“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another,” said G.K. Chesterton. Indeed, education connects generations. It builds a bridge between the past and the future by preserving the cultural heritage and inspiring young people to dream big.
Thus, an effective education system needs to be founded on universal human values and responsive to the rapid changes that reshape the social landscape every year. To paraphrase Albert Einstein’s iconic quote, teaching is like riding a bicycle; to keep your balance, you must keep moving.
The K-12 educational framework is no exception. It is a flexible and dynamic system that responds to such serious challenges as the current COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent switch to a fully online environment by developing new strategies. These new approaches help teachers meet the educational and psychological needs of the diverse student body.
So, what are the main trends that have recently emerged within K-12 education?
1. Personalization of Learning
Thanks to the development of a wide range of e-learning platforms, personalized teaching that caters to the needs of every student are now becoming a reality. Such learning environments as Moodle, Udemy, Coursera, Khan Academy, EdX, Udacity, and TED-Ed have changed the game in education and significantly influenced approaches used within the K-12 system.
Students can easily download the relevant materials. They can watch videos and listen to recordings as many times as they need, rewind and pause if they want to focus on complicated fragments. Moreover, there is often a possibility of chatting with their peers and getting fast feedback from the teacher.
Students can even get homework help from a professional custom essay writing service. All these options allow them to study at their own pace. Students who learn and think differently can achieve success by studying from home during the pandemic and going back to school.
2. Integration of Virtual and Augmented Reality Technologies
While virtual and augmented reality technologies may be a rather expensive and somewhat unobvious teaching tool, they certainly can boast a range of benefits. These benefits deal with a higher degree of student engagement and better comprehension of the material.
VR and AR help young learners immerse themselves in the subject. They stimulate their imagination and boost their curiosity. By relying on many senses at once and being essentially interactive, these technologies improve memorization and facilitate the practical implementation of the acquired knowledge.
3. Increasing Use of Nano-Learning Methods
Nano-learning (or micro-learning) is the approach based on short lessons. It allows educators to decrease the stress experienced by students. Thus, young people feel less overwhelmed by the pressure of deadlines, high requirements, and complex material.
The learners proceed one step at a time consuming bite-sized portions of new information. This strategy makes students feel more relaxed, comfortable, and confident. It is also a great solution for teachers facing a short attention span problem. These days, rapid attention switches have become a salient feature of the digital age students.
4. Advance of Social Learning Tools
Many teachers within the K-12 system have come to see social media as a friend and an educational asset rather than an enemy and a distraction. Social learning tools include such popular services as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
They help keep students interested and motivated while also building a bridge between the classroom and the students’ daily lives outside of it. Creating blogs, recording podcasts, and other forms of digital self-expression help to enliven the process of learning, raise students’ self-esteem, and empower them to use technology as an effective learning tool.
5. Rethinking Assessment and Accountability
No one doubts that assessment is an essential element of the educational process. However, many educators are voicing the need to rethink the excessively demanding and extremely stressful testing framework.
Back in September 2020, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos appealed to state leaders, saying, “Now may be the perfect time for you to rethink assessment in your state.” DeVos encouraged the chief state school officers to take a closer look at competency and mastery-based assessments.
While standardized testing is most likely here to stay for a long time yet, the experts believe that the most forward-thinking educators can be counted upon to develop more relevant student-centered alternatives.
6. Introducing Recovery Practices
As the schools are returning to the more or less normal routine after the pandemic, reversing learning loss and helping students recover essential learning and social skills have become the number one priority for the teachers.
Educators are also concerned about developing effective strategies for assisting students in coping with the trauma caused by anxiety, stress, illness, and loss. Thus, social-emotional learning has come into focus as an effective way of responding to this challenge.
7. Bringing Teachers Into the Spotlight
The pandemic has placed teachers under an unprecedented strain. This has led to many consequences: from a shift toward more creative approaches and increased personalization of learning to the frightening percentage of teacher burnouts. “Districts will be looking for ways to care for their teachers’ physical and mental well-being to prevent further burnout and teacher churn,” said Mike Teng, CEO, and Co-Founder of Swing Education.
8. Closer Collaboration with Parents
One of the most logical solutions to the post-pandemic problems is to increase parent engagement through online and hybrid learning environments. Informed parents are becoming active participants in the learning process. As recognized stakeholders, they can effectively help their children cope with the challenges of both studying from home and going back to school.
Wrapping Up
All in all, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the face of contemporary education. Teachers worldwide have been forced to rethink their approaches to material presentation, assessment, and student engagement.
And while the education experts are still investigating disturbing consequences of the rapid switch to online learning, many educators have learned to see the challenges posed by the pandemic as an inspiration. It is high time we transformed the system to finally meet the needs of the most diverse student body allowing every learner to look into the future with hope and optimism.
