Learning Sustainability During School Closure? Study on Student Experiences During COVID

This study from the ReZeitKon project, authored by Claire Grauer, Pascal Frank and Daniel Fischer, examines how German secondary students experienced learning during school closures in the pandemic, focusing on their actual activities and needs rather than just academic loss. Findings suggest that the disruption, while challenging, created opportunities for meaningful, self-directed learning that could inform more responsive approaches to environmental and sustainability education.

Paper Abstract:

While current research on school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic is predominantly concerned with learning deficits, the exploratory study presented here focuses on the previously neglected question of young people’s concrete learning experiences during this disruptive period, with a focus on how they used their time and how this relates to their individual needs. The authors interviewed German secondary school students via Zoom and used a grounded theory approach and a transformative learning theory framework to derive recommendations for environmental and sustainability education (ESE). Their findings highlight two important insights: first, that the predominant focus on academic learning loss obscures a more comprehensive understanding of students’ learning experiences; and second, that real-world experiments such as the involuntary school closures during the pandemic may hold the potential to start meaningful, transformative learning processes and experimentation with new strategies for needs satisfaction.

Bibliographic Reference:

Grauer, C., Frank, P. & Fischer, D. (2023). Learning to spend time in unusual times: An inquiry into the potential for sustainability learning during COVID-19-induced school closures. International Review of Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-023-10034-w