Catastrophes that affect society, such as pandemics or wars, create obstacles to organizing and participating in education. While the pandemic boosted the development of online education, the effects of other catastrophes on education, such as the war caused by Russian aggression against Ukraine, and how the resulting obstacles can be overcome, have received less attention.  Higher education institutions (HEIs) in Ukraine have suffered substantial damage to their infrastructure and disruption to their operations as a result of Russian aggression, which has reduced their ability to provide high-quality education and practical training. Institutions of vocational teacher education (VTE) have been particularly affected, as destroyed or inaccessible facilities hinder the organisation of supervision and hands-on learning. Displacement of students and teachers, and obstacles to participation in education, have impacted their motivation and emotional state (Lavrysh et al., 2022; Grunyuk et al., 2023; Kurapov et al., 2023). Despite the operational challenges, Ukraine has initiated VET reforms guided by the 2017 Law “On Education” emphasizing decentralization, institutional autonomy, and competency-based learning (Deißinger, & Melnyk, 2024).

The concept of learning loss, along with related terms such as the learning gap, qualification gap, academic gap, and achievement gap, has been studied in order to understand the underlying factors that cause certain individuals and groups to learn less.

Based on previous research, it is important to differentiate between educational deficits and learning loss. The former is a broader term that refers to any discrepancy between expected and actual learning, whether due to inadequate instruction or a lack of opportunity to learn the materials in the first place (Human Rights Watch, 2016; Patton, Davis & Museus, 2019; Mitchell & Greer, 2022). An educational deficit can manifest as underachievement in relation to the standards and benchmarks set for a given year group. It can also manifest as a lack of foundational skills necessary for subsequent learning, creating cumulative learning gaps when earlier gaps remain unaddressed. In contrast, learning loss refers to a specific or general decline in knowledge and skills, or a reversal in academic progress, which is typically caused by prolonged interruptions to the educational process. This can happen when learning does not take place due to school closures or when learners are not actively engaged with educational institutions, causing them to forget previously acquired knowledge (Azevedo et al., 2021; Nath, 2024).

This study aims to improve understanding of how learning loss caused by societal disruption, such as war resulting from another country’s aggression (like that experienced by Ukraine at the hands of Russia), can be addressed in education. 

1)      Based on previous studies, the following research questions have been identified: 1) How is learning loss conceptualised in the literature on crisis-affected post-compulsory education? and 2) What kinds of pedagogical and institutional responses are described?

The study is designed as a systematic literature review. The search for relevant literature sources was based on the PICOS approach (Amir-Behghadami & Janati, 2020), which allows for the formulation of eligibility criteria and defining keywords for article selection. The chosen keywords focus on post-compulsory education (i.e., upper secondary, vocational education and training, and higher education), learning loss or learning gaps (including academic and achievement gaps), and societal contexts (war, conflict, crisis, or pandemics). The search strings related to these concepts were combined with the Boolean operator AND. Applying this search strategy across databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, and ProQuest resulted in a primary pool of 145 related peer-reviewed articles. Further selection of relevant studies was performed according to the PRISMA flow protocol (Page et al., 2020). Two reviewers have performed title-and-abstract screening against four exclusion criteria: studies were retained only if they addressed learning loss in relation to broad societal or institutional factors, approached the topic from an educational perspective, provided conceptualizations or mitigation strategies, and met standard research-ethics requirements. Articles failing to meet any of these criteria were excluded. As a result, 70 of the articles were rejected (for instance, some focused on elementary education or achievement gaps rather than learning loss), 45 articles were labeled as requiring closer examination, while 25 appeared to address the topic of interest: learning loss in post-compulsory education. The descriptive characteristics such as region, education sector, methodology applied, main concept (learning loss, achievement gap, academic gap, learning gap, qualification gap or other), factors causing learning loss, approaches to counteract learning loss and whether it included the perspective of war, crises, pandemics or other causes of obstacles to utilization and participating in education were involved to categorize the data from reviewed articles into extraction rubrics. For each rubric, corresponding prompts were developed for AI-powered data extraction under thorough human oversight.

The findings highlight various pedagogical approaches that have been used to address learning loss. These include accreditation of prior experiential learning (APEL); flipped learning; project-based learning; online and blended learning courses; computer-assisted instruction; estimation of learning gaps; support from senior student tutors; AI-supported assessments; and chatbots to guide the question-and-answer process. There is also a focus on teaching self-regulated learning strategies. Furthermore, at an institutional level, the development of infrastructure, learning environments, and the capacity of teachers and leaders via pre-service and in-service training programmes has been suggested. This literature review is being conducted as part of the MOTIVET4UA project (University of Jyväskylä, n.d.). It is expected that, as the project progresses, a more in-depth analysis of previous research, combined with workshops involving Ukrainian teachers and trainee teachers, will improve our understanding of the relevance and implementation of these pedagogical approaches in the Ukrainian context.

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