and learning needs. Aside from online learning, there are learning packets that can be used, which is reminiscent of the correspondence mode of distance education way back years ago. Broadcast stations in regions or localities can be used to air radio or TV programs on lessons being learned in class. With these varying approaches to delivering learning, educators and school leaders should also be opened to re-thinking the purpose of assessments and grades. Are quizzes or long tests the best way to authentically access student’s learning in an online learning environment? Should we still grade them according to our face-to-face learning standards? The basic idea here is, while we aim for multiple pathways to learning or instruction, assessments and maybe even the grading systems will have to be reviewed to serve their main goals at this point of the pandemic.

• Better funding, stronger support, and more relevant professional development for teachers need to be prioritized. 

A lot have been expected from teachers at this time of the pandemic. Teachers were expected to become designers of online learning overnight, curate online resources and learn tech tools for their online classes, and re-design assessments that are valid for the rapid shift in education. Teachers continue to work from home while taking care of their own children. Teachers check in with their students to ask them how they are and to provide support and assurance that things will be better. In short, teachers are frontliners, too! They continue to give a sense of normalcy for students and support for parents, who are now experiencing firsthand how the life of a teacher looks like. With all of these expectations, teachers deserved to be prepared and given all necessary funding, support, and professional development to reach the society’s demands and expectations.

Society should demand for a new normal that puts the teacher in a more valued and prominent position, in words, actions, and policies. We do not get tired of being referred to as the most noble profession and we honestly and sincerely love it. We love how our students and parents show their appreciation and gratitude for the work that we do. However, it’s time to demand that the country invests more on training teachers to be more flexible and knowledgeable of the new approaches to learning and teaching, whether online or offline. We need to listen more to their needs and requests as they aim to teach better. We all know that our country’s progress also depends on the quality of education that we have. Hence, a battalion of well-trained, valued, and dedicated teachers can help develop a generation of better and responsible citizens, who can greatly contribute to the development of the society and humanity.

Part 2 of this post will be posted soon.

Share this:

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

One thought on “ It’s Not About Online Learning: A Reflection on the “New Normal” in Education (Part 1) ”

• Pingback: It’s Not About Online Learning: A Reflection on the “New Normal” in Education (Part 2) – empowerED

Comments are closed.

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Springer Nature - PMC COVID-19 Collection

The “new normal” in education

José augusto pacheco.

Research Centre on Education (CIEd), Institute of Education, University of Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal

Effects rippling from the Covid 19 emergency include changes in the personal, social, and economic spheres. Are there continuities as well? Based on a literature review (primarily of UNESCO and OECD publications and their critics), the following question is posed: How can one resist the slide into passive technologization and seize the possibility of achieving a responsive, ethical, humane, and international-transformational approach to education? Technologization, while an ongoing and evidently ever-intensifying tendency, is not without its critics, especially those associated with the humanistic tradition in education. This is more apparent now that curriculum is being conceived as a complicated conversation. In a complex and unequal world, the well-being of students requires diverse and even conflicting visions of the world, its problems, and the forms of knowledge we study to address them.

From the past, we might find our way to a future unforeclosed by the present (Pinar 2019 , p. 12)

Texts regarding this pandemic’s consequences are appearing at an accelerating pace, with constant coverage by news outlets, as well as philosophical, historical, and sociological reflections by public intellectuals worldwide. Ripples from the current emergency have spread into the personal, social, and economic spheres. But are there continuities as well? Is the pandemic creating a “new normal” in education or simply accenting what has already become normal—an accelerating tendency toward technologization? This tendency presents an important challenge for education, requiring a critical vision of post-Covid-19 curriculum. One must pose an additional question: How can one resist the slide into passive technologization and seize the possibility of achieving a responsive, ethical, humane, and international-transformational approach to education?

The ongoing present

Unpredicted except through science fiction, movie scripts, and novels, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed everyday life, caused wide-scale illness and death, and provoked preventive measures like social distancing, confinement, and school closures. It has struck disproportionately at those who provide essential services and those unable to work remotely; in an already precarious marketplace, unemployment is having terrible consequences. The pandemic is now the chief sign of both globalization and deglobalization, as nations close borders and airports sit empty. There are no departures, no delays. Everything has changed, and no one was prepared. The pandemic has disrupted the flow of time and unraveled what was normal. It is the emergence of an event (think of Badiou 2009 ) that restarts time, creates radical ruptures and imbalances, and brings about a contingency that becomes a new necessity (Žižek 2020 ). Such events question the ongoing present.

The pandemic has reshuffled our needs, which are now based on a new order. Whether of short or medium duration, will it end in a return to the “normal” or move us into an unknown future? Žižek contends that “there is no return to normal, the new ‘normal’ will have to be constructed on the ruins of our old lives, or we will find ourselves in a new barbarism whose signs are already clearly discernible” (Žižek 2020 , p. 3).

Despite public health measures, Gil ( 2020 ) observes that the pandemic has so far generated no physical or spiritual upheaval and no universal awareness of the need to change how we live. Techno-capitalism continues to work, though perhaps not as before. Online sales increase and professionals work from home, thereby creating new digital subjectivities and economies. We will not escape the pull of self-preservation, self-regeneration, and the metamorphosis of capitalism, which will continue its permanent revolution (Wells 2020 ). In adapting subjectivities to the recent demands of digital capitalism, the pandemic can catapult us into an even more thoroughly digitalized space, a trend that artificial intelligence will accelerate. These new subjectivities will exhibit increased capacities for voluntary obedience and programmable functioning abilities, leading to a “new normal” benefiting those who are savvy in software-structured social relationships.

The Covid-19 pandemic has submerged us all in the tsunami-like economies of the Cloud. There is an intensification of the allegro rhythm of adaptation to the Internet of Things (Davies, Beauchamp, Davies, and Price 2019 ). For Latour ( 2020 ), the pandemic has become internalized as an ongoing state of emergency preparing us for the next crisis—climate change—for which we will see just how (un)prepared we are. Along with inequality, climate is one of the most pressing issues of our time (OECD 2019a , 2019b ) and therefore its representation in the curriculum is of public, not just private, interest.

Education both reflects what is now and anticipates what is next, recoding private and public responses to crises. Žižek ( 2020 , p. 117) suggests in this regard that “values and beliefs should not be simply ignored: they play an important role and should be treated as a specific mode of assemblage”. As such, education is (post)human and has its (over)determination by beliefs and values, themselves encoded in technology.

Will the pandemic detoxify our addiction to technology, or will it cement that addiction? Pinar ( 2019 , pp. 14–15) suggests that “this idea—that technological advance can overcome cultural, economic, educational crises—has faded into the background. It is our assumption. Our faith prompts the purchase of new technology and assures we can cure climate change”. While waiting for technology to rescue us, we might also remember to look at ourselves. In this way, the pandemic could be a starting point for a more sustainable environment. An intelligent response to climate change, reactivating the humanistic tradition in education, would reaffirm the right to such an education as a global common good (UNESCO 2015a , p. 10):

This approach emphasizes the inclusion of people who are often subject to discrimination – women and girls, indigenous people, persons with disabilities, migrants, the elderly and people living in countries affected by conflict. It requires an open and flexible approach to learning that is both lifelong and life-wide: an approach that provides the opportunity for all to realize their potential for a sustainable future and a life of dignity”.

Pinar ( 2004 , 2009 , 2019 ) concevies of curriculum as a complicated conversation. Central to that complicated conversation is climate change, which drives the need for education for sustainable development and the grooming of new global citizens with sustainable lifestyles and exemplary environmental custodianship (Marope 2017 ).

The new normal

The pandemic ushers in a “new” normal, in which digitization enforces ways of working and learning. It forces education further into technologization, a development already well underway, fueled by commercialism and the reigning market ideology. Daniel ( 2020 , p. 1) notes that “many institutions had plans to make greater use of technology in teaching, but the outbreak of Covid-19 has meant that changes intended to occur over months or years had to be implemented in a few days”.

Is this “new normal” really new or is it a reiteration of the old?

Digital technologies are the visible face of the immediate changes taking place in society—the commercial society—and schools. The immediate solution to the closure of schools is distance learning, with platforms proliferating and knowledge demoted to information to be exchanged (Koopman 2019 ), like a product, a phenomenon predicted decades ago by Lyotard ( 1984 , pp. 4-5):

Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valued in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange. Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its use-value.

Digital technologies and economic rationality based on performance are significant determinants of the commercialization of learning. Moving from physical face-to-face presence to virtual contact (synchronous and asynchronous), the learning space becomes disembodied, virtual not actual, impacting both student learning and the organization of schools, which are no longer buildings but websites. Such change is not only coterminous with the pandemic, as the Education 2030 Agenda (UNESCO 2015b ) testified; preceding that was the Delors Report (Delors 1996 ), which recoded education as lifelong learning that included learning to know, learning to do, learning to be, and learning to live together.

Transnational organizations have specified competences for the 21st century and, in the process, have defined disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge that encourages global citizenship, through “the supra curriculum at the global, regional, or international comparative level” (Marope 2017 , p. 10). According to UNESCO ( 2017 ):

While the world may be increasingly interconnected, human rights violations, inequality and poverty still threaten peace and sustainability. Global Citizenship Education (GCED) is UNESCO’s response to these challenges. It works by empowering learners of all ages to understand that these are global, not local issues and to become active promoters of more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable societies.

These transnational initiatives have not only acknowledged traditional school subjects but have also shifted the curriculum toward timely topics dedicated to understanding the emergencies of the day (Spiller 2017 ). However, for the OECD ( 2019a ), the “new normal” accentuates two ideas: competence-based education, which includes the knowledges identified in the Delors Report , and a new learning framework structured by digital technologies. The Covid-19 pandemic does not change this logic. Indeed, the interdisciplinary skills framework, content and standardized testing associated with the Programme for International Student Assessment of the OECD has become the most powerful tool for prescribing the curriculum. Educationally, “the universal homogenous ‘state’ exists already. Globalization of standardized testing—the most prominent instance of threatening to restructure schools into technological sites of political socialization, conditioning children for compliance to a universal homogeneous state of mind” (Pinar 2019 , p. 2).

In addition to cognitive and practical skills, this “homogenous state of mind” rests on so-called social and emotional skills in the service of learning to live together, affirming global citizenship, and presumably returning agency to students and teachers (OECD 2019a ). According to Marope ( 2017 , p. 22), “this calls for higher flexibility in curriculum development, and for the need to leave space for curricula interpretation, contextualization, and creativity at the micro level of teachers and classrooms”. Heterogeneity is thus enlisted in the service of both economic homogeneity and disciplinary knowledge. Disciplinary knowledge is presented as universal and endowed with social, moral, and cognitive authority. Operational and effective knowledge becomes central, due to the influence of financial lobbies, thereby ensuring that the logic of the market is brought into the practices of schools. As Pestre ( 2013 , p. 21) observed, “the nature of this knowledge is new: what matters is that it makes hic et nunc the action, its effect and not its understanding”. Its functionality follows (presumably) data and evidence-based management.

A new language is thus imposed on education and the curriculum. Such enforced installation of performative language and Big Data lead to effective and profitable operations in a vast market concerned with competence in operational skills (Lyotard 1984 ). This “new normal” curriculum is said to be more horizontal and less hierarchical and radically polycentric with problem-solving produced through social networks, NGOs, transnational organizations, and think tanks (Pestre 2013 ; Williamson 2013 , 2017 ). Untouched by the pandemic, the “new (old) normal” remains based on disciplinary knowledge and enmeshed in the discourse of standards and accountability in education.

Such enforced commercialism reflects and reinforces economic globalization. Pinar ( 2011 , p. 30) worries that “the globalization of instrumental rationality in education threatens the very existence of education itself”. In his theory, commercialism and the technical instrumentality by which homogenization advances erase education as an embodied experience and the curriculum as a humanistic project. It is a time in which the humanities are devalued as well, as acknowledged by Pinar ( 2019 , p. 19): “In the United States [and in the world] not only does economics replace education—STEM replace the liberal arts as central to the curriculum—there are even politicians who attack the liberal arts as subversive and irrelevant…it can be more precisely characterized as reckless rhetoric of a know-nothing populism”. Replacing in-person dialogical encounters and the educational cultivation of the person (via Bildung and currere ), digital technologies are creating uniformity of learning spaces, in spite of their individualistic tendencies. Of course, education occurs outside schools—and on occasion in schools—but this causal displacement of the centrality of the school implies a devaluation of academic knowledge in the name of diversification of learning spaces.

In society, education, and specifically in the curriculum, the pandemic has brought nothing new but rather has accelerated already existing trends that can be summarized as technologization. Those who can work “remotely” exercise their privilege, since they can exploit an increasingly digital society. They themselves are changed in the process, as their own subjectivities are digitalized, thus predisposing them to a “curriculum of things” (a term coined by Laist ( 2016 ) to describe an object-oriented pedagogical approach), which is organized not around knowledge but information (Koopman 2019 ; Couldry and Mejias 2019 ). This (old) “new normal” was advanced by the OECD, among other international organizations, thus precipitating what some see as “a dynamic and transformative articulation of collective expectations of the purpose, quality, and relevance of education and learning to holistic, inclusive, just, peaceful, and sustainable development, and to the well-being and fulfilment of current and future generations” (Marope 2017 , p. 13). Covid-19, illiberal democracy, economic nationalism, and inaction on climate change, all upend this promise.

Understanding the psychological and cultural complexity of the curriculum is crucial. Without appreciating the infinity of responses students have to what they study, one cannot engage in the complicated conversation that is the curriculum. There must be an affirmation of “not only the individualism of a person’s experience but [of what is] underlining the significance of a person’s response to a course of study that has been designed to ignore individuality in order to buttress nation, religion, ethnicity, family, and gender” (Grumet 2017 , p. 77). Rather than promoting neuroscience as the answer to the problems of curriculum and pedagogy, it is long-past time for rethinking curriculum development and addressing the canonical curriculum question: What knowledge is of most worth from a humanistic perspective that is structured by complicated conversation (UNESCO 2015a ; Pinar 2004 , 2019 )? It promotes respect for diversity and rejection of all forms of (cultural) hegemony, stereotypes, and biases (Pacheco 2009 , 2017 ).

Revisiting the curriculum in the Covid-19 era then expresses the fallacy of the “new normal” but also represents a particular opportunity to promote a different path forward.

Looking to the post-Covid-19 curriculum

Based on the notion of curriculum as a complicated conversation, as proposed by Pinar ( 2004 ), the post-Covid-19 curriculum can seize the possibility of achieving a responsive, ethical, humane education, one which requires a humanistic and internationally aware reconceptualization of curriculum.

While beliefs and values are anchored in social and individual practices (Pinar 2019 , p. 15), education extracts them for critique and reconsideration. For example, freedom and tolerance are not neutral but normative practices, however ideology-free policymakers imagine them to be.

That same sleight-of-hand—value neutrality in the service of a certain normativity—is evident in a digital concept of society as a relationship between humans and non-humans (or posthumans), a relationship not only mediated by but encapsulated within technology: machines interfacing with other machines. This is not merely a technological change, as if it were a quarantined domain severed from society. Technologization is a totalizing digitalization of human experience that includes the structures of society. It is less social than economic, with social bonds now recoded as financial transactions sutured by software. Now that subjectivity is digitalized, the human face has become an exclusively economic one that fabricates the fantasy of rational and free agents—always self-interested—operating in supposedly free markets. Oddly enough, there is no place for a vision of humanistic and internationally aware change. The technological dimension of curriculum is assumed to be the primary area of change, which has been deeply and totally imposed by global standards. The worldwide pandemic supports arguments for imposing forms of control (Žižek 2020 ), including the geolocation of infected people and the suspension—in a state of exception—of civil liberties.

By destroying democracy, the technology of control leads to totalitarianism and barbarism, ending tolerance, difference, and diversity. Remembrance and memory are needed so that historical fascisms (Eley 2020 ) are not repeated, albeit in new disguises (Adorno 2011 ). Technologized education enhances efficiency and ensures uniformity, while presuming objectivity to the detriment of human reflection and singularity. It imposes the running data of the Curriculum of Things and eschews intellectual endeavor, critical attitude, and self-reflexivity.

For those who advocate the primacy of technology and the so-called “free market”, the pandemic represents opportunities not only for profit but also for confirmation of the pervasiveness of human error and proof of the efficiency of the non-human, i.e., the inhuman technology. What may possibly protect children from this inhumanity and their commodification, as human capital, is a humane or humanistic education that contradicts their commodification.

The decontextualized technical vocabulary in use in a market society produces an undifferentiated image in which people are blinded to nuance, distinction, and subtlety. For Pestre, concepts associated with efficiency convey the primacy of economic activity to the exclusion, for instance, of ethics, since those concepts devalue historic (if unrealized) commitments to equality and fraternity by instead emphasizing economic freedom and the autonomy of self-interested individuals. Constructing education as solely economic and technological constitutes a movement toward total efficiency through the installation of uniformity of behavior, devaluing diversity and human creativity.

Erased from the screen is any image of public education as a space of freedom, or as Macdonald ( 1995 , p. 38) holds, any image or concept of “the dignity and integrity of each human”. Instead, what we face is the post-human and the undisputed reign of instrumental reality, where the ends justify the means and human realization is reduced to the consumption of goods and experiences. As Pinar ( 2019 , p. 7) observes: “In the private sphere…. freedom is recast as a choice of consumer goods; in the public sphere, it converts to control and the demand that freedom flourish, so that whatever is profitable can be pursued”. Such “negative” freedom—freedom from constraint—ignores “positive” freedom, which requires us to contemplate—in ethical and spiritual terms—what that freedom is for. To contemplate what freedom is for requires “critical and comprehensive knowledge” (Pestre 2013 , p. 39) not only instrumental and technical knowledge. The humanities and the arts would reoccupy the center of such a curriculum and not be related to its margins (Westbury 2008 ), acknowledging that what is studied within schools is a complicated conversation among those present—including oneself, one’s ancestors, and those yet to be born (Pinar 2004 ).

In an era of unconstrained technologization, the challenge facing the curriculum is coding and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), with technology dislodging those subjects related to the human. This is not a classical curriculum (although it could be) but one focused on the emergencies of the moment–namely, climate change, the pandemic, mass migration, right-wing populism, and economic inequality. These timely topics, which in secondary school could be taught as short courses and at the elementary level as thematic units, would be informed by the traditional school subjects (yes, including STEM). Such a reorganization of the curriculum would allow students to see how academic knowledge enables them to understand what is happening to them and their parents in their own regions and globally. Such a cosmopolitan curriculum would prepare children to become citizens not only of their own nations but of the world. This citizenship would simultaneously be subjective and social, singular and universal (Marope 2020 ). Pinar ( 2019 , p. 5) reminds us that “the division between private and public was first blurred then erased by technology”:

No longer public, let alone sacred, morality becomes a matter of privately held values, sometimes monetized as commodities, statements of personal preference, often ornamental, sometimes self-servingly instrumental. Whatever their function, values were to be confined to the private sphere. The public sphere was no longer the civic square but rather, the marketplace, the site where one purchased whatever one valued.

New technological spaces are the universal center for (in)human values. The civic square is now Amazon, Alibaba, Twitter, WeChat, and other global online corporations. The facts of our human condition—a century-old phrase uncanny in its echoes today—can be studied in schools as an interdisciplinary complicated conversation about public issues that eclipse private ones (Pinar 2019 ), including social injustice, inequality, democracy, climate change, refugees, immigrants, and minority groups. Understood as a responsive, ethical, humane and transformational international educational approach, such a post-Covid-19 curriculum could be a “force for social equity, justice, cohesion, stability, and peace” (Marope 2017 , p. 32). “Unchosen” is certainly the adjective describing our obligations now, as we are surrounded by death and dying and threatened by privation or even starvation, as economies collapse and food-supply chains are broken. The pandemic may not mean deglobalization, but it surely accentuates it, as national borders are closed, international travel is suspended, and international trade is impacted by the accompanying economic crisis. On the other hand, economic globalization could return even stronger, as could the globalization of education systems. The “new normal” in education is the technological order—a passive technologization—and its expansion continues uncontested and even accelerated by the pandemic.

Two Greek concepts, kronos and kairos , allow a discussion of contrasts between the quantitative and the qualitative in education. Echoing the ancient notion of kronos are the technologically structured curriculum values of quantity and performance, which are always assessed by a standardized accountability system enforcing an “ideology of achievement”. “While kronos refers to chronological or sequential time, kairos refers to time that might require waiting patiently for a long time or immediate and rapid action; which course of action one chooses will depend on the particular situation” (Lahtinen 2009 , p. 252).

For Macdonald ( 1995 , p. 51), “the central ideology of the schools is the ideology of achievement …[It] is a quantitative ideology, for even to attempt to assess quality must be quantified under this ideology, and the educational process is perceived as a technically monitored quality control process”.

Self-evaluation subjectively internalizes what is useful and in conformity with the techno-economy and its so-called standards, increasingly enforcing technical (software) forms. If recoded as the Internet of Things, this remains a curriculum in allegiance with “order and control” (Doll 2013 , p. 314) School knowledge is reduced to an instrument for economic success, employing compulsory collaboration to ensure group think and conformity. Intertwined with the Internet of Things, technological subjectivity becomes embedded in software, redesigned for effectiveness, i.e., or use-value (as Lyotard predicted).

The Curriculum of Things dominates the Internet, which is simultaneously an object and a thing (see Heidegger 1967 , 1971 , 1977 ), a powerful “technological tool for the process of knowledge building” (Means 2008 , p. 137). Online learning occupies the subjective zone between the “curriculum-as-planned” and the “curriculum-as-lived” (Pinar 2019 , p. 23). The world of the curriculum-as-lived fades, as the screen shifts and children are enmeshed in an ocularcentric system of accountability and instrumentality.

In contrast to kronos , the Greek concept of kairos implies lived time or even slow time (Koepnick 2014 ), time that is “self-reflective” (Macdonald 1995 , p. 103) and autobiographical (Pinar 2009 , 2004), thus inspiring “curriculum improvisation” (Aoki 2011 , p. 375), while emphasizing “the plurality of subjectivities” (Grumet 2017 , p. 80). Kairos emphasizes singularity and acknowledges particularities; it is skeptical of similarities. For Shew ( 2013 , p. 48), “ kairos is that which opens an originary experience—of the divine, perhaps, but also of life or being. Thought as such, kairos as a formative happening—an opportune moment, crisis, circumstance, event—imposes its own sense of measure on time”. So conceived, curriculum can become a complicated conversation that occurs not in chronological time but in its own time. Such dialogue is not neutral, apolitical, or timeless. It focuses on the present and is intrinsically subjective, even in public space, as Pinar ( 2019 , p. 12) writes: “its site is subjectivity as one attunes oneself to what one is experiencing, yes to its immediacy and specificity but also to its situatedness, relatedness, including to what lies beyond it and not only spatially but temporally”.

Kairos is, then, the uniqueness of time that converts curriculum into a complicated conversation, one that includes the subjective reconstruction of learning as a consciousness of everyday life, encouraging the inner activism of quietude and disquietude. Writing about eternity, as an orientation towards the future, Pinar ( 2019 , p. 2) argues that “the second side [the first is contemplation] of such consciousness is immersion in daily life, the activism of quietude – for example, ethical engagement with others”. We add disquietude now, following the work of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. Disquietude is a moment of eternity: “Sometimes I think I’ll never leave ‘Douradores’ Street. And having written this, it seems to me eternity. Neither pleasure, nor glory, nor power. Freedom, only freedom” (Pesssoa 1991 ).

The disquietude conversation is simultaneously individual and public. It establishes an international space both deglobalized and autonomous, a source of responsive, ethical, and humane encounter. No longer entranced by the distracting dynamic stasis of image-after-image on the screen, the student can face what is his or her emplacement in the physical and natural world, as well as the technological world. The student can become present as a person, here and now, simultaneously historical and timeless.

Conclusions

Slow down and linger should be our motto now. A slogan yes, but it also represents a political, as well as a psychological resistance to the acceleration of time (Berg and Seeber 2016 )—an acceleration that the pandemic has intensified. Covid-19 has moved curriculum online, forcing children physically apart from each other and from their teachers and especially from the in-person dialogical encounters that classrooms can provide. The public space disappears into the pre-designed screen space that software allows, and the machine now becomes the material basis for a curriculum of things, not persons. Like the virus, the pandemic curriculum becomes embedded in devices that technologize our children.

Although one hundred years old, the images created in Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin return, less humorous this time than emblematic of our intensifying subjection to technological necessity. It “would seem to leave us as cogs in the machine, ourselves like moving parts, we keep functioning efficiently, increasing productivity calculating the creative destruction of what is, the human now materialized (de)vices ensnaring us in convenience, connectivity, calculation” (Pinar 2019 , p. 9). Post-human, as many would say.

Technology supports standardized testing and enforces software-designed conformity and never-ending self-evaluation, while all the time erasing lived, embodied experience and intellectual independence. Ignoring the evidence, others are sure that technology can function differently: “Given the potential of information and communication technologies, the teacher should now be a guide who enables learners, from early childhood throughout their learning trajectories, to develop and advance through the constantly expanding maze of knowledge” (UNESCO 2015a , p. 51). Would that it were so.

The canonical question—What knowledge is of most worth?—is open-ended and contentious. In a technologized world, providing for the well-being of children is not obvious, as well-being is embedded in ancient, non-neoliberal visions of the world. “Education is everybody’s business”, Pinar ( 2019 , p. 2) points out, as it fosters “responsible citizenship and solidarity in a global world” (UNESCO 2015a , p. 66), resisting inequality and the exclusion, for example, of migrant groups, refugees, and even those who live below or on the edge of poverty.

In this fast-moving digital world, education needs to be inclusive but not conformist. As the United Nations ( 2015 ) declares, education should ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. “The coming years will be a vital period to save the planet and to achieve sustainable, inclusive human development” (United Nations 2019 , p. 64). Is such sustainable, inclusive human development achievable through technologization? Can technology succeed where religion has failed?

Despite its contradictions and economic emphases, public education has one clear obligation—to create embodied encounters of learning through curriculum conceived as a complicated conversation. Such a conception acknowledges the worldliness of a cosmopolitan curriculum as it affirms the personification of the individual (Pinar 2011 ). As noted by Grumet ( 2017 , p. 89), “as a form of ethics, there is a responsibility to participate in conversation”. Certainly, it is necessary to ask over and over again the canonical curriculum question: What knowledge is of most worth?

If time, technology and teaching are moving images of eternity, curriculum and pedagogy are also, both ‘moving’ and ‘images’ but not an explicit, empirical, or exact representation of eternity…if reality is an endless series of ‘moving images’, the canonical curriculum question—What knowledge is of most worth?—cannot be settled for all time by declaring one set of subjects eternally important” (Pinar 2019 , p. 12).

In a complicated conversation, the curriculum is not a fixed image sliding into a passive technologization. As a “moving image”, the curriculum constitutes a politics of presence, an ongoing expression of subjectivity (Grumet 2017 ) that affirms the infinity of reality: “Shifting one’s attitude from ‘reducing’ complexity to ‘embracing’ what is always already present in relations and interactions may lead to thinking complexly, abiding happily with mystery” (Doll 2012 , p. 172). Describing the dialogical encounter characterizing conceived curriculum, as a complicated conversation, Pinar explains that this moment of dialogue “is not only place-sensitive (perhaps classroom centered) but also within oneself”, because “the educational significance of subject matter is that it enables the student to learn from actual embodied experience, an outcome that cannot always be engineered” (Pinar 2019 , pp. 12–13). Lived experience is not technological. So, “the curriculum of the future is not just a matter of defining content and official knowledge. It is about creating, sculpting, and finessing minds, mentalities, and identities, promoting style of thought about humans, or ‘mashing up’ and ‘making up’ the future of people” (Williamson 2013 , p. 113).

Yes, we need to linger and take time to contemplate the curriculum question. Only in this way will we share what is common and distinctive in our experience of the current pandemic by changing our time and our learning to foreclose on our future. Curriculum conceived as a complicated conversation restarts historical not screen time; it enacts the private and public as distinguishable, not fused in a computer screen. That is the “new normal”.

is full professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies and Educational Technology (Institute of Education, University of Minho, Portugal). His research focuses on curriculum theory, curriculum politics, and teacher training and evaluation. Presently, he is director of the PhD Science Education Program of the University of Minho, member of the Advisory Board of the Organization of Ibero-American Studies, director of the European Journal of Curriculum Studies, and director of the European Association on Curriculum Studies.

My thanks to William F. Pinar. Friendship is another moving image of eternity. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer. This work is financed by national funds through the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, under the project PTDC / CED-EDG / 30410/2017, Centre for Research in Education, Institute of Education, University of Minho.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

• Adorno, T. W. (2011). Educação e emancipação [Education and emancipation]. São Paulo: Paz e Terra.
• Aoki, T. T. (2011). Sonare and videre: A story, three echoes and a lingering note. In W. F. W. Pinar & R. L. Irwin (Eds.), Curriculum in a new key. The collected works of Ted T. Aoki (pp. 368–376). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Badiou A. Theory of the subject. London: Continuum; 2009. [ Google Scholar ]
• Berg M, Seeber B. The slow professor: Challenging the culture of speed in the academy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press; 2016. [ Google Scholar ]
• Couldry N, Mejias U. The costs of connection: How data is colonizing human life and appropriating it for capitalism. Stanford: Stanford University Press; 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Daniel SJ. Education and the Covid-19 pandemic. Prospects. 2020 doi: 10.1007/s11125-020-09464-3. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Davies D, Beauchamp G, Davies J, Price R. The potential of the ‘Internet of Things’ to enhance inquiry in Singapore schools. Research in Science & Technological Education. 2019 doi: 10.1080/02635143.2019.1629896. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Delors J. Learning: The treasure within. Paris: UNESCO; 1996. [ Google Scholar ]
• Doll, W. E. (2012). Thinking complexly. In D. Trueit (Ed.), Pragmatism, post-modernism, and complexity theory: The “fascinating imaginative realm” of William E. Doll, Jr. (pp. 172–187). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Doll WE. Curriculum and concepts of control. In: Pinar WF, editor. Curriculum: Toward new identities. New York, NY: Routledge; 2013. pp. 295–324. [ Google Scholar ]
• Eley G. Conclusion. In: Thomas JA, Eley G, editors. Visualizing fascism: The twentieth-century rise of the global Right. Durham, NC: Duke University Press; 2020. pp. 284–292. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gil, J. (2020). A pandemia e o capitalismo numérico [The pandemic and numerical capitalism]. Público . https://www.publico.pt/2020/04/12/sociedade/ensaio/pandemia-capitalismo-numerico-1911986 .
• Grumet, M.G. (2017). The politics of presence. In M. A. Doll (Ed.), The reconceptualization of curriculum studies. A Festschrift in honor of William F. Pinar (pp. 76–83). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Heidegger M. What is a thing? South Bend, IN: Gateway Editions; 1967. [ Google Scholar ]
• Heidegger M. Poetry, language, thought. New York, NY: Harper and Row; 1971. [ Google Scholar ]
• Heidegger M. The question concerning technology and other essays. New York, NY: Harper and Row; 1977. [ Google Scholar ]
• Koepnick L. On slowness: Toward an aesthetic of the contemporary. New York, NY: Columbia University Press; 2014. [ Google Scholar ]
• Koopman C. How we became our data: A genealogy of the informational person. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press; 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lahtinen M. Politics and curriculum. Leiden: Brill; 2009. [ Google Scholar ]
• Laist R. A curriculum of things: Exploring an object-oriented pedagogy. The National Teaching & Learning. 2016; 25 (3):1–4. doi: 10.1002/ntlf.30062. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Latour, B. (2020). Is this a dress rehearsal? Critical Inquiry . https://critinq.wordpress.com/2020/03/26/is-this-a-dress-rehearsal
• Lyotard J. The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press; 1984. [ Google Scholar ]
• Macdonald BJ. Theory as a prayerful act. New York, NY: Peter Lang; 1995. [ Google Scholar ]
• Marope PTM. Reconceptualizing and repositioning curriculum in the 21st century: A global paradigm shift. Geneva: UNESCO IBE; 2017. [ Google Scholar ]
• Marope PTM. Preventing violent extremism through universal values in curriculum. Prospects. 2020; 48 (1):1–5. doi: 10.1007/s11125-019-09453-1. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Means B. Technology’s role in curriculum and instruction. In: Connelly FM, editor. The Sage handbook of curriculum and instruction. Los Angeles, CA: Sage; 2008. pp. 123–144. [ Google Scholar ]
• OECD . OECD learning compass 2030. Paris: OECD; 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• OECD . Trends shaping education 2019. Paris: OECD; 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pacheco, J. A. (2009). Whole, bright, deep with understanding: Life story and politics of curriculum studies. In-between William Pinar and Ivor Goodson . Roterdam/Taipei: Sense Publishers.
• Pacheco, J. A. (2017). Pinar’s influence on the consolidation of Portuguese curriculum studies. In M. A. Doll (Ed.), The reconceptualization of curriculum studies. A Festschrift in honor of William F. Pinar (pp. 130–136). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Pestre, D. (2013). Science, technologie et société. La politique des savoirs aujourd’hui [Science, technology, and society: Politics of knowledge today]. Paris: Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian.
• Pesssoa F. The book of disquietude. Manchester: Carcanet Press; 1991. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pinar WF. What is curriculum theory? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 2004. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pinar WF. The worldliness of a cosmopolitan education: Passionate lives in public service. New York, NY: Routledge; 2009. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pinar, W. F. (2011). “A lingering note”: An introduction to the collected work of Ted T. Aoki. In W. F. Pinar & R. L. Irwin (Eds.), Curriculum in a new key. The collected works of Ted T. Aoki (pp. 1–85). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Pinar WF. Moving images of eternity: George Grant’s critique of time, teaching, and technology. Ottawa: The University of Ottawa Press; 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Shew M. The Kairos philosophy. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 2013; 27 (1):47–66. doi: 10.5325/jspecphil.27.1.0047. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Spiller, P. (2017). Could subjects soon be a thing of the past in Finland? BBC News . https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39889523 .
• UNESCO (2015a). Rethinking education. Towards a global common global? Paris: UNESCO.
• UNESCO (2015b). Education 2030. Framework for action . Paris: UNESCO. https://www.sdg4education2030.org/sdg-education-2030-steering-committee-resources .
• UNESCO (2017). Global citizenship education . Paris: UNESCO. https://en.unesco.org/themes/gced .
• United Nations . The sustainable development goals. New York, NY: United Nations; 2015. [ Google Scholar ]
• United Nations . The sustainable development goals report. New York, NY: United Nations; 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wells W. Permanent revolution: Reflections on capitalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press; 2020. [ Google Scholar ]
• Westbury, I. (2008). Making curricula. Why do states make curricula, and how? In F. M. Connelly (Ed.), The Sage handbook of curriculum and instruction (pp. 45–65). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
• Williamson B. The future of the curriculum. School knowledge in the digital age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
• Williamson, B. (2017). Big data in education. The digital future of learning, policy and practice . London: Sage.
• Žižek S. PANDEMIC! Covid-19 shakes the world. New York, NY: Or Books; 2020. [ Google Scholar ]

Advertisement

Supported by

Britain’s Violent Riots: What We Know

Officials had braced for more unrest on Wednesday, but the night’s anti-immigration protests were smaller, with counterprotesters dominating the streets instead.

• Share full article

By Lynsey Chutel

After days of violent rioting set off by disinformation around a deadly stabbing rampage, the authorities in Britain had been bracing for more unrest on Wednesday. But by nightfall, large-scale anti-immigration demonstrations had not materialized, and only a few arrests had been made nationwide.

Instead, streets in cities across the country were filled with thousands of antiracism protesters, including in Liverpool, where by late evening, the counterdemonstration had taken on an almost celebratory tone.

Over the weekend, the anti-immigration protests, organized by far-right groups, had devolved into violence in more than a dozen towns and cities. And with messages on social media calling for wider protests and counterprotests on Wednesday, the British authorities were on high alert.

With tensions running high, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s cabinet held emergency meetings to discuss what has become the first crisis of his recently elected government. Some 6,000 specialist public-order police officers were mobilized nationwide to respond to any disorder, and the authorities in several cities and towns stepped up patrols.

Wednesday was not trouble-free, however.

In Bristol, the police said there was one arrest after a brick was thrown at a police vehicle and a bottle was thrown. In the southern city of Portsmouth, police officers dispersed a small group of anti-immigration protesters who had blocked a roadway. And in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where there have been at least four nights of unrest, disorder continued, and the police service said it would bring in additional officers.

But overall, many expressed relief that the fears of wide-scale violence had not been realized.

Here’s what we know about the turmoil in Britain.

Where arrests have been reported

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

How to cite ChatGPT

Use discount code STYLEBLOG15 for 15% off APA Style print products with free shipping in the United States.

We, the APA Style team, are not robots. We can all pass a CAPTCHA test , and we know our roles in a Turing test . And, like so many nonrobot human beings this year, we’ve spent a fair amount of time reading, learning, and thinking about issues related to large language models, artificial intelligence (AI), AI-generated text, and specifically ChatGPT . We’ve also been gathering opinions and feedback about the use and citation of ChatGPT. Thank you to everyone who has contributed and shared ideas, opinions, research, and feedback.

In this post, I discuss situations where students and researchers use ChatGPT to create text and to facilitate their research, not to write the full text of their paper or manuscript. We know instructors have differing opinions about how or even whether students should use ChatGPT, and we’ll be continuing to collect feedback about instructor and student questions. As always, defer to instructor guidelines when writing student papers. For more about guidelines and policies about student and author use of ChatGPT, see the last section of this post.

Quoting or reproducing the text created by ChatGPT in your paper

If you’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools in your research, describe how you used the tool in your Method section or in a comparable section of your paper. For literature reviews or other types of essays or response or reaction papers, you might describe how you used the tool in your introduction. In your text, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated in response.

Unfortunately, the results of a ChatGPT “chat” are not retrievable by other readers, and although nonretrievable data or quotations in APA Style papers are usually cited as personal communications , with ChatGPT-generated text there is no person communicating. Quoting ChatGPT’s text from a chat session is therefore more like sharing an algorithm’s output; thus, credit the author of the algorithm with a reference list entry and the corresponding in-text citation.

When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. It is particularly important to document the exact text created because ChatGPT will generate a unique response in each chat session, even if given the same prompt. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper.

When given a follow-up prompt of “What is a more accurate representation?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that “different brain regions work together to support various cognitive processes” and “the functional specialization of different regions can change in response to experience and environmental factors” (OpenAI, 2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript).

Creating a reference to ChatGPT or other AI models and software

The in-text citations and references above are adapted from the reference template for software in Section 10.10 of the Publication Manual (American Psychological Association, 2020, Chapter 10). Although here we focus on ChatGPT, because these guidelines are based on the software template, they can be adapted to note the use of other large language models (e.g., Bard), algorithms, and similar software.

The reference and in-text citations for ChatGPT are formatted as follows:

• Parenthetical citation: (OpenAI, 2023)
• Narrative citation: OpenAI (2023)

Let’s break that reference down and look at the four elements (author, date, title, and source):

Author: The author of the model is OpenAI.

Date: The date is the year of the version you used. Following the template in Section 10.10, you need to include only the year, not the exact date. The version number provides the specific date information a reader might need.

Title: The name of the model is “ChatGPT,” so that serves as the title and is italicized in your reference, as shown in the template. Although OpenAI labels unique iterations (i.e., ChatGPT-3, ChatGPT-4), they are using “ChatGPT” as the general name of the model, with updates identified with version numbers.

The version number is included after the title in parentheses. The format for the version number in ChatGPT references includes the date because that is how OpenAI is labeling the versions. Different large language models or software might use different version numbering; use the version number in the format the author or publisher provides, which may be a numbering system (e.g., Version 2.0) or other methods.

Bracketed text is used in references for additional descriptions when they are needed to help a reader understand what’s being cited. References for a number of common sources, such as journal articles and books, do not include bracketed descriptions, but things outside of the typical peer-reviewed system often do. In the case of a reference for ChatGPT, provide the descriptor “Large language model” in square brackets. OpenAI describes ChatGPT-4 as a “large multimodal model,” so that description may be provided instead if you are using ChatGPT-4. Later versions and software or models from other companies may need different descriptions, based on how the publishers describe the model. The goal of the bracketed text is to briefly describe the kind of model to your reader.

Source: When the publisher name and the author name are the same, do not repeat the publisher name in the source element of the reference, and move directly to the URL. This is the case for ChatGPT. The URL for ChatGPT is https://chat.openai.com/chat . For other models or products for which you may create a reference, use the URL that links as directly as possible to the source (i.e., the page where you can access the model, not the publisher’s homepage).

Other questions about citing ChatGPT

You may have noticed the confidence with which ChatGPT described the ideas of brain lateralization and how the brain operates, without citing any sources. I asked for a list of sources to support those claims and ChatGPT provided five references—four of which I was able to find online. The fifth does not seem to be a real article; the digital object identifier given for that reference belongs to a different article, and I was not able to find any article with the authors, date, title, and source details that ChatGPT provided. Authors using ChatGPT or similar AI tools for research should consider making this scrutiny of the primary sources a standard process. If the sources are real, accurate, and relevant, it may be better to read those original sources to learn from that research and paraphrase or quote from those articles, as applicable, than to use the model’s interpretation of them.

We’ve also received a number of other questions about ChatGPT. Should students be allowed to use it? What guidelines should instructors create for students using AI? Does using AI-generated text constitute plagiarism? Should authors who use ChatGPT credit ChatGPT or OpenAI in their byline? What are the copyright implications ?

On these questions, researchers, editors, instructors, and others are actively debating and creating parameters and guidelines. Many of you have sent us feedback, and we encourage you to continue to do so in the comments below. We will also study the policies and procedures being established by instructors, publishers, and academic institutions, with a goal of creating guidelines that reflect the many real-world applications of AI-generated text.

For questions about manuscript byline credit, plagiarism, and related ChatGPT and AI topics, the APA Style team is seeking the recommendations of APA Journals editors. APA Style guidelines based on those recommendations will be posted on this blog and on the APA Style site later this year.

Update: APA Journals has published policies on the use of generative AI in scholarly materials .

We, the APA Style team humans, appreciate your patience as we navigate these unique challenges and new ways of thinking about how authors, researchers, and students learn, write, and work with new technologies.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

Related and recent

Comments are disabled due to your privacy settings. To re-enable, please adjust your cookie preferences.

APA Style Monthly

Subscribe to the APA Style Monthly newsletter to get tips, updates, and resources delivered directly to your inbox.

Welcome! Thank you for subscribing.

APA Style Guidelines

Browse APA Style writing guidelines by category

• Abbreviations
• Bias-Free Language
• Capitalization
• In-Text Citations
• Italics and Quotation Marks
• Paper Format
• Punctuation
• Research and Publication
• Spelling and Hyphenation
• Tables and Figures

Full index of topics