{"id":268924,"date":"2020-11-17T11:30:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T16:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/will-the-pandemic-help-shift-the-education-system-back-to-teaching\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T23:18:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T03:18:00","slug":"will-the-pandemic-help-shift-the-education-system-back-to-teaching","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2020\/11\/will-the-pandemic-help-shift-the-education-system-back-to-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the pandemic help shift the education system back to teaching?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dropcap-big\">Students are now routinely referred to as \u201clearners\u201d in the school system-bound world of K-12 education. Teaching is \u201cfacilitating learning,\u201d the classroom is a \u201clearning environment,\u201d and pursuing continuing education is \u201clifelong learning.\u201d Over the past forty years, learning has essentially subsumed teaching, devalued the professional practice of teaching, and, in many ways, resulted in the disappearance of the teacher.<\/p>\n<p>The dominant language of learning is symptomatic of a much more pervasive educational process \u2013 the <em>learnification<\/em> of primary and secondary education. That term, largely unknown to the public, was first coined by the Dutch-born educational philosopher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.routledge.com\/The-Rediscovery-of-Teaching\/Biesta\/p\/book\/9781138670709\">Gert Biesta, the recognized global leader of the reclaiming teaching movement<\/a>. It\u2019s reached a point where the regular practice of standing to deliver a lesson is frowned upon by education ministries, education faculties and many elementary school principals.<\/p>\n<p>Warnings from Biesta and fellow teaching practice researchers went largely unheeded until the global pandemic. Suspending in-person schooling in March 2020 for three months, followed by the introduction in September 2020 of hybrid-blended learning schedules, shook up <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mqup.ca\/state-of-the-system--the-products-9780228000846.php\">the Canadian school system<\/a> and exposed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.taylorfrancis.com\/books\/9781315634319\">learnification<\/a>\u00a0and its debilitating effects on teachers and teaching for everyone to see.<\/p>\n<p>With schools closed and traditional classrooms gone, teachers were left on their own to deliver the curriculum and interact, mostly-one-on-one, with students. Facing a gallery of students with cameras on, logged into\u00a0Zoom\u00a0or\u00a0Microsoft Teams<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>or another type of system-sanctioned platform, changed the terms of engagement in COVID-19 education times.<\/p>\n<p>Conventional progressive pedagogical practices such as\u00a0<em>cooperative learning activities, facilitating group discussion\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>project-based learning<\/em>\u00a0were far more challenging, if not impossible to implement. Many and perhaps most teachers defaulted to simply assigning homework and hoped for the best. Over the course of the first three months, student participation rates plummeted and an estimated one-out-of-four students went missing in public education.<\/p>\n<p>The gradual shift from teaching to learning did not happen overnight. The transformation has been happening gradually since the 1980s. But the change altered far more than the language of education. It changed <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s11217-019-09667-y\">the role, position and the identity of the teacher<\/a>. A whole generation of teachers were schooled to shift from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncattbookshop.com\/a-sage-on-the-stage\">\u201csage on the stage\u201d\u00a0to\u00a0\u201cguide on the side<\/a>\u201d\u00a0and, in the eyes of some, to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s11217-019-09667-y\">\u201cpeer at the rear.<\/a>\u201d<em>\u00a0<\/em>System change theorists and progressive education reformers socialized classroom practitioners to blend-in as a learner among learners in a learning community, to the point where many were almost indistinguishable from their students.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s generation of teachers has been thrust into technology-enabled distance learning and given\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/21515864\/covid-hybrid-school-learning-remote-plan-pandemic\">a crash course on managing the complexities of\u00a0hybrid-blended learning.<\/a>\u00a0Video conferencing and live streaming are emerging as the primary survival tools for educators faced with teaching a combination of in-person and virtual classes. That dramatic development has also thrown school system change theorists and progressive pedagogues for a loop.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nationalpost.com\/opinion\/post-covid-19-classrooms-what-if-keeping-your-distance-becomes-the-new-school-normal\"><strong>new normal\u00a0<\/strong>in K-12 education<\/a>\u00a0is not conducive to the simple resumption of past teaching practices, and particularly elementary learning centres, process-driven activities and interactive group learning. A whole generation of educators, steeped in progressive pedagogy, is coming to the realization that post-pandemic education may well be defined by physical distancing, spaced-out student desks, plexiglass partitions and\u00a0<strong>\u201ckeeping your distance\u201d education<\/strong>. Standing and delivering a lesson, live-streaming presentations and whole-class teaching are much more practical and pragmatic responses to post-pandemic educational realities.<\/p>\n<p>Today it\u2019s fashionable in K-12 education to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/epochemagazine.org\/learnification-and-the-attack-on-education-ce259c9d5bdb\">attribute all that ails the system to\u00a0globalization\u00a0and so-called\u00a0neo-liberal education reform<\/a>.\u00a0Standardized testing and accountability did play an instrumental role in promoting and entrenching efficiency and managerialism, while eroding teacher autonomy in the school and community. It was not, however, the main impetus behind the new technocratic educational language of learnification. That shift was promoted by education change gurus and reformers of all persuasions, and \u2013 most notably \u2013 by education progressives wedded to student-centred learning.<\/p>\n<p>The pandemic disruption has upset the educational status quo and challenged the hegemony of system-focused learnification. Engaged parents and educators have been awakened to what \u00a0Biesta\u00a0aptly identified as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.taylorfrancis.com\/books\/9781315634319\">the real point of education<\/a>: to learn\u00a0<em>something,\u00a0<\/em>to learn it\u00a0<em>for a reason<\/em> and to learn it\u00a0<em>from someone<\/em>. It may turn out that it took a global pandemic to demonstrate the wisdom of bringing teachers back to centre stage and putting teaching back into K-12 education.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"image-caption\">Photo: Shutterstock.com, by MNStudio.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Students are now routinely referred to as \u201clearners\u201d in the school system-bound world of K-12 education. Teaching is \u201cfacilitating learning,\u201d the classroom is a \u201clearning environment,\u201d and pursuing continuing education is \u201clifelong learning.\u201d Over the past forty years, learning has essentially subsumed teaching, devalued the professional practice of teaching, and, in many ways, resulted in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":278474,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-10-08T03:18:02Z","apple_news_api_id":"91feee85-255f-4cbc-8683-5d44a9c8572a","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-08T03:18:02Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Akf7uhSVfTLyGg11EqchXKg","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[9379,9372],"tags":[8377],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[4209,4266],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[7173],"class_list":["post-268924","issues","type-issues","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-recent-stories-fr","tag-skills-fr","irpp-category-education","irpp-category-travail","irpp-tag-competences"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Will the pandemic help shift the education system back to teaching?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2020\/11\/will-the-pandemic-help-shift-the-education-system-back-to-teaching\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Will the pandemic help shift the education system back to teaching?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Students are now routinely referred to as \u201clearners\u201d in the school system-bound world of K-12 education. 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