Why flipping the classroom is not enough: Digital curriculum making after the pandemic

Susanne Backes,Isabell Baumann,Dominic Harion,Sabrina Sattler,Thomas Lenz

doi:10.1007/s11125-021-09555-9

Abstract

To slow down the proliferation of Covid-19, governments virtually shut down public life, temporarily closed schools, and forced teaching to be done exclusively on a remote basis. These measures offer an opportunity to reexamine conventional teaching and learning arrangements, test new digital and analogue concepts, and provide essential inspiration for curriculum making in the twenty-first century. This article addresses the historical development of schooling in the classroom as differentiated from “homeschooling”. On one hand, the question of how school closures and digitally supported teaching settings may affect an increase in educational inequalities is investigated using an international comparison. On the other hand, the pedagogical and didactical implications of distance learning and a digital teaching culture, which constitute the foundation for digital curriculum making, are examined.

Highlights

To slow the proliferation of Covid-19, governments virtually shut down public life, temporarily closed schools, and forced teaching to be done exclusively on a remote basis
The question of how school closures and digitally supported teaching settings may affect an increase in educational inequalities is investigated using an international comparison
The pedagogical and didactical implications of distance learning and a digital teaching culture, which constitute the foundation for digital curriculum making, are examined

Summary

The state and the schools

Schools are—and this applies, not just to Luxembourg—institutions capable of cultivating a feeling of national belonging, so it is no accident that the modern school system emerged in historical parallel to the modern nation-state (Baumann 2019). Out of purely epidemiological necessity, teaching reverted to the status of homeschooling and of observing, imitating, and editing standardized teaching material This posed a number of difficulties because almost all the prerequisites for a successful transfer of school responsibility were missing, and the curricular, pedagogical, and even purely technical prerequisites for functional homeschooling did not exist. This has medium and long-term effects on teaching practices, the fabric of teaching and learning, and our understanding and framework of education in general. We will first take a look at the connection between digitization and educational inequalities

Educational inequality and barriers

Findings

Digital cultures and new models of teaching and learning