How students’ attitudes to school were impacted by pandemic home learning

While the COVID-19 pandemic caused headaches for parents trying to teach their children at home, new research reveals there were some positives to come from home learning for older students.

A University of South Australia study compared the attitudes of year 10 to 12 students at two schools — one in Victoria which endured a lengthy learning from home period, and one in South Australia which had only a short period of home learning — and found students at both schools generally had similar attitudes towards learning during the pandemic.

Students even reported some positives to learning from home.

“We found between these two schools very little difference, nothing we could separate with any statistical certainty,” Dr John Kennedy, Research Fellow in UniSA Education Futures, who led the study, told 3AW Drive.

“But what we did find was there were differences between different subject areas.

“What this last two years should have done is point out to schools and education ministers, hopefully … that they can select the bits which are significant and important and deliver those by remote learning if need be to create space in the classroom for more experiences where they can work together, where they can do those lab experiments, where they can do some applied mathematics, where they can be creative.”

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