Youth in the time of Coronavirus

Susanne Gannon, Jacqueline D’warte, Rachael Jacobs and Loshini Naidoo

This program of research involves an ongoing examination of the feelings, thoughts and experiences of young people aged 15-19 through periods of online learning in Australian schools during 2020, and 2021. The move to online learning challenged educators, families and students in a myriad of ways and privileging the voices and perspectives of young people seemed particularly important. As researchers concerned about educational justice and inclusion, we were inspired and guided by research led by Professor Dorte Marie Sondergaard Aarhus University Denmark. As our Danish colleagues noted, beyond conventional learning outcomes, the sociality and relationality of schooling are central to young people’s lives and their sense of belonging and becoming (Hansen, Knage, Rasmussen and Søndergaard, 2020). In this challenging time we were interested in considering how young people experience the shutting down of these domains of social life? What other modes of sociality have opened for them? What were their perspectives on online learning, on themselves as learners?

Current Australian data comprises anonymous online surveys responses (or ‘written interview’) of open-ended questions from 2020 and 2021. 2020 interviews by Zoom with 8 individual students aged 14-15 and a collection of creative and reflective artefacts (31 writing, tasks) produced by young people under the guidance of their teachers within curriculum contexts. Analysis of this data and the collection of a further round of 2021 data is ongoing. We are currently undertaking a program of comparative analysis of all current data with our Danish colleagues and planning to co-author a series of publications.

Current outputs from existing 2020 data include 2 manuscripts: ‘But w’rry not we shall banquet again someday: Creativity and socially distanced, English in Australia and Sociality, resilience and agency: How did young Australians experience online learning during Covid-19? Currently under review