In this brief, the British Columbia Teachers' Federation (BCTF) welcomes new Minister of Education, the Honourable Jennifer Whiteside. The purpose of the brief is to provide context and recommendations for action on key issues of concern in the BC public education system. It brings together in one place many of the BCTF's concerns and proposals…

The Guam Department of Education (GDOE) is a single unified and accredited school district consisting of Kindergarten through 12th grade, which administers Head Start, pre-Kindergarten GATE programs, and is piloting Pre-Kindergarten classes at selected schools. The 26 elementary, 8 middle, 6 high and 1 alternative schools serve about 30,000…

Most community college students take in-person placement tests in English or math to determine whether they are required to take developmental (or remedial) courses, which are prerequisites for the college-level courses in those subjects. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced colleges to close their campuses, making in-person testing…

Disproportionate discipline of students with disabilities is a long-running crisis--and with the new rules and considerations around COVID-19, the stakes are even higher. Instead of simply reacting as incidents come up, however, schools have the opportunity to develop proactive discipline policies that serve students during the pandemic and also…

Schools across Pennsylvania and around the country are beginning the 2020-2021 school year while COVID-19 remains a threat in widely varying degrees, in different communities, and at different times. Every school that is opening its building to students--part-time or full-time, starting now or later in the school year--needs to contemplate the…

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to "forced innovation" in the health education industry. High-quality training of the future rural health workforce is crucial to ensure a pipeline of rural health practitioners to meet the needs of rural communities. This paper describes the implementation of an online multidisciplinary teaching…

Background: Learning losses does not mean forgetting only curricular learning but slipping back of fundamental learning abilities that learner would have acquired during schooling. School closures in India have severely disrupted learning processes of children resulting in learning losses and social gaps in academic outcomes. Though school closure…

Background: Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) refugees and immigrants in the United States (U.S.) face barriers to accessing health care, and are more likely to have worse health outcomes as it relates to chronic disease. Better understanding health literacy for this population can identify gaps in knowledge, facilitate health…

The global spread of COVID-19 has prompted countries worldwide to design initiatives and measures to ensure public health and safety. Saudi Arabia launched a "Stay-at-Home" initiative in March 2020 involving all sectors of society. This exploratory study employed a qualitative research design using written journal reflections to discern…

At least 25 million K-12 students in the U.S.--disproportionately children of color from low-income families--have been physically out of school for a full year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These children are at risk of significant academic, social, mental, and physical harm now and in the long-term; it is thus essential that all students gain…

School students can use a sequence of contextual tasks to learn mathematics. We can use COVID-19 as a phenomenon or context to exploit in learning mathematics. This article describes how students learn with mathematical problems that adapted PISA tasks and used the COVID-19 context. This study involved 29 secondary-level students, 15 years old,…

The outbreak of COVID-19 at the end of 2019 lifted 2020 of the world in turmoil. Now, the world is absolutely in a unique environment. In all corners, today, the scientific world accompanies huge consequences from the novel coronavirus. The economic, social, educational, and political aspects of the world get into the abnormal conditions. This…

Advances in biodesign, in which principles of engineering and technology are applied to the life sciences, are moving out of laboratories and into daily life. However, they have not made their way into K-12 classrooms. Today's students need to become familiar with biotechnologies so that they can make informed decisions about how they will be…

In the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, many educators across the country and around the world scrambled to shift their practice from in-person to remote teaching within a matter of days. This global pandemic exposed a significant gap in teacher preparation and training for emergency remote teaching, including teaching with technology to ensure…

Foreign language classroom anxiety is a construct that has been investigated since the 1980s, yet few studies have examined language anxiety in the context of the online learning environment. In this literature review, the following guiding questions were examined: (a) What is foreign language classroom anxiety? (b) What are the research findings…