OLAW-C19

A pilot project in China to inform education policies and programmes to safeguard the health and wellbeing of adolescents learning online during school closures in the response to Covid-19 pandemic

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, schools across the world switched to online education as early as February 2020 to contain the spread of the disease.

While schools in China gradually have reopened since April, Beijing had to close schools again in June due a resurgence of cases. Periodic school closing has become an important containment strategy until effective treatment and/or vaccination for COVID-19 becomes available.

Employing the ‘facilitated look-backs’, a quality improvement method validated in previous epidemics, this pilot project will involve schools and stakeholders in Beijing and Wuhan to generate evidence to inform a wider rollout across China and to other countries and for future epidemic responses.

Our objectives

To identify and investigate critical issues around education quality, and health and well-being of adolescents confronted with abrupt changes in teaching delivery and learning environment.
To develop an After Action Review (AAR) to learn lessons from previous school closures during the Covid-19 outbreak.
To evaluate the AAR report against collected feedback from stakeholders to ensure its feasibility and appropriateness in various contexts particularly among marginalized, disadvantaged populations that has an impact beyond the pandemic.
To build an interdisciplinary research capability by applying a ‘facilitated look-backs’, a quality improvement approach developed for management of routine annual and pandemic influenza, to the educational filed.

Timeline

April 2021 – Our logo is born

Our research logo was designed based on the brainstorm ideas of the project team, all team members agreed the following logo to present our project in the up-coming two years.

May 2021 – Guest collaborative lecture given for the Global and Digital Perspectives in Education course at UEA

Dr Tinghe Jin and Dr Yujun Xu delivered a collaborative lecture for the course Global and Digital Perspectives in Education, introducing the digital perspectives in Chinese education, particularly at the midst of Covid-19 pandemic, and inviting UEA students to reflect on the issues from intercultural perspectives.

June 2021 – Scoping review stage 1

The research team conducted the first study of scoping review in order to achieve an understanding of the existing literature (written in either Chinese or English) and contextual situation regarding the adolescents’ health and wellbeing in online learning during the pandemic school closure in China.

July 2021 – Presentation at CERA annual conference

Dr Tinghe Jin and Dr Yujun Xu were invited to participate in the panel discussion at CERA Annual conference, on the panel discussion Looking to the future: how our work in education could be supported for sustainable development and social wellbeing. Both presenters participated the forum, along with colleagues from UNESCO, UNSSC, Queen’s University Belfast and UEA.