Extraordinary times

This editorial has been written after months of school closure in some countries. The pandemic has placed unprecedented demands on teachers and necessitated much creative adaptation including distance learning at home. First then, this editorial pays tribute to all the teachers and school leaders whose dedication and ingenuity has seen them through this challenge and enabled them to sustain children’s education. It is hardly surprising that the quality of children’s educational experience has varied. In some countries, the easy availability of tedious commercial online packages in spelling and arithmetic – offered as free tasters initially – has reinforced a test-driven curriculum which already overemphasised these so-called ‘basics’. The economic divisions of our society have become exacerbated for many children growing up in poverty and suddenly expected to learn at home without books, computers or Internet access and often with parents less equipped to help. The crisis is not over. It has been easier for some politicians to push for a reopening of schools than to think in holistic terms of the broader needs of the child. Yet this crisis and the period of recovery could provide an occasion for rethinking the aims and methods of schooling in the 21st century. This includes the complexities of relationship between teachers and parents, a major theme of this issue of the journal. Although the articles were all written before the pandemic hit, they carry important lessons and challenges for the future. Marlon Cummings and Jennifer Olson, from Illinois (United States), look at community partnerships and in particular, the support they can give to schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods threatened by accountability-driven closure or ‘turnaround’. In this context, teachers can feel overwhelmed and there is a tendency to fall back on deficit views of students and to rely on basic routines which do not engage the students – what have been called ‘pedagogies of poverty’. In this exploratory paper, the authors outline some ways in which working partnerships between teachers and community members can support change. Carmen Álvarez-Álvarez, from the University of Cantabria (Spain), examines a related theme, the role of parents’ associations. This research, a qualitative study in collaboration with parent associations at 36 state schools, found that despite parents’ groups having a legal right to be heard in Spain, in practice, there are often limited channels of communication. Parents were rarely engaged in decision making and often contacted only when the school needed something. This study found substantial desire to be more involved in social and curricular matters. Tanja Lindacher, at the University of Erfurt (Germany) examines co-teaching partnerships between regular and special education teachers. Her article identifies various patterns of co-teaching of pupils with special educational needs, the relative strengths of the partners (specialist knowledge, diagnosis, etc.) and differing perspectives on pedagogical norms. This research highlights the potential for reflective professional relationships to develop stronger understandings of inclusion and how to reach young people with complex needs. 941950 IMP0010.1177/1365480220941950Improving SchoolsEditorial editorial2020