Individual and classroom level factors shaping the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on learning in mathematics
Final Report Abstract
As a measure to contain the COVID 19 pandemic, regular face-to-face teaching in schools was suspended for longer periods in the 19/20 and 20/21 school years. The distance learning introduced unfamiliar challenges for schools, students and parents. Moreover, during this period, students’ learning was impaired due to higher demands on self-directed learning. Nevertheless, researchers have asserted that high teaching quality may help for compensating negative consequences of the pandemic. Taken together, this draws attention to potentially still-increasing detrimental effects of educational inequality during the pandemic and to the question of how to counter these developments. The aim of this project was to investigate the mid-term effects of the pandemic-related teaching restrictions in the 20/21 school year on learning success in the 21/22 school year. The project made use of data collected in another project to assess learning progress in mathematics in eighth grade in Hessian grammar schools (Gymnasien). Pandemic-related factors on classroom and individual level assessed retrospectively. First results show some effects of these factors over and above prior achievement, as well as interactions between individual and classroom level factors. Therefore, the project provides beneficial insights on the pandemic’s effects on post-pandemic learning.
