Abstract
The purpose of this article is to analyse how education and schooling took part in handling the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in eight European countries (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Poland and Sweden). The focus is on primary education and on decisions to close schools, or not. Our research was informed by assemblage theory in order to analyse how different components interacted in developing societal responses to mitigate the pandemic. The research was designed as a comparative case study of practical reasoning in diverse contexts. Data sources were the mass media and statements from governments and authorities. Our analyses showed that decisions to close schools, or not, were based on two alternative discourses on schooling. Closing primary schools was a preventive measure underlined by discourses of schools as places for infection. Keeping primary schools open was underlined by a discourse in which schools were conceived of as a place for social supportive measures and caring. Furthermore, the closing alternative was often combined with attempts to replace school practices by distance learning or computerized instruction. Legal constitutions and lawmaking were of significant importance in selecting discourses and the relative impact of different components, mostly political or medical, in responding to the pandemic.
Highlights
In early 2020, COVID-19 was spreading across the world, leading to disease and deaths
Our research resulted in answers to the questions we put forward on schooling and education as parts in mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic during the first months of the pandemic, where uncertainties were high (Czarniawska et al, 2021) and there was little knowledge about the virus
It was important in these answers that we could understand why the mitigating responses differed across the countries included in our research, and that similar responses emerged in different ways in our actual cases
Summary
In early 2020, COVID-19 was spreading across the world, leading to disease and deaths. There was no vaccine available, and there was great uncertainty as to how to mitigate the growing pandemic and how to behave. It had to be counteracted, and different agents – global organizations, governments and a number of national authorities and organizations – were interacting in order to slow the spread of the pandemic. School lockdowns and distance education were part of such responses in most but not all places. We posed questions regarding why and how these different responses were made. We asked: what do these responses, such as closing the school premises, tell us about the school as a societal institution?
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