![]() ![]() ![]() But particular changes during the pandemic have also drawn people’s attention to longer-term opportunities that exist. Some of this is guided by the realization that climate change may make interruptions to regular schooling incurred by pandemics or other natural disasters more likely in the future-and that more flexible and responsive systems of teaching and learning may need to be established now for when those eventualities arise ( World Health Organisation 2018 International Council of Educational Advisers 2020). These changes in teachers’ work during COVID-19 have not only led to losses, gains, and transformations during the pandemic itself, but many commentators also expect, and in some cases are advocating for, some of these changes to continue in some form or other once the pandemic is over. This can then translate into increased learning and well-being. At the same time, where school has been an unpleasant and unrewarding experience for some students, learning away from it might actually provide relief from harms and threats ( Whitley 2020). Remote learning also presents teachers with challenges of how to maintain relationships and establish emotional connections with students, and how to sustain student engagement with learning, especially among those who are most vulnerable ( Hagerman and Kellam 2020). By contrast, digital learning in a remote environment provides uneven and uncertain levels of support from teachers, tutors, and mentors. A lot of digitally based learning can and does also occur within an in-person teaching environment, with advice and support from teachers on how to access and process knowledge, information, and learning tasks. Initially, some provinces discovered that around one-third of their students had no devices or internet access and had to be provided with hard copy materials instead ( ASCD 2020). Remote learning may occur with or without digital access. ![]() Remote learning is not identical to virtual learning. Beyond post-pandemic narratives of educational doom on the one hand and of jubilant celebrations of bright spots and silver linings on the other, the article concludes that the future of teaching after COVID-19 will actually be complex, uncertain, and contingent on the policy decisions and professional directions that are set out in the recommendations to this report. These are the development of “teacher expertise”, the nature of teaching as an “emotional practice” in which the well-being of students and teachers is reciprocally interrelated, and the ways in which external changes either enrich or deplete teacher’s “professional capital”, especially their “social capital”. This article analyzes actual and likely pandemic consequences of and insights deriving from remote access, digitally based interactions, and physical distancing in relation to three core characteristics of teaching and teacher quality. Any questions of learning loss in the short term and learning transformations in the long run cannot therefore be addressed in any meaningful way without examining the short- and longer-term impacts of the pandemic on losses, gains, and transformations in teachers and teaching. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that although learning can and sometimes does occur without teaching, on any significant scale, and especially among the most marginalized and vulnerable children, a lot of learning does not occur when children are deprived of teachers and teaching. ![]()
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