As schools around the world prepare for fall 2020 with high degrees of pandemic apprehension, scores of school leaders are talking about “blended learning” or a “hybrid model.”
BLENDED LEARNING
Blended learning combines educational delivery models, most commonly face-to-face on-site learning with synchronous and asynchronous online learning. This approach has been used with mixed success since the early 2000s, mainly in higher education settings (Graham 2013; Means & Colleagues, 2013). It has become so accepted in tertiary education that some even call it the “new normal” (Dziubun 2018). However, it has not been tested or understood at large scale for pre-tertiary education.
Our current global context of Covid-19, which has seen 1.5 billion children out of schools since March, 2020 (UNESCO 2020), creates an opportunity to test if, or how, blended learning can be a viable, equitable, pedagogically sound, and child and family appropriate model moving forward. Across the board, people want schools up and running, but no one is sure how to implement the blended model in ways that will satisfy the social, developmental, and pedagogic goals of schooling.
“people want schools up and running, but no one is sure how to implement the blended model in ways that will satisfy the social, developmental, and pedagogic goals of schooling.”
In “Lessons from Education,” a joint OECD, Harvard, World Bank Webinar series examining education during the Coronavirus crisis, Dr. Tarek Shawki, Minister of Education and Technical Education in Egypt, spoke about being optimistic about the future despite the heavy challenges. To be sure, Covid-19 has proved to be a great accelerator of change. In Egypt, the digital transformation of education and new modes of assessment that in “normal times” may have taken years for public buy-in, seemingly happened at breakneck speeds. Indeed, Egypt stands out as a pioneer globally for its digital learning platforms, with the Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) the jewel in the crown. In a mere four days after the March 15 school closures, the online platform Edmodo was set up and huge numbers of students (11.5 million), teachers (1.16 million) and parents (750,000) subscribed to it in the ensuing weeks in order to access and manage classes and student projects (Shawki in World Bank Webinar 2020). As of July 2020, the Ministry of Education and Technical Education (MoETE) has five functioning online platforms.
“blended learning might offer a long-term solution to the problem of high-density in schools.”
The high degree of participation in online education encouraged the MoETE to consider a blended learning model for fall term 2020. Beyond short-term planning in response to Covid-19, blended learning might offer a long-term solution to the problem of high-density in schools. Though plans are still tentative and scenarios are hypothetical at this stage, students would alternate attendance by class or grade, with each group attending school a few days per week, and working from home other days using online and other resources. In the current thinking, children in the earlier years of K-3 who are in the new Education 2.0 system, would continue to attend school on a daily basis.
SHOULD PARENTS BE TEACHERS? HOW CAN TEACHERS RETOOL?
This reimagined scenario for blended learning calls for a new learning paradigm in which parents are critical partners. The Minister referred to parents as “mentors” who would be members of the virtual classrooms as “partners.” It may be instructive here to learn from the growing number of international homeschooling practitioners, where parents assume teacher roles and build learning communities (Homeschooling Global Summit 2020).
Anecdotal evidence from parents who were unexpectedly charged with overseeing their children’s education during Covid-19, reveal some gaping challenges and reluctance to continue in this direction. For example, a parent in a best-case scenario situation, someone with a high degree of education, a job in the knowledge economy which allowed her to work from home, financial means, part of a stable two-parent household, put it this way: “Being home with my two children was a gift. For once, I didn’t have to run around and feel guilty about not being with them, and I loved getting involved with the day-to-day of their schooling….that is, for the first week. By the second week, I was exhausted, falling behind in my own work, and short-tempered. And there were things I was not equipped to teach, like math and language. I had to get private tutors to help with these subjects.” If this represents a best-case scenario, imagine a much less optimal scenario: a home where parents have low literacy rates; work long hours; suffer from poor health conditions; have issues with abuse; live in precarious situations; struggle with poverty and making ends meet; are in single-parent households; don’t have internet access, and the list goes on. These scenarios do not even begin to touch upon the different learning needs of children of different ages and abilities. Some parents may well be able to serve as partners and mentors, however this is far from a given.
For teachers, who are sometimes labeled “facilitators” or “mentors” in this changing educational ecosystem, what does pedagogy and the art of teaching look like? How can they best guide and support learners? What values and habits of mind and body are they meant to cultivate and how do these differ in online versus in-person environments? In their work on e-Learning Ecologies, Cope and Kalantzis (2017) stress that e-learning must be accompanied by a transformation of pedagogy, which is by no means a simple or straightforward undertaking.
RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
On the precipice of another grand new experiment in education which will have far-reaching ramifications far beyond Covid-19, certain questions beg to be asked. Among the questions that can start a process of understanding and action in Egypt are the following:
How can teachers transition from a pedagogic style that values fixed knowledge, passive learning, and teaching-to-the-test, to a style that encourages collaborations, critical inquiry, and multidisciplinary learning in online and on-site environments? How will teacher reeducation and training be handled?
How can issues around child protection, welfare, and online safety be managed and mitigated in a blended model?
What impact will a blended educational model have on households in terms of gender distribution of work, family income, and family well-being?
What impact will the blended educational model have on children in the household, taking into consideration female versus male, older versus younger, mixed academic abilities, and special needs children?
Do parents have the knowhow, time, and interest to be MoETE partners and mentors? Do they want or need training and oversight? If so, how would this be managed?
Will a hybrid model open the way for more equality of opportunity, widen inequality, or both? How can equity issues be mitigated and the opportunities be maximized?
What are the implications of a blended model system on the private lesson market? Will it lead to even more teachers participating in private lessons and /or open the way for a more predatory private lesson market? Will it provide legitimate new opportunities and roles for teachers?
Under the current crisis, the answers to such questions can allow education policy makers to build up a solid evidence base to make sound choices as they move into uncharted territory. Research combined with robust deliberation on questions about the changing direction of education are urgently needed as societies forge ahead in times burdened with unspeakable risks, yet bursting with unique opportunities.
REFERENCES
Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (Eds.) (2017) e-Learning Ecologies: Principles for New Learning and Assessment. New York: Routledge.
Dziuban, C., Graham, C.R., Moskal, P.D. et al. (2018) Blended Learning: The New Normal and Emerging Technologies. International Journal of Educational Technologies in Higher Education. 15, 3, 1-16.
Graham, C. R. (2013). Emerging Practice And Research In Blended Learning. In M. G. Moore (Ed.), Handbook of Distance Education, (3rd ed., pp. 333–350). New York: Routledge.
Homeschooling Global Summit 2020 https://2020.hgsummit.com/ (Accessed July 10, 2020).
Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., & Baki, M. (2013). The Effectiveness of Online and Blended Learning: A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature. Teachers College Record, 115(3), 1–47.
UNESCO. (2020) Covid-19 Impact on Education. https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse (Accessed July 1, 2020)
World Bank, Harvard, OECD Lessons from Education Webinar. (July 9, 2020). “Lessons Learned from Egypt during the Pandemic: Implementing Digital Technologies to Support Remote Learning and Student Assessment/Webinar.” https://www.worldbank.org/en/events/2020/07/09/joint-oecd-harvard-hundred-world-bank-webinar-accelerating-modernization-of-education-in-egypt (Accessed July 9, 2020).
RDP would like to express sincere gratitude to colleagues who provided insightful comments on an earlier draft of this blog: Juan Manuel Moreno, Manar Ahmed, Nelly ElZayat, and Hany Zayed.
Photo attribution: <a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-photos-vectors/medical">Medical photo created by freepik - www.freepik.com</a>
[To cite this blog] Herrera, Linda. “Blended Learning is Coming to a School Near You: Research Reflections from Egypt during Covid-19.” Education 2.0 Research and Documentation Project (RDP). July 14, 2020. https://www.rdp-egypt.com/en/newblog/blended-learning-is-coming-to-egypt-covid-19/
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