Social Justice, Participation and School during the COVID-19—The International Project Gira por la Infancia

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present the data which have been obtained in a research project on education during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the framework of the international project Gira por la Infancia 2020. The aim was to construct a critical, active, and participatory citizenship. The method used has been the pedagogical hermeneutic in which the qualitative analysis of data was preceded by a process of child participation which allowed the analysis of the opinions of 6867 children and adolescents from 22 countries and 3 continents. The results present the children’s thinking about the closure of schools, the alternative teaching carried out, the role of teachers and families, and on the return of the "new school" with the health protocols. This work provides the children's view on the measures of social distancing and massive school closures. However, without doubt, it also shows children’s and adolescents’ potential to empower themselves in complex situations which put the world’s schools in an unprecedented crisis. In addition, it shows the opportunity to take into consideration a joint construction of a society from the germ of its citizenship: children.

Representations of Social Justice and Digital Civic Engagement: The Influence of Psychosocial Variables in Teacher Training

“…It would be worthwhile to continue reflecting on the importance of previous training and experience upon entering the teaching program, as well as other psychosocial variables that might be linked to these gender differences [27]. Nonetheless, our findings are consistent with many similar studies [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55]57,60] that found more developed levels of social justice in education, and lower levels in variables that were negatively linked to it and its three dimensions, in teachers-in-training, as well as in trained teachers. If we aspire to achieve an educational system with greater social justice, one of the great future challenges will be to continue improving and transforming teacher training.…”

“…Through numerous studies that have analyzed teachers' social justice attitudes [57], a general conclusion has emerged: these attitudes are greatly impacted by their training [39]. In addition, their training process is related to civic engagement outside and inside the classroom, in order to build more sustainable and equitable societies through education [26].…”

The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Educational Communities: Evidence of Early Childhood Education Students

“…This creates a gap between those who have sufficient resources and knowledge to maintain fluid communication and those who do not have sufficient resources [9,22]. The closure of schools during confinement, the educational and technological gap, and the lack of participation and relationships are some of the threats observed among participants in this study and other research related to educational participation in times of pandemics that demonstrate the need for communication and participation as guarantors of social and educational justice [53].…”

Teaching History in a Post-pandemic World: The Perceptions of Teachers on Training

“…The school closure as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the world of education to reflect on its traditional ways of functioning, the existence of an uncertain post-pandemic world, and the need to deepen the training of people with a set of strong skills in accordance with the need that the new reality demands. To all this should be added yet other challenges, given that recent studies have shown that territorial, gender, social, and cultural differences have aggravated the educational gap due to the existing digital divide (Cannellotto, 2020;Lloyd, 2020;Salinas, 2020;Arenas, 2021;Ballén et al, 2021;Jiménez et al, 2021).…”