Editorial: they think it’s all over…

Abstract

They think it’s all over. Revellers welcome in the New Year 2023 in TV pictures from cities around the globe, no vestige of social distancing apparent. The intermission concluded, normal service resumed. For those of us working in transnational education in China, the interregnum of COVID-19 restrictions lasted longer than anywhere before an abrupt change in policy. The challenge of the rapid pivot to online learning was handled admirably in the circumstances, but now the pivot back to in-person teaching may be equally challenging. They think it’s all over. Back to the classroom. They think it’s all over. What have we, as educators, experienced and learnt from the hiatus? Exasperation or inspiration? Disconnection or reinvention? Disturbance or innovation? Hollowness or thoughtfulness? The pages of pedagogic journals attest to ingenuity, ambition and imagination of educators responding to the difficult challenges of a global pandemic, burgeoning in-trays of journal editors in the process. Across academia, a Web of Science search indicates that over 360,000 journal articles referring to COVID-19 had been published by the end of 2022. Unsurprisingly, over 80,000 contributions are catalogued as virology with two early papers on the clinical characteristics of the new virus accumulating more than 10,000 citations each. More than 200 articles exceed 1,000 citations. Just 2% of these papers are in journals classified as education and educational research, but 22,854 papers refer to COVID-19 and Higher Education. Refining the search to COVID-19 and Higher Education and Geography, 163 papers have been published by end 2022 with more than a quarter of these specifically relating to teaching and learning in a university context. They think it’s all over. Might the melodrama of managing a journal through the pandemic give way to a period of calm? The challenges, particularly in the earlier phases of the pandemic, created a triple whammy. First, perhaps finding the initial interruption to normal academic life an opportunity to reflect and write about interventions and observations in geography education, we experienced a surge in submission rate, 50% above pre-pandemic traffic. Second, the difficulties of recruiting willing referees, for several years a worrying trend, further exacerbated, necessitating additional work from the editorial board to secure peer reviews. Third, as many of our editorial board members, by the nature of their expertise and experience, were first responders for quality assurance and digital transformation of curricula in their respective schools and institutions, capacity for editorial duties was squeezed. Inevitably, a few submissions to the journal have been snagged by delays in the review system resulting in a less than satisfactory experience for some authors. However, it is testament to the dedication and diligence of the editorial board and peer reviewers that the majority of submissions have progressed. A pre-pandemic tradition is here reinstated that this editorial serves as a prelude to list of referees who have provided reviews in the 2020-22 period. JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY IN HIGHER EDUCATION 2023, VOL. 47, NO. 1, 1–8 https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2023.2168862