Asian Journal of Distance Education Volume 15, Issue 1, 2020 A global outlook to the interruption of education due to COVID-19 Pandemic: Navigating in a time of uncertainty and crisis Aras Bozkurt, Insung Jung, Junhong Xiao, Viviane Vladimirschi, Robert Schuwer, Gennady Egorov, Sarah R. Lambert, Maha Al-Freih, Judith Pete, Don Olcott, Jr., Virginia Rodes, Ignacio Aranciaga, Maha Bali, Abel V. Alvarez, Jr., Jennifer Roberts, Angelica Pazurek, Juliana Elisa Raffaghelli, Nikos Panagiotou, Perrine de Coëtlogon, Sadik Shahadu, Mark Brown, Tutaleni I. Asino, Josephine Tumwesige, Tzinti Ramírez Reyes, Emma Barrios Ipenza, Ebba Ossiannilsson, Melissa Bond, Kamel Belhamel, Valerie Irvine, Ramesh C. Sharma, Taskeen Adam, Ben Janssen, Tatiana Sklyarova, Nicoleta Olcott, Alejandra Ambrosino, Chrysoula Lazou, Bertrand Mocquet, Mattias Mano, Michael Paskevicius Abstract: Uncertain times require prompt reflexes to survive and this study is a collaborative reflex to better understand uncertainty and navigate through it. The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit hard and interrupted many dimensions of our lives, particularly education. As a response to interruption of education due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this study is a collaborative reaction that narrates the overall view, reflections from the K12 and higher educational landscape, lessons learned and suggestions from a total of 31 countries across the world with a representation of 62.7% of the whole world population. In addition to the value of each case by country, the synthesis of this research suggests that the current practices can be defined as emergency remote education and this practice is different from planned practices such as distance education, online learning or other derivations. Above all, this study points out how social injustice, inequity and the digital divide have been exacerbated during the pandemic and need unique and targeted measures if they are to be addressed. While there are support communities and mechanisms, parents are overburdened between regular daily/professional duties and emerging educational roles, and all parties are experiencing trauma, psychological pressure and anxiety to various degrees, which necessitates a pedagogy of care, affection and empathy. In terms of educational processes, the interruption of education signifies the importance of openness in education and highlights issues that should be taken into consideration such as using alternative assessment and evaluation methods as well as concerns about surveillance, ethics, and data privacy resulting from nearly exclusive dependency on online solutions. Keywords: emergency remote education, distance education, online learning, Coronavirus Pandemic, Covid-19. Introduction Following the first-time identification of Coronavirus (Covid-19) in December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that Covid-19 is a global pandemic in March 2020, and warned about its highly contagious nature (WHO, 2020). As a precaution to slow down its spread, countries all around the world followed strict protocols such as complete or partial lockdowns, social distancing regulations, and curfews. To reduce the chances of humans infecting each other with Covid-19, places where humans interact closely were shut down, including educational institutions. Accordingly, as an outcome of the measures taken worldwide, more than 1.5 billion enrolled students of all ages from all around the globe experienced interruption of education which equals nearly 90% of the global student population (UNESCO, 2020a; 2020b; UNICEF, 2020). Though the interruption of education has occurred previously in many local instances (e.g., in cases of war, civil unrest, famine or strikes) it is “being experienced more acutely and affectively by educators, students and parents” at a global scale for the first time (Williamson, Eynon, & Potter, 2020, p. 107). Consequently, to ensure the continuity of education, emergency remote education was put in practice in varying delivery modes. 1 Published by EdTechReview (ETR), New Delhi, India ISSN 1347-9008 http://www.asianjde.org This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license Asian Journal of Distance Education: 2020, Volume 15, Issue 1, 1-126 Bozkurt et al. Emergency Remote Education In such a critical time, there has been a drastic change in how teaching and learning happen while learners are physically out of schools and separated from their teachers and co-learners. The educational practices during the Covid-19 pandemic are denoted with different terms in different countries (e.g., distance education, e-learning, online education, homeschooling, etc.). However, these terms do not quite capture what is being practiced during the interruption of education, which can better be described as emergency remote education (ERE). Considering that the terms used in different countries are derivations of distance education, as a generic term, the remarkable difference between emergency remote education and distance education is that the latter is an option while the former is an obligation. Such an understanding is crucial because misconceptions in definitions would lead us to misconceptions in practices. Distance education, for instance, is a planned activity and its implementation is grounded in theoretical and practical knowledge which is specific to the field and its nature. On the other hand, emergency remote education is about surviving in a time of crisis with all resources available, including offline and/or online. To better conceptualize emergency remote education and to distinguish it from distance education, there is a need to briefly revisit the field of distance education. Distance education is defined as “any educational process in which all or most of the teaching is conducted by someone removed in space and/or time from the learner, with the effect that all or most of the communication between teachers and learners is through an artificial medium, either electronic or print” (UNESCO, 2002, p. 22). Nevertheless, it ‘is not simply a geographical separation of learners and teachers, but, more importantly, is a pedagogical concept’ (Moore, 1997, p. 22). In contrast, the crash nature of emergency remote education inevitably results in its weakness in theoretical underpinning and is far from being a pedagogical concept in its own right. The field of distance education has already proved its validity and value (Xiao, 2018) and earlier research indicated that there is no difference between distance education and face to face education (Russell, 1999). Against widely known assumptions, distance education does not specifically refer to online education, but a wide range of technologies used throughout its generations (Bozkurt, 2019a; Jung, 2019; Moore & Kearsley, 2012). The pragmatic nature of distance education allows the field to use working solutions for learners and defends the view that the field should provide educational opportunities for those who are “vulnerable to unequal developments” (Bozkurt, 2019b, p. 510). While this is the case for the field of distance education, the World Bank (2020a) highlights that during the emergency remote education “failure is common, and success is often a result of experience and learning from past failures” (p. 1). The World Bank (2020b) further points out that: “education systems must confront issues of inequity front and center. They must also prepare multi-modal responses, capitalizing on existing infrastructure and utilizing a combination of different learning mediums to ensure students are engaged and learning. [emergency remote education] can ensure that students continue learning through a variety of avenues. While digital technologies can offer a wide set of capabilities for remote learning, most education systems in low- and middle-income countries, including schools, children and/or teachers, lack access to high-speed broadband or digital devices needed to fully deploy online learning options. As such, education systems need to consider alternative ways for students to continue learning when they are not in school, like in the current Covid-19 crisis” (p. 1). In this regard, it can be argued that, during the Covid-19 pandemic, with similarities and differences (Bozkurt, & Sharma, 2020; Hodges et al., 2020; Huang et al., 2020; Tzifopoulos, 2020), it was emergency remote education that was applied and it can be further argued that emergency remote education is a branch of distance education as in the case of online learning, e-learning, m-learning, or homeschooling. The following sub-sections briefly describe major themes that have arisen from the interruption of education during Covid-19 and briefly introduce some background information to better interpret the cases. 2 Asian Journal of Distance Education: 2020, Volume 15, Issue 1, 1-126 Bozkurt et al. Issues of Concern in Relation to Interruption of Education Trauma, psychological pressure, and anxiety In addition to the profound and global impact of the pandemic on our social, economic, and political lives, Covid-19 has also affected individuals both emotionally and psychologically (Miller, 2020). As Jansen (2020), former Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Free State (South Africa) highlighted, “Our biggest mistake would be to treat children as cognitive machines that can simply be switched on again after the trauma of Covid-19”. Due to the pandemic, learners, teachers and parents are going through a great deal of anxiety. In their everyday lives, they may be finding self-isolation