March 2020 will be reminded as the time when schools around the world came to a shutdown. This resulted in a necessary and immediate redesign of teaching and learning. School-based instruction had to be replaced by a home-based instruction format. This required students, parents and teachers to adapt their daily routines to a new and unknown educational reality. Given this unprecedented situation, research into the impact of homeschooling during the COVID-19 crisis became urgent. This brief report introduces a nation-wide research project in Germany. Following a mixed-methods design, the SCHELLE project titled Student-Parents-Teachers in Homeschooling (abbreviated as SCHELLE following its German name Schüler-Eltern-Lehrer) was developed in order to comprehensively explore students’, parents’, and teachers’ experiences during homeschooling. Overall, the studies focused on collecting quantitative and qualitative data on how homeschooling was implemented, whether inclusive education was considered, and the well-being of all three perspectives. The main findings of the SCHELLE project revealed that the impact of homeschooling expanded not only into the educational domain, but as well into the social (e.g. social distancing), psychological (positive and negative activation), and educational equality matters (implementation of inclusive education).

Given the increasing diversity of the student body, teachers are called to appropriately address students' various learning needs by means of differentiated instruction (DI). However, empirical research has yielded mixed evidence on teachers' reported use of DI. Using nationally representative data from the National Educational Panel Study in Germany, this article aimed to explore German (as native language) and Mathematics teachers' use of DI practices. In addition, this study took into consideration contextual factors, such as school track, and investigated the impact of teachers' constructivist beliefs on their DI implementation. Results from a mixed analysis of covariance indicated that teachers occasionally implement DI practices. Furthermore, between-subject effects reported differences across school tracks. It appears that advanced secondary school teachers implement less often DI practices. The covariate of teachers' constructivist beliefs was also positively linked to overall teachers' implementation of DI. Implications of the results, as well as further lines of research are discussed. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The Corona virus (COVID-19) crisis forced many countries to follow strict protocols ordering schools to close. With schools under lockdown, homeschooling has become the only form of schooling available. Reports have indicated that parents and students have struggled with the challenges of homeschooling. Against this background, this study explored primary school students and parents' educational chances and challenges during homeschooling in two countries: Mexico and Germany. Comparing these two countries can shed light into potential differences of how inclusive approaches have been incorporated in homeschooling. Following a qualitative approach, thirteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents and school students. Results from a qualitative content analysis revealed that parents across both countries face challenges to organise homeschooling and motivate their children. However, they spent more time with their children. Primary school students in Germany and Mexico are challenged considerably by the loss of social contact.

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In consideration of the substantial increase in students’ learning demands, teachers are urged to address student heterogeneity in their daily teaching practice by means of differentiated instruction (DI). The practice of DI, as a vehicle to achieve inclusive education, not only aims to support all students’ academic learning but also foster their social and emotional development. However, current research in the field of DI has mostly been limited to an examination of its effects on students’ achievement outcomes. Consequently, the potential impact of DI on students’ socio-emotional outcomes has, till now, received very little attention. In order to address this gap in the research, the current researchers seek to investigate the effects of DI on school students’ well-being, social inclusion and academic self-concept. Survey participants in this study included 379 students from 23 inclusive and regular classes in secondary schools in Austria. Following multilevel analyses, the results have indicated that students’ rating of their teachers’ DI practice is positively associated with their school well-being, social inclusion and academic self-concept. However, a t-test for dependent samples demonstrated that students perceive their teachers’ DI practice to be infrequent. Implications of the results along with further lines of research are also presented in this paper.