What can be learned from educational psychologists’ work and experiences from working with students, teachers and parents during the COVID-19 pandemic?

With reference to Bourdieu’s sociology of education (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) and cultural psychology (Valsiner, 2014) the objective of this presentation is to analyze the educational consequences of the pandemic analyzed through the work and perspectives of educational psychologists. Educational psychologists are in frequent contact with students with special needs and with vulnerable children and their families. The educational psychologists know the students’ teachers and their schools, and the educational psychologists thus have a rich and cross-contextual understanding of children and their everyday lives (Szulevicz, 2021).

Despite the fact that educational psychologists have extensive professional knowledge and expertise regarding children with and without special needs and vulnerable students and students at risk of social and academic marginalization, their perspectives on and their understandings of the consequences of the pandemic have been surprisingly understudied (Szulevicz, 2021).

The COVID-19 is obviously a sociocultural phenomenon, but it is definitely also an educational one, and it is well-known how the COVID-19 pandemic has had widespread educational consequences, and that the pandemic, among other things, has exposed and amplified inequalities and made tacit structures of power and control more visible. Lupton (2020) argues that the crisis can be seen as a mirror to our society and that it urges us to raise new questions, generate new knowledge and reevaluate our existing ways of knowing.

The obvious disproportionate consequences of the pandemic for example were seen in the fact that low-income families received less support from schools during the lock-down, whereas parents in better-off families and with higher levels of education were more likely to work from home and to have space and resources to help educate their children. Blundell et al. (2020) further describe how the school lock-downs might have produced long-lasting learning outcome effects as schools under normal circumstances represent an equalizing force that was suspended during the lock-down, where families assumed a much larger share of the responsibility for educating their children (see also Szulevicz, 2021). So, although schools tend to reproduce existing inequalities and contribute to social reproduction, the lockdowns have made it very clear that schools play a prominent role in reducing the effects of social inequalities. Schools clearly provide a structured setting that was not accessible during the lockdowns, which has impacted many so-called vulnerable children negatively. The picture is, however, not unambiguous as evidence also suggests that many students with special needs even were doing better during the lockdown (Pesch et al., 2020) and that many students thrived due to reductions in class sizes etc. (Szulevicz, 2021). This does however not change the fact that the pandemic generally has had huge social and educational consequences, and that the crisis has taken a toll on students’ mental health (Sampogna et a., 2022).

Overall, the pandemic has given new insights and understandings regarding students with special needs and vulnerable children. But even more interestingly, the crisis has also exposed how professionals within schools have had a hard time helping the most vulnerable and in need-of-help students, and the crisis has also exposed systemic and educational vulnerabilities. The pandemic has thus also forced us to ask critical questions about established understandings of individual student vulnerability. 

In the presentation, I ask what the shock of COVID-19 might mean for our ability to think of education, special education, educational psychology practice and particularly for our understanding of student and educational vulnerability.

Empirically, the paper is based on analyses of 1) 94 randomly selected statutory psychoeducational reports from two different local authorities in Denmark, and 2) on 20 qualitative interviews with educational psychologists from five different local authorities in Denmark conducted during June 2020 and again in early 2022. The statutory psychoeducational reports are analyzed qualitatively to see whether the restrictions during the pandemic, the closing and re-openings of schools are considered to have had any impact on student well-being and functioning. It is also analyzed how the consequences of the pandemic can be understood from the psychoeducational reports. The qualitative interviews consist of seven interviews conducted in June 2020 and 13 in January and February 2022. The time interval between the interviews allowed for different interesting perspectives on the consequences of the pandemic. Due to social restrictions, the interviews were converted to a teleconferencing technology. The interviews lasted between 1 hour and 1½ hours, and they were transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) will be used in the analysis of the psychoeducational reports and the interviews. According to Braun & Clarke (2006), thematic analysis is a method used for identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns (themes) within the data. I opted for the method as ‘rigorous thematic approach can produce an insightful analysis that answers particular research questions’ (Braun and Clarke, 2006, p.97). Insights from both the psychoeducational reports and the qualitative interviews allow for triangulation of the empirical material to develop a comprehensive understanding of both individual, educational and organizational consequences of the pandemic from the perspectives of educational psychologists.

The aim of the research presented in this paper, is to shed light on how the pandemic can teach us something new about the understanding of special needs education, special needs children and vulnerability. The pandemic has been a completely unforeseen disruption of our everyday lives and educational practices. The qualitative study exploring educational psychologists’ experiences from the pandemic can be used to elaborate theoretical understandings of individual and systemic vulnerability. Moreover, the global nature of the pandemic in which all countries have been affected by the crisis makes comparisons between different educational systems and approaches interesting. Denmark is usually considered a privileged society with a strong welfare model. Nonetheless, the pandemic has been a significant challenge for the educational system and it has taken a substantial toll on students’ mental health and wellbeing. Therefore, in-depth qualitative empirical and theoretical analyses of the visible, but also more subtle consequences of the pandemic on both individual and organizational levels are needed. Overall, the expected outcome of the research in the presentation is to: - Analyze the educational consequences of the pandemic through the work of and from the perspectives of educational psychologists - Develop empirically informed theoretical understandings of individual and organizational/educational vulnerability - Develop perspectives on the works of educational psychologists based on the insights from the empirical material presented in the paper.

Blundell, R., Costa Dias, M., Joyce, R. and Xu, X. (2020), COVID‐19 and Inequalities*. Fiscal Studies, 41: 291-319. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12232 Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. University of Chicago Press. Braun V. & Clarke V., 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3, pp.77-101. www.QualResearchPsych.com Lupton, D. (2020) Contextualising COVID-19: Sociocultural Perspectives on Contagion (July 27, 2020). Lupton, D. and Willis, K. (eds) The COVID-19 Crisis: Social Perspectives. London: Routledge, Forthcoming., Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3661226 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3661226 Pesch, M., Julian, M., & Munzer, T. (2020). Reflections on children with developmental and behavioral challenges who are thriving while sheltering in place. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 41(7), 506–507. https://doi.org/10.1097/DBP.0000000000000848 Sampogna, G., Pompili, M., & Fiorillo, A. (2022). Mental Health in the Time of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Worldwide Perspective. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(1), 161. doi:10.3390/ijerph19010161 Szulevicz, T. (2021). COVID-19 and Educational Consequences for (Vulnerable) Children from the Perspectives of Educational Psychologists. Human Arenas. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-021-00214-1 Valsiner, J. (2014). An invitation to cultural psychology. SAGE Publications.