Education in Flux: Preparing students with the complexity of the new normal

By ASM
Division of City of San Fernando

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID 19) pandemic has placed the world into a sudden halt. It forced the
people to stay indoors and some of the industries closed. It has created global health concerns and
educational disruptions. Though everyone is aware that the world around us is constantly changing, people
were caught off guard. In a snap, the way people live has changed. What used to be the normal no longer
exists. The new normal reorders the world in multiple dimensions.

What has become the normal? Lockdowns, quarantines, masks, washing of hands, physical distancing,
remote working, remote learning, and the omnipresent support of technology have become part of the new
normal. The great speed of these changes and challenges seem to overwhelm each of us. Complexity is
growing as the world and education are and will always be in flux. The educational institutions shall prepare
the students in dealing with complexity and develop in them the confidence to handle the new normal.

The education system in the country has been gearing towards the 21st century teaching and learning.
Critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity are the target competencies in every class.
These, now, are even more relevant since students are learning outside the four corners of a classroom and
within the vast world of virtual knowledge. Most of the concerns the parents and students have is the
authenticity of the learning process. Sharon M. Ravitch a Professor of Practice at the University of
Pennsylvania introduced a new pedagogical approach that will prepare the students with the complexity of
the new normal. For her, in this moment of relational and educational uncertainty, upheaval and
reverberation, of taking everything we do in person online, there is a need for an emergent and humanizing
education approach- flux pedagogy.

Flux pedagogy refers to the integration of relational and critical pedagogy frameworks into a transformative
and responsive teaching approach. It is a humanizing pedagogy that can enable teachers to explore the aims
and processes of schooling in this moment of intense uncertainty with the intention of fostering mutual,
collective, durable individual and societal development, learning and transformation. Developing a class as
an online and/or remote community of practice that supports students in identifying, naming, and pushing
against real-time inequities in relation to our struggle with the new normal can create a flux-tolerant
academe.

In this new normal, all schools all over the country are offering blended or purely on-line courses. These
are not entirely new. Some schools and universities have been using blended learning; but for most in the
country this is wholly new, and the school facilities as well as teachers’ trainings are not suited for this
mode of teaching and learning. Everyone is struggling, from the administrators down to students. With
these limitations and constraints, education must still be a location of immense possibility, which everyone
especially needs right now.