Meaningful Learning Experiences in Everyday Life During Pandemics. A Qualitative Study

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the lives of people all over the world. In particular, an unprecedented educational crisis has occurred due to the circumstances of physical distancing and remote learning. This article focuses specifically on the meaningful learning experiences in the everyday lives of adolescents during the pandemic. 72 meaningful learning experiences were identified from 11 participants who recorded their specific learning experiences for a week by a means of a journal recorded by themselves. A content analysis was undertaken in order to identify the ecology (what, how, where, and who with) of the different learning experiences. The results show a prevalence of personal and conceptual learning, a presence of both formal and specifically informal, everyday activities among the meaningful learning experiences detected, the importance of peers, teacher and “learning experiences while alone,” and the use of digital technologies as learning resources; they also reveal the assistance of others in the learning process. The main contribution of this study illustrates how students in everyday life during pandemics are involved in a whole range of different activities both at school and at home.

“I Think Friendship Over This Lockdown Like Saved My Life”—Student Experiences of Maintaining Friendships During COVID-19 Lockdown: An Interpretative Phenomenological Study

“…This resonates with the findings of multiple other lockdown studies (Branquinho et al, 2020;Evans et al, 2020;Das et al, 2021;Durosini et al, 2021;Vaterlaus et al, 2021;McKinlay et al, 2022;Owens and Cassarino, 2022) suggesting that both personal growth and growth within relationships were described when communication was upheld, furthermore, as well as echoing others that suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic and enforced isolation could be traumatic but lead to post-traumatic growth (Evan, et al, 2020;Tamiolaki and Kalaitzaki, 2020). The personal growth expressed by participants is in line with similar research during COVID-19 (Evans et al, 2020;González-Ceballos et al, 2021), which suggests that many meaningful learning experiences were facilitated by social interactions despite these being distanced.…”

“…Here they focused on the lack of social experiences available, rather than the learning experience itself. This is interesting as other research has found that online learning is not always academically a disadvantage (González-Ceballos et al, 2021) even though it was commonly viewed as a hindrance to the learning experience (Butler-Warke et al, 2021;Petchamé et al, 2021).…”

“…For those in education, the COVID-19 pandemic brought many barriers to learning (Butler-Warke et al, 2021;Farris et al, 2021;Gupta and Agrawal, 2021). Some studies detail how limited connection (between both staff and students) in the online learning environment adversely impacted individual's experience of education (Butler-Warke et al, 2021;Lippke et al, 2021;Petchamé et al, 2021), but did not always limit learning per se (González-Ceballos et al, 2021). Despite this, some participants overcame this limited connection while in online learning (Ang et al, 2021;Lippke et al, 2021;Owens and Cassarino, 2022).…”

Life-Writing and Virtual Exchange

“…Newer developments have addressed important societal change and the beneficial role that VE can play; O'Dowd (2020) found that VE can be a vehicle for promoting global citizenship's core values, such as respect for diversity and solidarity for humanity. It has also been employed as a medium for students to process trauma arising from the Covid-19 crisis (González-Ceballos et al, 2021;Porto et al, 2021), and for working through international conflicts and controversies (Watanabe, 2020).…”

Learning Experiences in Small Group Discussion in the Third Semester of English Education Students

“…Learning activities provide students with an essential learning experience that can improve their learning achievement. It is defined that learning experiences become a series of processes and events that acted by students in certain discussions to elicit educational knowledge and achieve learning objectives (Sari & Muhartono, 2018;Sofa et al, 2021;Ammigan et al, 2021;Darmawan, 2021;Fazey et al, 2005;González-Ceballos et al, 2021;Hassanien, 2006;Khushnoor et al, 2018;Miller et al, 2011;Syaharuddin et al, 2021). The learning experience can influence students' competence and achievement (Aryanty et al, 2013) because the students will apply their learning experience to face the test.…”