Learning Loss During COVID-19: An Early Systematic Review

Abstract

With COVID-19 having caused significant disruption to the global education system, researchers are beginning to become concerned with the impact that this has had on student learning progress and, in particular, if learning loss has been experienced. To evaluate this, we conduct a thorough analysis of recorded learning loss evidence documented between March 2020 and March 2021. This systematic review aims to consolidate available data and document what has currently been reported in the literature. Given the novelty of the subject, eight studies were identified; seven of these found evidence of student learning loss amongst at least some of the participants, while one of the seven also found instances of learning gains in a particular subgroup. The remaining study found increased learning gains in their participants. Additionally, four of the studies observed increases in inequality where certain demographics of students experienced learning losses more significant than others. It is determined that further research is needed to increase the quantity of studies produced, their geographical focus, and the numbers of students they observe.

University Teacher Students’ Learning in Times of COVID-19

“…Taking into account our previous theoretical considerations (see Section 1), two explanations for these results suggest themselves: on the one hand, the lower ratings could reflect an actual deficit in knowledge acquisition during distance learning. This explanation would be in line with those empirical findings that have now clearly shown that the unprepared switch to distance learning has been problematic for the learning success of school and university students due to limited opportunities of communication, technical difficulties and/or a lack of abilities regarding self-regulated learning [15,57,58,82,100,101]. On the other hand, the lower scores of the group surveyed after switching to distance learning could also be attributed to difficulties in validly rating their own abilities, caused by diminishment of the social dimension of comparison that is decisive for the development of a stable and realistic academic self-concept [23,24].…”

The Covid-19 Learning Crisis as a Challenge and an Opportunity for Schools: An Evidence Review and Conceptual Synthesis of Research-Based Tools for Sustainable Change

“…Capturing actual impacts on learning may take years, but there are ongoing efforts to capture emergent learning losses using both objective and proxy measures (Ofsted 2020a, b, c;Sharp et al, 2020;UNESCO et al, 2020). Early findings from Australia, Europe, the UK and the US show that although not all children have experienced learning losses, many children have lost between one and five months of learning (Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), 2020; Patrinos & Donnelly, 2021), while simulations project up to one year or more of learning loss in some LICs (Angrist et al, 2021). Differences have emerged across subject areas and age groups, while socioeconomically disadvantaged and racially marginalised learners have often experienced greater losses (EEF, 2020;Patrinos & Donnelly, 2021).…”

“…Early findings from Australia, Europe, the UK and the US show that although not all children have experienced learning losses, many children have lost between one and five months of learning (Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), 2020; Patrinos & Donnelly, 2021), while simulations project up to one year or more of learning loss in some LICs (Angrist et al, 2021). Differences have emerged across subject areas and age groups, while socioeconomically disadvantaged and racially marginalised learners have often experienced greater losses (EEF, 2020;Patrinos & Donnelly, 2021). Measuring actual learning losses systematically is proving challenging due to a lack of assessment standardisation (Middleton, 2020), a lack of system-wide approaches (UNESCO et al, 2020) and inaccurate/incomplete results due to missing assessment data, low response rates and sampling biases (Crenna-Jennings et al, 2021;Wyse et al, 2020).…”

“…In the United Kingdom alone, 98% of primary and secondary students began learning from home, including many of the most vulnerable students (Department for Education (DfE), 2020a). Even short gaps in schooling can lead to lost learning (Patrinos & Donnelly, 2021), thus concern about the pandemic's adverse effects on children quickly arose. Entering 2021, over 250 million children were still affected by ongoing school closures, and many more by educational disruptions (UNESCO, 2021).…”

Schulschließungen als ethische Herausforderung

“…( 2022 ), Hammerstein et al. ( 2021 ), König und Frey ( 2022 ), Patrinos und Donnelly ( 2021 ) und Zierer ( 2021 ) geben einen Überblick über Leistungsstudien, die die Frage nach Lerneinbußen und neuer Bildungsungleichheit aufgrund der pandemiebedingten Schulschließungen im Frühjahr 2020 zu beantworten versuchen. 1 Nimmt man die Befunde der in den Überblicksarbeiten enthaltenen Studien (z.…”