COVID-19 has profoundly disrupted national education systems, affecting the future well-being of school-age children. Bacher-Hicks and colleagues showed that the intensity of the search for online learning resources in the United States doubled with respect to pre-COVID-19 levels. However, areas of the country with higher incomes, better internet access, and fewer rural schools experienced significantly greater increases in search intensity. Using a similar method to study the case of Spain, we analyze the evolution of search intensity for a selection of digital educational resources over the period 2015 to 2021. Special attention is paid to the period of COVID-19 pandemic, namely, March 2020 to June 2021. The findings include a widespread rise in the use of digital resources with respect to the use in the last 5 years, which varies by digital educational resource and region. However, the use of digital resources in Spain does not seem to vary according to family income, at least in relation to open access digital educational resources. In addition, there appears to be a steady decline in search intensity for digital educational resources and a certain degree of substitutability following the surge due to the pandemic and the school closures.

Likert scales traditionally used in student evaluations of teaching (SET) suffer from several shortcomings, including psychometric deficiencies or ambiguity problems in the interpretation of the results. Assessment instruments with Behavioral Anchored Rating Scales (BARS) offer an alternative to Likerttype questionnaires. This paper describes the construction of an appraisal tool with BARS generated with the participation of 974 students and 15 teachers. The resulting instrument eliminates ambiguity in the interpretation of results and gives objectivity to the evaluation due to the use of unequivocal behavioral examples in the final scale. However, BARS methodology presents the problem of losing behavioral information during scale construction. The BARS methodology presented by the authors introduces an additional step to the traditional procedure, which significantly reduces the loss of information during the scale construction. The authors conclude that the qualitative approach of the proposed instrument facilitates the application of the formative function of the evaluation.

El confinamiento y el consiguiente cierre de los centros educativos provocó un aumento de la proporción de niños y adolescentes con problemas de salud mental desde el 10,9% al 16,0% en Inglaterra, uno de los países para los que mejor se ha medido este impacto. Sin embargo, hay varios aspectos que matizarían esta primera conclusión. El primero es que la experiencia de España, uno de los primeros países en Europa en abrir de forma generalizada y prolongada los centros educativos, muestra que una parte importante de los jóvenes se recupera en su bienestar emocional al volver a las clases presenciales y, con ellas, tener de nuevo la interacción con sus compañeros y docentes y reencontrarse con un espacio como el de los colegios e institutos con el que se sienten identificados. Los novedosos datos de GAD3 para Ernst & Young analizados en este capítulo muestran que la proporción de estudiantes con un estado de ánimo bajo a muy bajo disminuyó desde el 29,9% durante el confinamiento en el último trimestre del curso 2019-2020 al 7,2% del 2020-2021 con las clases presenciales o semipresenciales. El segundo aspecto que gradúa el impacto de la pandemia en la salud mental de los jóvenes es que no todos los estudios encuentran que el bienestar emocional de niños y adolescentes ha empeorado o al menos no en todas las dimensiones.