Education continues to be characterised by what has been called a ‘grammar of schooling’ (Zhao, 2020, p. 198) which categorises students, splinters knowledge into subjects and fractures learning. This grammar is remarkably persistent, despite challenges and in the face of increasing recognition that ‘it is obsolete and does not serve our children well’ (Zhao, 2020, p. 198). The COVID-19 pandemic, has had widespread impact, “upending the lives of children and families” (UNICEF 2020) across the globe and requiring teachers students and behaviours, to function in new and unfamiliar ways. When learning was relocated to children’s homes and delivered online, strenuous efforts were made to ensure students had experiences that were as ‘normal as possible.’ In so doing, the grammar of schooling was replicated. It is perhaps not surprising, given the enormous pressures on schools to mitigate learning loss among pupils, that they should seek to recreate schooling in all its familiarity. It is also not surprising that we should see the grammar of schooling persisting, even in these extraordinary circumstances, as this has been recognised and well documented (Tyack and Tobin, 1994; Cuban, 2020; Hubbard and Datnow, 2002). Nevertheless, we are mindful of Ball and Collet-Sabé’s (2021, p. 1) pronouncement of schools and schooling as ‘intolerable’ as long as their principle purpose continues to be about normalizing students by ability. Furthermore, as nation states adapt to the lifting of restrictions and consider what a return to ‘normal’ or to ‘a new normal’ (which could include living with COVID-19) means for education, we are reminded by Ladson-Billings (2021) of how particularly damaging the old ‘normal,’ within which we would situate the grammar of schooling, has been for disabled students and those from minority ethnic groups. These groups of students have been disadvantaged and sometimes excluded by curricula and teaching approaches that fail account of different abilities or of different cultural understandings.

This paper draws on the findings of a one year research study, Diversifying Inclusion and Growth: Inspiring Technologies for Accessible Learning (DIGITAL) – in the time of COVID. This study investigated the effectiveness of educational responses, using technologies, to the COVID-19 pandemic. It examined responses across a range of international contexts and evaluated the effectiveness of these responses in relation to pedagogic value; children’s learning; teacher and parental satisfaction, inclusion and accessibility and social interactions and relations. The purpose of this research has been to identify positive examples of practices in response to the pandemic with a view to sharing these widely. The conduct of this research and analysis our findings, using a theoretical framework informed by Deleuze and Guattari (1987; 1994), has alerted us to both the persistence of the grammar of schooling and the possibilities for rewriting this through the pursuit of creative, and inclusive, alternatives.

The paper fits well within the conference theme of Education in a changing world: The impact of global realities on the prospects and experiences of educational research, with the researchers reporting direct engagement with a ‘changed and changing reality’ (EERA, 2022) and seeking to understand how key educational stakeholders navigate the two ‘centrifugal forces of interdependency and individuality’ (EERA, 2022).

The research was undertaken in six countries - UK, US, Australia, Chile, Malaysia and Italy -throughout 2021 and involved 27 interviews, carried out via zoom with teachers, teaching assistants, inclusion managers and community leaders. International policy documents and national and local guidelines relating to COVID-19 and education were also scrutinised. The findings were analysed with the aid of key concepts from Deleuze and Guattari (1987) - rhizomic learning and deterritorialization. The concept of the rhizome functions as a model of thought and as an alternative to the rigid and striated knowledge which normally exists within schools and ‘which articulates and hierarchizes tracings’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p. 12). A rhizome, which grows or moves in messy and unpredictable ways, has multiple connections, lines and points of rupture, but no foundation or essence. As a model of learning, the rhizome ‘releases us from the false bondage of linear relationships’ (Roy 2003, 90) and allows for endless proliferation, new lines of flight and new forms of knowledge. The concept of deterritorialization knocks existing understandings and ways of acting into a different orbit or trajectory (Roy 2004), undoing the ‘processes of continuous control and instantaneous communication’ (Smith 1998, 264). It is a deliberate and performative breaking of existing codes which is also a ‘making’ (Howard 1998, 115), through which new intensities open up. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) specify four elements of deterritorialization: (1) Becoming foreigners in our own tongue, experiencing the world around us as new: (2) A refusal of essences or of signifieds, stopping asking questions such as ‘what is learning?’; (3) Creative subtraction, involving taking things away or deciding not to do particular things and (4) An acceptance that there is no-one behind expression. The concepts of the rhizome and deterritorialization enabled us to apprehend both the grammar of schooling (and its replication) and the creative alternatives pursued by the teachers.

The experiences of teachers, students and parents of coping with the pandemic and adapting to new ways of learning at home and subsequently back in school are reported. In seeking to make online learning, and the subsequent return to school after the lifting of lockdown, as normal as possible teachers found themselves replicating the grammar of schooling. This took place even when teachers were aware of the exclusionary effects of such practices. There were also many instances, however, of teachers finding creative alternatives that had the potential to rewrite the grammar of schooling. We discuss the persistence of the grammar of schooling and its consequences, especially for students. We also reflect on the possibilities for providing alternative educational experiences and for rewriting the grammar of schooling that leads to a rethinking – or resetting – of the education system along more inclusive lines. In this regard, we respond to the enjoinder by the Global Partnership for Education (2020) to take the opportunity afforded by the pandemic to rethink education along more inclusive lines and to identify mechanisms to support and enhance accessibility. We also react to the willingness of teachers and others, evident in our findings, willingness, to ‘negotiate the future’ (Olssen 2017, 516).

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