{"title":"Introduction to Our Special Issue Change and Challenge: Jewish Education in the Time of COVID-19","authors":"Shai Goldfarb Cohen","doi":"10.1080/15244113.2021.1993031","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In December 2019 a new coronavirus, known as COVID-19 was discovered in the city of Wuhan, China (Huang et al., 2020). This deadly virus quickly spread across the globe causing the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) to declare COVID-19 a pandemic in March 2020. Since this virus spreads through person-to-person transmission, pandemic responses have included the forced closures of public and community spaces including schools (Adedoyin & Soykan, 2020). As a result and over a very short period of time, a huge range of institutions had to adapt to the new conditions of work, shopping, communing, and learning at a distance. While communications technologies (email, videoconferencing platforms, and so on) have long been available, and although the drumbeat of “online learning” has been heard in educational circles for years, most institutions were forced to go fully online before they had appropriate procedures in place, and then they had to master this new situation quickly (Adedoyin & Soykan, 2020). For schools, social distancing and concerns about transmission meant rapidly pivoting away from classroom models and toward modes of instruction or interaction that were exclusively online (Dhawan, 2020). Some, of course, had greater success than others. Jewish schools, synagogues, summer camps, and other settings experienced the same shifts in remote learning and social interaction. Jewish communal organizations figured out how to continue their work holding services, celebrating life-cycle events, and learning under these new conditions. But even if you can have a Torah study group meet online, it is qualitatively not the same as meeting in a living room or around a seminar table. Therefore, it is important to ask what or how such changes impacted Jewish education and what these circumstances can teach us about online Jewish learning more broadly.","PeriodicalId":42565,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Jewish Education","volume":"87 1","pages":"270 - 283"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Jewish Education","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15244113.2021.1993031","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In December 2019 a new coronavirus, known as COVID-19 was discovered in the city of Wuhan, China (Huang et al., 2020). This deadly virus quickly spread across the globe causing the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) to declare COVID-19 a pandemic in March 2020. Since this virus spreads through person-to-person transmission, pandemic responses have included the forced closures of public and community spaces including schools (Adedoyin & Soykan, 2020). As a result and over a very short period of time, a huge range of institutions had to adapt to the new conditions of work, shopping, communing, and learning at a distance. While communications technologies (email, videoconferencing platforms, and so on) have long been available, and although the drumbeat of “online learning” has been heard in educational circles for years, most institutions were forced to go fully online before they had appropriate procedures in place, and then they had to master this new situation quickly (Adedoyin & Soykan, 2020). For schools, social distancing and concerns about transmission meant rapidly pivoting away from classroom models and toward modes of instruction or interaction that were exclusively online (Dhawan, 2020). Some, of course, had greater success than others. Jewish schools, synagogues, summer camps, and other settings experienced the same shifts in remote learning and social interaction. Jewish communal organizations figured out how to continue their work holding services, celebrating life-cycle events, and learning under these new conditions. But even if you can have a Torah study group meet online, it is qualitatively not the same as meeting in a living room or around a seminar table. Therefore, it is important to ask what or how such changes impacted Jewish education and what these circumstances can teach us about online Jewish learning more broadly.
2019年12月,在中国武汉市发现了一种被称为新冠肺炎的新型冠状病毒(Huang et al.,2020)。这种致命的病毒迅速在全球传播,导致世界卫生组织(世界卫生组织,2020年)总干事于2020年3月宣布新冠肺炎为大流行。由于这种病毒通过人与人之间的传播,疫情应对措施包括强制关闭包括学校在内的公共和社区空间(Adedoyin&Soykan,2020)。因此,在很短的时间内,大量的机构不得不适应新的工作、购物、交流和远程学习条件。尽管通信技术(电子邮件、视频会议平台等)早已问世,尽管“在线学习”的鼓点在教育界已经响起多年,但大多数机构在制定适当的程序之前都被迫完全在线,然后他们必须迅速掌握这一新情况(Adedoyin&Soykan,2020)。对学校来说,保持社交距离和对传播的担忧意味着迅速从课堂模式转向完全在线的教学或互动模式(Dhawan,2020)。当然,有些人比其他人取得了更大的成功。犹太学校、犹太教堂、夏令营和其他场所在远程学习和社交方面也经历了同样的转变。犹太社区组织想出了如何在这些新条件下继续开展服务、庆祝生命周期活动和学习的方法。但是,即使你可以让一个托拉研究小组在网上开会,这在本质上也与在客厅或研讨会桌旁开会不同。因此,重要的是要问这些变化对犹太教育产生了什么或如何的影响,以及这些情况可以更广泛地教会我们什么关于在线犹太学习。