COVID-19 lockdown and children’s informal learning
Imagine as a child learning for the first time that you are going into a COVID-19 ‘lockdown’ and you cannot visit friends, see your wider family and whānau or even physically go to school. This moment became an overnight reality for children in their learning lives in Aotearoa New Zealand in March 2020. During the first national lockdown between March and May children were required to learn at home at the same time their parents were reconfiguring their accustomed home and work lives and routines.
During term 3, 2020 a research partnership between Te Kura o Te Mātauranga Institute of Education, Massey University and Rangahau Mātauranga o Aotearoa New Zealand Council for Educational Research documented children’s experiences of learning during lockdown, working with 178 children in Years 4 to 8 across 10 schools through the medium of group art activities and individual interviews. Our starting points were that: first, for the most part children are capable social actors in their childhood worlds; second, that children have the right to express their views on matters of interest to them in their lives, and to be listened to by adults; and, third, that no major decisions should be taken about children’s schooling without their ‘voice’ and ‘participation’. The results foregrounded children’s nuanced accounts of learning beyond school, in the home and surrounding environments, alone and with siblings, adults in the household, pets and wildlife. Perhaps for the first time in their ‘school lives’ children learned that autonomy, choice and deciding what to do and when, were fulfilling ways to learn and were beneficial for their achievement, wellbeing and identity.
During a period that profoundly challenged the wellbeing, health and learning of households nationally amid a global pandemic, a period that produces substantive social, economic, health and political consequences, children quietly went about the business of learning in their way and in their time. Some children were involved in learning novel life skills from their family and whānau that extended beyond daily routine tasks or chores. For example, one child who had previously learned to cut hair from his uncle who owned a barbershop, then started to cut his father’s hair during lockdown.
Informal learning at home should not be confused with school learning. During lockdown, the kinds of assessment and measurement of learning that children typically experience in the classroom were often reoriented by the children towards self-assessment and ipsative assessment (measuring their progress against their personal best). The seven themes in the findings that represent the children’s experiences of lockdown learning comprised: (i) how they learned new structures and routines in their bubbles and influenced these (ii) learning from and with whānau, (iii) learning about and through language, culture and identity, (iv) learning through life events such as births, deaths, illness, birthdays, ANZAC day and Easter, (v) emotional dimensions of learning such as boredom, anxiety, anger, fear, fun and happiness, (vi) learning about and through digital technologies, (vii) an authentic shift to self-directed and self-regulated learning freedom to choose, was a key factor in what and how the children learned.
Children learned alone and in the company of their fathers, mothers, other family members at home, or online, through YouTube clips, in their backyards and the local area. They talked insightfully about their learning through science, maths, reading, art, singing, drama, dance, sports, cooking, cleaning, caring of siblings or elderly family members, and by doing chores, and pitching in. Significantly, they talked about understanding, controlling and working with their emotions. Children talked about the way they cared for, and learnt from, their dogs, pigs, spiders, chickens, cats, kittens, horses, birds, guinea pigs, and other home and farm animals. Even the naming of pets became an interest: ‘I had a pet spider and I named him Bob, for no reason. One day I went to check on him and he was gone. I was sad. He was my little spider friend. He had two long legs at the front, and short ones at the back. He was a small one. He was friendly. And then Bob ran away. So poor Bob was missing. I was sad. I hope he’ll come back one day’.
The chances are Bob the spider will not re-appear in this child’s life, but the learning Bob’s presence generated will remain. Such anecdotes demonstrate that we need to enable children to speak about their experiences, and make sense of them, and in doing so we will find that children’s learning will show up in many creative, imaginative, and unimagined ways. These young people remind us that life experiences such as lockdown are not about ‘getting behind’ or ‘missing out’ on learning, but rather about discovering that learning through living helps a young person to grow, survive, and thrive.
On Wednesday 18th August 2021 Aotearoa New Zealand went into a second national lockdown. Schools across the country once again replaced the familiar, timetabled routines of classroom and school based learning, with online home learning and flexibly determined learning experiences. We now know children will continue to learn and develop in challenging circumstances, and make their own routines in order to learn and to enjoy learning.
Have a look at the findings of our research that we have worked to make easily accessible and useable, by both children and adults. We have accompanied conventional written reports with a series of digital narratives that use the children’s words to illustrate each of the seven major themes from the findings.
Full report and digital narratives available at https://www.nzcer.org.nz/research/publications/learning-during-lockdown
Roseanna Bourke is Professor of Learning and Assessment, and John O’Neill is Professor of Teacher Education at the Institute of Education. They jointly research and publish in the areas of children’s rights, capabilities, student voice, and informal and everyday learning.