Abstract
English as a foreign language is an essential secondary-school subject in many parts of the world. However, complications during the COVID-19 pandemic emphasised weaknesses in curricula and the need for attention. This study discusses the potential of online community projects in post-pandemic curricula. Analytic autoethnography is used to examine the difficulties schools faced during the lockdown and the current situation of English as a foreign language in secondary schools in Italy and other countries. It draws upon literature regarding pedagogical theory in teaching foreign languages, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, and existing scholarship in the field of online community projects. The results provide insights into the advantages and drawbacks of integrating learner-centred tools, such as online community projects, into the post-pandemic curricula.
TopBackground
It will be many years until the impact of the pandemic on education systems and people’s lives are fully comprehended (Kuhfeld et al., 2020). Much research focused on young children but overlooked older secondary school students (Velde et al., 2021). The lack of scientific study into secondary-school EFL curricula surfaced after the lockdown when students’ levels declined on returning to school (Iyengar, 2021). When young people have long periods out of school, they struggle to catch up, mainly because of the inadequacy of the school curricula (Kaffenberger, 2021). Learning losses due to the pandemic affect students unfairly, and the underprivileged sector of society will be the worst affected because they will not be able to invest in education (Kaffenberger, 2021). Di Pietro et al. (2020) predict that consequences are long and short-term. Long-term disadvantages are that young people will lack cognitive and socio-emotional skills, achieve to a lesser extent in education and have poorer work prospects. This reduction in human capital could even lead to a drop in productivity, innovation and employment (Di Pietro et al., 2020).
In Italy
As far as the situation in Italy is concerned, there is a profound lack of data and research into the effects of the lockdown and distance learning because all data were collected from internet-using students and families, ignoring the many people without access (Pellegrini & Maltinti, 2020). This gap in research has contributed to increasing the digital divide and inequalities (Mascheroni et al., 2021). Italy was the first country in the EU to close its schools in response to the pandemic in late February 2020. The Italian Ministry of Education set up a task force to manage the situation and coined ‘La Scuola non si ferma’ (‘School Never Stops’) to describe the rapid transition to distance learning (Pellegrini & Maltinti, 2020). It is estimated that Italian students missed at least 65 days of schooling during the lockdown (Mascheroni et al., 2021). 6.7 million students could access distance learning, but 1.6 million young people were excluded and received no education (Pellegrini & Maltinti, 2020). This number comprised students with disabilities, low economic status and immigrants and increased to 3 million when considering those who dropped out of school and those living in families who lacked enough devices to support their children’s needs (Mascheroni et al., 2021). Additionally, studies showed that one of the most challenging aspects of teaching English or any other subject during the lockdown was motivating students (Di Pietro et al., 2020; Duraku & Hoxha, 2021)
Key Terms in this Chapter
Teacher-Led: This approach is where the teacher is the centre of the students’ attention, feeds the lesson content and controls feedback.
Learner-Centred: A constructivist approach to teaching whereby students are actively involved in the learning process. The teacher’s role is that of a guide, not the knowledge source.
Project-Based Learning (PBL): A teaching method where students learn and develop skills through projects that focus on authentic and motivating topics. Learners collaborate and research the matter in order to construct an end product.
Social Constructivism: A pedagogical theory that regards learning as social interaction, negotiation, and evaluation processes. For this reason, social constructivist lessons are learner-centred, with the teacher acting as a facilitator rather than an instructor. Skills and understanding take precedence over content and memory.
Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT): A learner-centred approach where teachers create interactive and communicative tasks for their students to complete in groups or pairs. The key to this approach is that learners must speak and communicate to complete the task at hand.
Synchronous Communication: Communication that occurs in real-time. Synchronous interaction is usually face-to-face, by telephone or by online conference tools.
Community Of Practice: A group of people with different social and cultural backgrounds linked together through a common goal or practice. Each individual brings unique experiences and skills to the rest of the community. Theoretically, the community communicates and collaborates to solve problems and create new skills and understandings.
Online Community Projects (OCPs): This is the name the researcher has given to projects in educational environments with at least two schools in different locations. They use the Internet and technological devices to communicate and a website as home to the project and community.
Intrinsic Motivation: This term is used to describe motivation derived from personal gratification.
Asynchronous Communication: Any means of communication that does not happen in real-time. For example, texting, chatting, email, letters, and others. There is a time-lapse between when the contributor sends the message and when the receiver responds.