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Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to the Global Pandemic of 2020

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Abstract

The rapid disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in multiple sectors and areas of daily life provide a unique opportunity to study the university’s capacity to respond to changes in the external environment, to be a learning organization , in service of addressing significant social challenges. In this book we study universities’ responses to one such challenge: the disruption to educational opportunities caused by the interruption of schooling brought about by the pandemic. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, universities innovated on several fronts. Unsurprisingly, some of those innovations focused on internal actions implemented to mitigate the impact of the pandemic by transitioning to online teaching delivery or extension of semester break, etc. (Crawford J et al. J Appl Learning Teaching 3.1:1–20, 2020; Leon-Garcia F, Cherbowski-Lask A, Leadership responses to COVID 19: a global survey of college and university leadership. International Association of Universities – Santander Universities. IAUP. https://www.iaup.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/IAUP-Santander_Survey_to_COVID-19_Report2020.pdf , 2020). Beyond the solutions to mitigate the pandemic’s impact on their communities of students, faculty, or staff, universities also innovated to mitigate such impact on the larger community. While the contributions of universities to alleviate the pandemic’s impact have been most visible in public health (Daniels, R. J. 2020. Universities’ Vital Role in the Pandemic Response. Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine. https://magazine.jhsph.edu/2020/universities-vital-role-pandemic-response ), they have extended to other areas of relief and support as well. Almost half of universities participating in a global survey conducted by the International Association of Universities indicated that due to the pandemic, their community engagement had increased (Marinoni G et al. The impact of Covid-19 on higher education around the world. IAU global survey report. International Association of Universities, Paris. https://www.iau-aiu.net/IMG/pdf/iau_covid19_and_he_survey_report_final_may_2020.pdf , 2020). This book is a study of one such response of universities to the pandemic which has not yet received sufficient attention: their support of schools at the pre-collegiate level through a variety of innovative approaches to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on opportunity to learn. In this chapter, we argue that studying such innovations provides insight into the responsiveness of universities to complex societal needs and into their capacity to operate as learning organizations open to their external environment. We introduce the study, explain its value in understanding the role and nature of higher education’s outreach, social impact, and capacity to deal with complex challenges, and summarize the chapters of the book and the results of a survey which was administered to over one-hundred universities to study the nature of their collaborations with schools during the first 9 months of the pandemic, between March and December of 2020.
1© The Author(s) 2022
F. M. Reimers, F. J. Marmolejo (eds.), University and School Collaborations
during a Pandemic, Knowledge Studies in Higher Education 8,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82159-3_1
Chapter 1
Leading Learning During aTime ofCrisis.
Higher Education Responses totheGlobal
Pandemic of2020
FernandoM.Reimers andFranciscoMarmolejo
Abstract The rapid disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in multiple sec-
tors and areas of daily life provide a unique opportunity to study the university’s
capacity to respond to changes in the external environment, to be a learning organi-
zation, in service of addressing signicant social challenges. In this book we study
universities’ responses to one such challenge: the disruption to educational oppor-
tunities caused by the interruption of schooling brought about by the pandemic.
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, universities innovated on several fronts.
Unsurprisingly, some of those innovations focused on internal actions implemented
to mitigate the impact of the pandemic by transitioning to online teaching delivery
or extension of semester break, etc. (Crawford J etal. J Appl Learning Teaching
3.1:1–20, 2020; Leon-Garcia F, Cherbowski-Lask A, Leadership responses to
COVID 19: a global survey of college and university leadership. International
Association of Universities– Santander Universities. IAUP. https://www.iaup.org/
wp- content/uploads/2020/11/IAUP- Santander_Survey_to_COVID- 19_
Report2020.pdf, 2020). Beyond the solutions to mitigate the pandemic’s impact on
their communities of students, faculty, or staff, universities also innovated to miti-
gate such impact on the larger community. While the contributions of universities to
alleviate the pandemic’s impact have been most visible in public health (Daniels,
R.J. 2020. Universities’ Vital Role in the Pandemic Response. Hopkins Bloomberg
Public Health Magazine. https://magazine.jhsph.edu/2020/universities- vital- role-
pandemic- response), they have extended to other areas of relief and support as well.
Almost half of universities participating in a global survey conducted by the
International Association of Universities indicated that due to the pandemic, their
community engagement had increased (Marinoni G etal. The impact of Covid-19
on higher education around the world. IAU global survey report. International
F. M. Reimers (*)
Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
e-mail: Fernando_Reimers@harvard.edu
F. Marmolejo
Quatar Foundation, Doha, Qatar
2
Association of Universities, Paris. https://www.iau- aiu.net/IMG/pdf/iau_covid19_
and_he_survey_report_nal_may_2020.pdf, 2020).
This book is a study of one such response of universities to the pandemic which
has not yet received sufcient attention: their support of schools at the pre- collegiate
level through a variety of innovative approaches to mitigate the impact of the pan-
demic on opportunity to learn.
In this chapter, we argue that studying such innovations provides insight into the
responsiveness of universities to complex societal needs and into their capacity to
operate as learning organizations open to their external environment. We introduce
the study, explain its value in understanding the role and nature of higher educa-
tion’s outreach, social impact, and capacity to deal with complex challenges, and
summarize the chapters of the book and the results of a survey which was adminis-
tered to over one-hundred universities to study the nature of their collaborations
with schools during the rst 9 months of the pandemic, between March and
December of 2020.
1.1 A High-Impact Global Event
The global pandemic of Covid-19 marked a watershed moment for humanity. This
highly impactful event caused many disruptions, directly and indirectly, interrupt-
ing the lives of many and altering the lives of many more. The pandemic will be
remembered, to be sure, as a milestone, a marker of time, after which many aspects
of human life were never the same. There is a serious risk that several of the changes
caused by the pandemic will make the world less inclusive, less stable, and less
sustainable during the coming years, creating challenges of a new order of complex-
ity. The most recent forecast of global trends from the National Intelligence Council
of the United States describes the impact of Covid-19 as having disrupted econo-
mies and political dynamics within and between nations, creating new uncertainties
about the global economy, governance, geopolitics, and technology. The report con-
cludes that the pandemic accelerated and accentuated pre-existing trends, bringing
global health and healthcare into focus, revealing and widening social ssures, and
highlighting deciencies in international coordination. The effects of the pandemic
extended into other domains, including disrupting global supply chains, increasing
national debt, government intervention in economies, accentuating exclusionary
nationalism and polarization, deepening inequality, exposing the digital divide,
straining governance, and exacerbating the polarized information that undermines
public condence in government, among other challenges (National Intelligence
Council, 2021, 11–13).
This description of the type of difculties caused by the pandemic corresponds
to what have been called “super wicked problems,” a term used by MIT president
Rafael Reif to describe challenges like climate change: “it means an enormously
complex societal problem that has no single right answer and no clear nish line,
multiple stakeholders with conicting priorities, and no central authority empow-
ered to solve it” (Reif, 2021).
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
3
On March 11 of 2020, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of
the World Health Organization, declared that Covid-19 was a pandemic. At that
point in time 118,000 cases had been diagnosed in 114 countries, and 4291 people
had lost their lives. Over the next 13months, those gures would grow to 164mil-
lion people infected, and 3,381,774 people having lost their lives (Johns Hopkins
University, May 17, 2021).
In response to the pandemic, as a way to contain the velocity of the spread of the
virus, segmenting the rate of infection over time to prevent the collapse of the medi-
cal infrastructure, many governments put in place measures that restricted physical
contact among people, physical distancing measures, as well as restricted travel.
The disruption of the ability to congregate, to move, and to travel impacted the
functioning of many institutions: workplaces, schools, universities, businesses,
houses of worship, and government itself.
The resulting direct impact of the pandemic included effects on people who were
infected with Covid-19, in some cases taking their lives or deteriorating their physi-
cal or mental health. The direct impact also involved the economic and psychologi-
cal consequences of having been infected or having had a family member become
seriously ill or die. Many more people were impacted indirectly, including all those
affected by the disruptions caused by the pandemic through jobs and income loss,
mobility restrictions, disruptions to schooling, and severe limitations to other forms
of association and interaction as well as the toll on mental health caused by living
under stress during such a protracted period.
A considerable burden for governments was the nancial toll created by nanc-
ing the costs of the public health response to the pandemic, as well as the costs of
the economic relief to individuals and businesses which some governments pro-
vided to mitigate the impact of the disruption to work and business.
The scale of the disruptions caused by the pandemic was unprecedented in recent
history, causing a global economic recession not seen since the Great Depression
(Reinhart & Reinhart, 2020). An analysis of the global economic effects of the pan-
demic forecasts multiple nancial crises across the world, sovereign debt defaults in
the developing world, a contraction in economic activity, decline in global trade,
increased unemployment, a disproportionate impact on lower-income households,
an additional 60 million people pushed into extreme poverty, and an increase in
hunger. What’s more, the economic recovery will be slow (Reinhart &
Reinhart, 2020).
A disruption of such scale and depth will likely compound many pre-existing
challenges. For example, the challenge of reducing poverty will be heightened in a
context of economic recession or slow growth. The economic burden of the pan-
demic will compound pre-existing challenges faced by governments whose econo-
mies were already burdened with considerable levels of debt. The challenge of
political polarization and challenges to democratic governance will be exacerbated
as more people see their economic circumstances decline, and as the resulting mar-
ginalization and inequality intensify political competition. The rise of exclusionary
nationalism will likely increase in response to growing domestic challenges, caus-
ing further retrenchment from globalization (National Intelligence Council, 2021).
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
4
Given the scale of these disruptions, the Covid-19 pandemic is a serious course-
altering event, one that will change the life trajectories of individuals and the future
of institutions and nations, setting them on paths which will make improvement of
individual and collective well-being more challenging. Individuals, those who begin
their careers in this economic depression, will nd it challenging to recover. Those
who prematurely end their employment because of the economic depression will
experience reduced well-being for a long period. For institutions, whether they are
businesses, universities, or hospitals, the economic toll of the pandemic will pose
considerable burdens, driving some out of existence. This will hamper the innova-
tion ecosystem. For nations, the burden of the adjustments necessitated by the pan-
demic will diminish prospects for development.
A United Nations report described these vast implications of the pandemic in
this way:
The pandemic is more than a health crisis; it is an economic crisis, a humanitarian crisis, a
security crisis, and a human rights crisis. It has affected us as individuals, as families and as
societies. The crisis has highlighted fragilities within and among nations. It is no exaggera-
tion to suggest that our response will involve remaking and reimagining the very structures
of societies and the ways in which countries cooperate for the common good. Coming out
of this crisis will require a whole-of-society, whole-of-government and whole-of-the-world
approach driven by compassion and solidarity (UN, 2020, 1).
This UN report explains that the pandemic has exposed and aggravated pre-existing
vulnerabilities, and that recovering from its impact requires not just restoring the
conditions that existed prior to the pandemic, but “building back better,” pursuing
the global development agenda, as articulated in the UN Sustainable
Development Goals.
Recovery is an opportunity to address the climate crisis, inequality of all kinds and gaps in
our social protection systems. Instead of going back to unsustainable systems and
approaches, we need to transition to renewable energy, green infrastructure, sustainable
food systems, social inclusion, gender equality, and stronger social safety nets, universal
health coverage, better preparedness for health emergencies and multi-hazard risks (UN,
2020, 8).
Of course, “building back better” is no small challenge in the context created by the
pandemic, especially because so much of “building back better” involves working
on “super wicked problems” that require collective action, not well addressed by
market forces and made more difcult by the current democratic politics in contexts
of low trust and intense polarization. Further social fragmentation, accelerated by
the pandemic, will compound the complexity of addressing these challenges
(National Intelligence Council, 2021). Climate change, for instance, is likely to
require several changes in government, private industries, and individual behavior
that have so far proven elusive (Reif, 2021). Even mitigating the health impact of the
pandemic itself has proven especially challenging in the oldest democratic republic
in existence, the United States.
For higher education institutions, the nancial impact may accelerate the decline
of institutions, already severely strained, to the point of closure (Startz, 2020). For
reasons that will be articulated in this chapter, universities may be well positioned
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
5
to contribute to the structural changes necessitated insociety that will allow for the
collective action necessary to “build back better.” Whether universities would take
on the task of leading in imagining and building a better future, while at the same
time having to address the impact of the pandemic on their own internal constituen-
cies and possibly having to reimagine their own existence and future, remains to be
seen. But it is at least worth considering that in reimagining their purpose, universi-
ties may decide to become more intentional in contributing to imagining and build-
ing a better future precisely because this crisis has made this need so pressing.
In this book we ask the question of whether and how, amidst the crisis created by
the pandemic, universities have stepped up to serve society with respect to a singu-
lar impacted domain: education, and not just education within the university, but
pre-university education writ large. In what follows, we explain the need to “build
back better” in education, why universities might focus on that challenge, and what
the answer to such a question could tell us about the nature of the university as a
learning organization with the capacity not just to respond to changes in its external
environment but to shape that environment in building a better future.
1.2 Impact ofthePandemic onEducational Opportunity
Institutionalized learning was disrupted by Covid-19 as schools and universities
adopted physical distancing measures. On March 3, 2020, UNESCO reported that
school closures in 13 countries had interrupted the education of 290million stu-
dents around the world (UNESCO, 2020). By the end of March 2020, 3weeks after
the World Health Organization had declared the outbreak, national school closures
had impacted 1,581,173,934 learners. All remaining learners, out of a total of
1,712,374,616, had been impacted by localized school closures (UNESCO, 2020).
By the end of July 2020, only a very small number of schools and universities had
reopened. Soon after, most schools and universities around the world suspended in-
person instruction, and many of them adopted alternative modalities of education
delivery, including using online learning and relying on radio, television, mobile
applications, and printed materials.
Some of these alternative education arrangements represented innovative uses of
existing technologies, which was the result of novel forms of collaboration and
partnership among various kinds of organizations, including collaborations between
schools and school systems and universities (Reimers & Schleicher, 2020).
Early studies of these innovations showed that online learning modalities were
not effective in creating comparable opportunities to learn to those provided by
school-based instruction and that they were not reaching all students with the same
levels of effectiveness (Reimers & Schleicher, 2020). For instance, a study of the
education response to Covid-19 conducted between September and December of
2020in Bangladesh, Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa,
United Arab Emirates, and the United States concludes that “these alternative
arrangements produced losses in access to education, consistent access, and
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
6
engagement with learning, how they resulted in instruction of limited quality and
shorter duration than regular in-person instruction, and how remote learning
arrangements devised in this fashion limited opportunities for socio-emotional
development” (Reimers etal., 2021, 18).
The resulting limited options available to learn during the pandemic led to a
growing concern over the impact of the pandemic on learning loss, student mental
health, student disengagement with learning and potential dropout, and over the
long-term impact of these conditions on students and societies, as well as concern
over growing disparities in opportunity to learn.
A series of World Bank simulations of the global impact of school closures con-
cludes that a 5- month closure with moderately effective alternative forms of educa-
tion could lead to a loss of 0.6years, reducing the average number of school years
students receive at present from 7.9years to 7.3years. This would amount to a loss
in $10trillion in lifetime earnings for the current cohort of students. In addition,
close to 7million students could drop out because of the impact of the pandemic on
income for their families (World Bank, 2020, 23).
The magnitude of the shock that the disruption to education, resulting from
Covid-19, is expected to cause will likely extend beyond the predicted impact on
individual earnings; it would compound the disruptions likely to result from the
slow economic recovery that is expected to follow the pandemic. It would also com-
pound many of the other challenges expected to follow, from increased political
polarization and governance challenges to the possibility of addressing other devel-
opment goals, as described in the UN Sustainable Development Goals agenda. In
effect, the education consequences of the pandemic could unleash a process of
development in reverse, hence the priority of addressing how to “build back better”
for education.
1.3 Response ofEducational Institutions tothePandemic
andWhy Universities Would Want toHelp
Educational institutions, from pre-schools to universities, have used a variety of
means to provide some form of educational continuity to carry out their instruc-
tional mission amidst the challenging conditions caused by the physical distancing
requirements. For most institutions, this involved very rapid design and implemen-
tation of alternative means of delivery and continuous adaptation based on what
they learned about the effectiveness of the approaches deployed.
In effect, schools and universities responded to the disruption caused by the pan-
demic with an unprecedented global effort in innovation in order to continue to
operate and sustain educational opportunity in spite of the distancing requirements
(Marinoni etal., 2020). These efforts, many dependent on the use of technology,
quickly revealed that not all students had the same access to technology and other
supportive conditions that would allow them to learn online (Ali, 2020). Other
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
7
students lacked the self-management skills to effectively learn online and to learn
more independently than when they attended schools in person. These innovative
efforts also revealed skill gaps among teachers for teaching remotely (Reimers &
Schleicher, 2020). Finally, not all institutions were prepared to support the new
teaching- learning environment, and their regulatory arrangements were not attuned
with the new demands.
These challenges also made evident that students and the systems and structures
supporting them lacked the skills needed to navigate a volatile and uncertain world,
such as capacity to learn independently, resiliency, exibility, and creativity. As
such, they reinvigorated pre-existing interests in helping students develop a range of
skills, in educating them holistically, and in signicantly improving educational
institutions, particularly through the adoption of technology.
The need to meet such ambitious goals with an appropriate level of resources and
institutional capacity, at a time when they faced many demands resulting from the
crisis, led some education authorities to seek collaborations and institutional part-
nerships with universities and other organizations. The secretary of education of
Sao Paulo, Brazil, for instance, asked some of the most afuent business leaders in
the State to partner with the Department of Education in creating a multimedia
infrastructure to sustain educational opportunity during the exigency (Dellagnello
& Reimers, 2020). He also developed a partnership with the State University of Juiz
de Fora, for support in building a formative monitoring system that would help
teachers and school leaders assess student engagement and learning as they studied
remotely. Similarly, Colombia’s Minister of Education built on a pre-existing part-
nership with a University (EAFIT) to support online learning, creating a robust
multimedia platform to support remote instruction.
It is reasonable that some education system leaders should have reached out to
universities for assistance in creating alternative means of delivery. Schools share
with universities the purpose of educating students and, as such, they have knowl-
edge of how to teach and support teaching. Some had prior experience teaching
online and knowledge of digital pedagogies. In addition, because universities are
larger and more complex, and have more resources and institutional capacity than
schools, they can more easily and quickly develop innovative education approaches
in a shifting context such as that created by the pandemic.
In addition to their greater relative capacity and resources, universities are ubiq-
uitous. Today, more than ever before, most school systems, at the national or subna-
tional levels, have access to at least one university. The considerable global
expansion of universities during the last two decades made visible that the more
than 28,000 universities throughout the world were a signicant reservoir of global
institutional capacity for rapid innovation in sustaining knowledge creation and
dissemination.
Just as it was reasonable for school and system leaders to ask universities for
help in sustaining education during the pandemic, it also made sense for universities
to undertake such a task, for doing so would simultaneously address important
needs while addressing universities’ own challenges of relevancy, effectiveness, and
sustainability.
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
8
Many universities see it as part of their mission to contribute to the development
of the communities of which they are a part, through research, education, and out-
reach (Puukka & Marmolejo, 2008). Universities play a central role as anchor insti-
tutions in communities, they are drivers of economic prosperity, and outreach to
PreK-12 is one of the ways in which universities advance missions and strategies
related to economic development, as well as to support equity and democracy. But
supporting schools and school systems within the challenging context created by
the pandemic was not just an opportunity for outreach, it was an opportunity to
advance knowledge on how to tackle complex challenges. As institutions interested
in addressing “super wicked problems,” the challenges created by the pandemic,
such as the interruption of schooling, provide an opportunity to exercise and develop
the capacity to tackle such problems.
During the pandemic, just as universities contributed to providing viable solu-
tions to the development of testing, vaccines, PPE production and distribution, and
other technologies and processes to address the health aspects of the pandemic, they
also contributed solutions to upholding the continuity of education provision for the
education system as a whole.
Sustaining education during the pandemic required more than nding alternative
means of education delivery that overcame the physical distancing constraints. The
interruption of in-person instruction created, for schools as well as for universities,
the occasion to ask again what should be taught and how andto reprioritize the cur-
riculum. Their shared interest with schools in the central questions of teaching and
learning made universitiesa logical partner for schools, school networks and school
systemsat a time when a rapidly changing context upended the ability to learn and
to teach in the way institutions are most accustomed to.
Beyond the opportunity to generate and mobilize knowledge to help sustain edu-
cation systems, the education crisis created by the pandemic also provided an
opportunity to engage students in higher education in the search for such solutions,
in ways benecial to their own education. Prior to the pandemic, many universities
were already grappling with the challenges of helping their own students develop
the breadth of skills essential to participate in the twenty-rst century, including
teaching them civic responsibility and leadership (Nghia Tran, 2018; Matsouka &
Mihail, 2016). The many challenges created by the pandemic provided a multitude
of “teachable moments” from which students could gain essential competencies;
helping pre-collegiate institutions continue to educate was one such opportunity.
In addition to their challenges with relevancy and effectiveness, universities have
been struggling to identify ways to deepen their effectiveness while remaining sus-
tainable in the face of growing costs and declining revenues. Universities, particu-
larly in high-income countries with aging populations, were already facing
challenges of how to nd more sustainable ways to educate students, particularly as
most of the recent growth in enrollments has taken place in the developing world.
The number of students enrolled in higher education grew from 100million stu-
dents in 2000, to 250million in 2020, and is expected to grow to 594million by
2040 (Calderon, 2012). Most of that growth will take place in middle income
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
9
countries in the developing world, with very limited growth in North America and
Western Europe as shown in Fig.1.1.
Facing spiraling costs and declining populations of high school graduates, uni-
versities in North America and Western Europe had increasingly sought to meet
enrollment targets with a growing population of students from the emerging middle
classes in the rest of the world. But the travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic
prevented universities from relying on those students, leading to a signicant loss in
total enrollment and of revenue for many universities in Australia, Canada, the
United Kingdom, and the United States (Burki, 2020). In Britain, it is expected that
the Covid-19 crisis will produce losses ranging from 3 to 19billion British pounds,
most of it as a result of falling international student enrollment (about 2.8billion
British pounds) (Drayton & Waltman, 2020). In 2019/2020, the international stu-
dent enrollment in US colleges and universities declined almost 2% in comparison
with the previous year, resulting in a loss of 1.8billion dollars from the prior aca-
demic year (NAFSA, 2020).
A further motivation for universities to help school systems mitigate learning
loss and the interruption of learning is that the enrollment intake of universities
draws from graduates of high schools. Any serious knowledge and skill gaps in a
generation of learners would have ripple effects in their subsequent learning at the
university level. Universities understand that the undergraduate experience can be
greatly enriched and maximized if incoming students are more adequately prepared
to cope with the academic and social demands of colleges and universities, and that
the increased sophistication of the knowledge and skills necessary to participate in
society make the typical 4–5years of university life insufcient to develop the pre-
requisite technical and socioemotional skills. The teaching mission of the university
builds on the work of teachers in primary and secondary schools. Any signicant
loss in knowledge and skills among high school graduates would, in time, affect
teaching and learning at the tertiary level.
This obvious need for alignment across various institutions supporting the edu-
cational trajectories of students has in the past caused universities to seek ways to
increase the coherence in that continuum. Some universities have established their
own senior high schools, as part of the same university system. Others have engaged
in various ways to inuence the curriculum and instruction at pre-collegiate levels.
2000
2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030
377.4
99.9
Arab States
Latin America & the Caribbean
Central & Eastern Europe Central Asia
South & West Asia
East Asia & the Pacific
Sub-Saharan Africa
North America & Western Europe
214.1 250.7 305.9
471.7
594.1
2035
2040
Fig. 1.1 Number of students enrolled, and projected to be enrolled (in millions), in higher educa-
tion institutions by region from 2000 to 2040. Worldwide higher education enrolment by global
region, actual from 2000 to 2015 and projected to 2040. (Source: Calderon, 2012)
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
10
For instance, through rules governing college admissions, universities have inu-
enced the high school curriculum as Harvard’s president Charles Eliot did in the late
nineteenth century with the creation of a contact hour standard for secondary educa-
tion in what would eventually become the “Carnegie Unit” after it was endorsed by
the Carnegie Foundation to dene a standard of 120h of academic work in a sub-
ject. University engagement in pre-collegiate education is also illustrated by James
Bryant Conant, Harvard president and chemistry professor, who wrote about how
the lack of a solid pre-collegiate foundation in mathematics would deter students
from pursuing calculus in college, an essential subject to pursue advanced careers in
the sciences. Conant also wrote about the necessity to learn to read German early
on, to enable access to research in the eld of chemistry (Conant, 1970, 189). The
review of Harvard’s undergraduate curriculum led by Conant, published in 1945
with the title “General Education in a Free Society,” would have considerable inu-
ence in high school curricula. His involvement in the expanded use of the Scholastic
Aptitude Test in college admissions would support access to college for students
from public high schools, inuencing the opportunities those schools would provide
students to prepare for college. The books Conant wrote at the end of his life on the
American high school and on teacher preparation inuenced those two institutions.
Government policies have occasionally sought to foster greater collaboration
between universities and schools, as did the National Defense Education Act of
1958in the United States, a response to the soviet launch of Sputnik, that funded the
involvement of research universities, such as Harvard and MIT, in designing pre-
collegiate science, math, foreign language curriculum, and teacher preparation
programs.
Another reason for universities to become interested in collaborating with
schools, to continue functioning during the pandemic, is that they represent one of
the few institutions with which most members of a society have contact, and they
carry out a function that has long-term and high-value consequences for society. At
a time when there are questions regarding the contributions that universities make
to society, many of them would see it as aligned to their mission: as socially embed-
ded institutions, to contribute to the communities of which they are a part. As such,
universities would want to engage in efforts that mitigate the harm caused by the
pandemic because it poses such a serious risk to development and well-being of
society as a whole.
Universities have good reason to attend to their reputation in the eyes of the pub-
lic, as public trust in them is declining. In the United States, for example, even
though most people still hold a positive view and have more condence in universi-
ties than in most other institutions, with the exception of the military, small busi-
nesses, and the police, the percentage of the population with a negative view of the
contributions of colleges and universities to society has been increasing signi-
cantly in recent years. In surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2019
asking people to evaluate whether colleges and universities had a positive or a nega-
tive effect on how things are going in the country, 38% responded they had a nega-
tive effect, a 50% increase from 26% who held the same view in 2012 (Parker,
2019). The Gallup organization found a similar decline in condence in colleges
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
11
and universities, from 57% who expressed a great deal or quite a lot of condence
in higher education in 2015 down to 48% in 2019 (Jones, 2018).
The public has less condence in colleges and universities than in the military
(74% have a great deal or quite a lot of condence), small business (67%), or the
police (54%). However, there is more condence in universities than in the church
or organized religion (38%), the presidency (37%), the US Supreme Court (37%),
the medical system (36%), banks (30%), the public schools (29%), organized labor
(26%), big business (25%), newspapers (23%), the criminal justice system (22%),
television news (20%), and Congress (11%) (Parker, 2019).
The disruptions caused by the pandemic provided, therefore, an opportunity for
universities to demonstrate that they create value for society, beyond the students
they educate directly and in addition to the knowledge they advance. Those contri-
butions of universities to the greater social good were clearly visible during the
pandemic through the role played by teaching hospitals, and by their faculty and
staff involved in the health sciences and public health, as those professionals
engaged with the larger health ecosystem in providing a response to the public
health emergency.
For similar reasons to those that drove universities to assist in mitigating the
health impact of the pandemic, given the signicance of the educational impact of
the pandemic and the great salience of its consequences to multiple dimensions of
future development, it is reasonable that universities would seek to partner with
school systems to sustain educational opportunity during the education crisis of
Covid-19. The pandemic provided the university with “A Sputnik moment” to inu-
ence school education.
1.4 Why Study How Universities Collaborated withSchools
During thePandemic
The reasons to study whether and how universities engaged with schools to sustain
educational opportunity during the pandemic include the insights that such a study
could provide about the evolving nature of higher education and its mission, and in
particular about the nature of universities as learning organizations capable of learn-
ing from and with their external environment. The pandemic is just one instance of
a larger class of unpredictable events, and it provides an opportunity to understand
how universities respond during an unexpected crisis. On a more practical level, this
study might help universities keen to collaborate with schools learn from global
experience and perhaps even inspire those in the university community to pursue
collaborations along the lines of those examined in this book.
In a world rapidly changing, there is continued interest in ensuring that what
students learn in college and what they learn at all levels is indeed relevant and pre-
pares them for the demands of this volatile and uncertain world. Doing this requires
that educational institutions be adaptive and in good communication with their
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
12
external environment, and that they are able to adjust what they teach and how they
operate in response to those changes—that they are, in effect, organizations that can
learn. This comparative study will help answer two fundamental questions: Did the
high-impact disruptions in the external environment caused by the pandemic show
the university is a learning organization? Did the response of universities to the
pandemic in fact support the idea that they are institutions open to their external
environment, capable of learning from and with their environment?
Arguably, as learning organizations, universities are very much open systems,
that is, systems in interaction with their environment, with the capacity to identify
changes that can inuence them and adapt in response to those changes, in their
external environment (von Bertalanffy, 1938; Senior & Swailes, 2010; Argyris &
Schön, 1978; Senge etal., 1990). The characteristics of open systems are their rela-
tions to and interactions with the environment as well as their ability to scan and
discover changes in that environment (Birnbaum, 1988; O’Connor & McDermott,
1997). Universities have not just the capacity to adjust to changes in the external
environment, but also to create alternative futures. Through their functions in teach-
ing, research, and outreach, universities can very much imagine and build imagined
futures. They are singularly positioned to contribute to “building back better,” to use
the exhortation of the United Nations in response to the pandemic, particularly in
domains that involve collective action challenges, as mentioned by MIT’s president
with respect to climate change (Reif, 2021).
The literature on educational institutions as learning organizations highlights
seven features that dene them as such:
1. Developing and sharing a vision centered on the learning of all students.
2. Creating and supporting continuous learning opportunities for all staff.
3. Promoting team learning and collaboration among staff.
4. Establishing a culture of inquiry, innovation, and exploration.
5. Establishing embedded systems for collecting and exchanging knowledge and
learning.
6. Learning with and from the external environment and larger learning system.
7. Modelling and growing learning leadership (Kools & Stoll, 2016, 3).
Studying how universities engaged with pre-collegiate educational institutions to
support educational continuity during the pandemic will help us understand how
socially connected the university is to its surrounding context, and how it interprets
its responsibility to be an engine of social innovation at a time of great unexpected
need. We will also be able to ascertain whether such involvement builds on pre-
existing institutional relationships or creates new partnerships.
Such study will also illuminate how such outreach is aligned with the universi-
ty’s mission and how it relates to the research and teaching missions.
Recent studies of the university argue that, as a result of the growing complexity
of roles that the university has taken on, along with how society denes the contem-
porary university, universities are operating in a context of “super complexity”
(Scott, 2020, p.27). As a result of such super complexity, the onset of the pandemic
met universities in a stage of searching for more sustainable ways to advance their
mission, perhaps for some even in search of renewal of such a mission.
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
13
Examining how universities collaborated with schools to sustain learning during
a time of crisis might shed light on how the university interprets its mission during
a time of great volatility and interest in accountability and emerging questions about
its social role and value. A pandemic is undoubtedly, thankfully, a rare event with
high impact on society. It is in fact rarer an event than a solar eclipse, a major earth-
quake, in most countries rarer than a breakdown of democratic rule, or a civil war.
High-impact events of this sort have in the past inuenced how universities inter-
preted, and re-created, their mission. For instance, the second global wave of
democratization after World War II and the third wave beginning in the mid-1970s
(Huntingon, 1993) led universities to embrace the goal of expanding access with
unprecedented vigor.
Clearly, there are multifaceted ways in which universities could respond to the
pandemic, ranging from how they themselves adapted teaching and learning to the
conditions created to the pandemic, to how they managed to carry out other aspects
of their mission, including extension and outreach. As part of their outreach mis-
sion, the role of universities in attending to the public health aspects of the pan-
demic is an immediate and obvious area of response. But, as institutions where
learning and teaching are core to their mission and that have historically played a
signicant role dening how learning and teaching should take place, not just while
students are enrolled in universitybut also before, examining whether and how uni-
versities focused on the larger social enterprise of teaching and learning, when the
enterprise was threatened by a major global disruption, makes sense as well. After
all if, as some have predicted, the pandemic accelerated the transformation of teach-
ing and learning at all levels, it is reasonable to ask what role universities have
played in that process, not just for their own students but beyond, for the larger
teaching and learning ecosystem.
The engagement of universities in the redesign of learning and teaching systems
in response to the context of socially distancing created by the pandemic ts squarely
within the contemporary interest in more effective and open learning systems within
universities, and outside of them (Scott, 2020).
At the root of the study of how universities responded to a signicant disruption
in their context is the question of how socially embedded universities are. A century
ago, the idea that research in universities was carried out by researchers working in
the isolation of the ivory tower was replaced by the argument that research was the
product of researchers interacting with society; the related argument of the “Triple
Helix” explained research as the result of close collaboration between universities,
industry, and government (Engwall, 2020, 5). The concept of the “Triple Helix” is
the foundation of the idea of the “entrepreneurial university,” the university that
serves as an engine of societal improvement. In fact, as universities more formally
engage in supporting social entrepreneurship, they are, in reality, relying on a “qua-
druple helix” framework (Garcia-Gonzalez & Ramirez-Montoya, 2019).
This entrepreneurial, socially embedded university is the idealized model of the
American university, which contemporary discourse on “world class” universities
propagates as desirable: a university with porous borders with society, open to social
change and its impact (Ramirez, 2020, 131).
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
14
However, at the same time that universities are lured to pursue the “world class”
aspiration, they are also being requested to connect their work more effectively to
local needs and realities. In fact, engagement has become so prominent that it is now
considered a key component of national or state policymaking, a tool of institutional
proling, and an indicator of performance as part of the broader accountability and
system-steering agendas (Goddard etal., 2016).
A related theme, which begets interest in how universities have engaged with
pre-collegiate institutions to support education during the global pandemic, con-
cerns the democratic imperative which some authors argue is part of the university
mission in our times:
Put most simply, the urgent task before us to reinforce, and maybe reforge, the links between
higher education and democracy which, perhaps too complacently, was taken for granted in
the twentieth century in the age of mass higher education, now drawing to the close. The
twenty-rst century university needs to be an open institution –spatially, by opening up
closed-off, policed corporate-like academic precincts; scientically and academically, by
embracing open knowledge systems and welcoming new (and challenging) knowledge tra-
ditions (and rejecting the exclusionary and hierarchical tendencies of performance and rak-
ing regimes- and, maybe, the seductive discourses of ‘excellent’ and ‘world-class’); and
socially, by meeting the needs of everyone, not just of enlarged elites. (Scott, 2020,
page 111)
1.5 The Current Study
To conduct this study, we identied 20 universities around the world that had
become involved with pre-collegiate institutions during the pandemic. To identify
them, we drew on our institutional networks and created an intentional sample of
universities that reected a variety of institutional types—teaching, research, more
recent, more established—in a variety of countries. Our aim was to reect the wide
diversity that characterizes higher education globally. We then invited colleagues in
those institutions to write case studies, using a common protocol we developed
based on a virtual meeting of all participants. The case study was not meant to
address all forms of engagement of the university with K-12 education, but rather to
examine in particular and in some depth collaborations that were responsive to the
challenges created by the pandemic. The purpose of such a strategy was to help
understand with some nuance how universities engaged with pre-collegiate educa-
tion in response to a signicant disruption to society, as was the case with the dis-
ruption caused by the pandemic, rather than ascertain the full extent of what they
had done in response to the crisis.
We discussed drafts of those cases at a virtual conference attended by all authors
of the case studies, and then revised them based on feedback obtained from peers at
the conference.
The authors of the case studies were asked to write cases that answered the fol-
lowing questions:
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
15
Provide a brief prole of your university, including general information about its
scale, type (public/private), focus, longevity, geographic location and scope, pro-
le of students, paths followed by graduates, links with industry and other
employers, etc. Please include a brief idea of the focus of the current strate-
gic plan.
Describe briey what the university is doing to support elementary and secondary
schools in their efforts aimed at ensuring educational continuity during the
Covid-19 pandemic. What is the scale of those efforts? How many elementary
and secondary schools are involved? How many students are impacted? How
long have these efforts been going on?
What units or departments in the university have been involved in this initiative?
Who is funding these efforts? What is the total cost of those efforts?
What was the motivation for the university to undertake this initiative? Was this
building on prior efforts engaging the university with K-12 schools, or was this a
new initiative?
How are these efforts perceived to be aligned with the mission of the university?
How are they aligned with the research and teaching efforts and approach of the
university?
What kind of support do these efforts have from the governing boards of the univer-
sity? From the President’s ofce? From Deans?
What is the rationale of these efforts? What is the hypothesis on which these efforts
are based? Its theory of action? Why were these particular efforts initiated and
not others?
How did schools participate in designing these efforts described in this case study?
How did education authorities participate? Was there any involvement of parents
of students?
Is there a monitoring system of these efforts? What is being monitored? How is this
information used?
What have these efforts achieved to date? What has been learned from these efforts?
How have they been modied over time?
What are some unexpected results of these efforts, positive or negative?
What have been some failures or shortcomings of these efforts? What was more dif-
cult to achieve than you had imagined?
What is the likely future of these efforts? Are there plans to make those efforts more
permanent? Or to transition them into a new initiative? Or to close them under
certain future circumstances?
The resulting case studies follow a common set of goals and analytic framework,
although they differ in that some examine in greater depth a single collaboration
with schools, whereas others provide a more comprehensive view of the variety of
engagements the university had with schools. Accordingly, there are different
emphases in the research questions each case study answers. Collectively, however,
the case studies provide a broad overview of the variety and extent of the collabora-
tions that these universities orchestrated with schools during the pandemic.
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
16
These in-depth case studies were then supplemented with a survey that we
administered to a larger number of universities around the world. The survey was
designed to cover a range of the same questions that guided the case studies. The
survey was administered throughout our networks, to a larger list of senior admin-
istrators in universities. We received 101 responses to the survey (see Map 1.1).
These methods were not designed to answer the question of what proportion of
universities had engaged in school collaborations (given the way in which respon-
dents were selected), but rather, to describe and analyze what it was that universi-
ties, who had developed such collaborations, did. It should be clear that our evidence
originates in a convenience sample, not on a probabilistic sample intended to repre-
sent a known population. Given the way in which we recruited the institutions for
the case studies and administered the survey, relying on our own professional net-
works, there are at least two possible sources of bias in the study. The rst is that our
reach was limited by our respective professional contacts and networks. The second
that the respondents are primarily those in our networks who had actually engaged
in collaborations of some sort. In other words, if this study shows that universities
engaged with schools during the pandemic, it is because those are the institutions
we sought out and those that agreed to participate. Finally, this is a study of the
immediate response of universities to the pandemic, in the months immediately fol-
lowing the suspension of face-to-face instruction in most countries. It is possible
that these efforts will evolve, and change, over time, and that some of these efforts
may stop or other forms of collaboration might develop as universities and schools
continue to respond to the pandemic.
Map 1.1 Countries participating in the study with case studies and with responses to institu-
tional survey
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
17
1.6 Summary oftheCases
1.6.1 Brazil: Fundação Getulio Vargas
In Brazil, the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) has focused its support for the con-
tinuation of education by providing policymakers with access to reliable informa-
tion to navigate the crisis, and by making high-quality, online educational resources
available to secondary students and education professionals. A distinctive collabo-
ration has been FVG’s High School program, whose main objective is carrying out
analysis that contributes to the improvement of the quality and provision of upper
secondary. Established in 2003, this initiative has worked with state and local gov-
ernments by providing technical assistance, and it has developed online resources to
support teachers and students. Most notably, FVG created a web site that allows
students to practice for the National High School Examination (ENEM), which is
used by prestigious higher education institutions as an admission test for enroll-
ment. The government decision to transition to an online version of ENEM due to
the pandemic triggered a massive increase in the use of FGV’s High School practice-
test platform. In addition, it opened the door for the establishment of further partner-
ships with state education ofces and schools, with the goal of establishing
trustworthy online platforms that can assist teachers in the application of exams and
mock tests remotely. FGV’s online tool is suited to address capacity gaps at the local
level to evaluate and assess students. Other initiatives conducted by FGV in support
of school education include the offering of free online courses and a signicant
effort disseminating best practices and establishing policy dialogue with local gov-
ernments. The pandemic has enabled an increased level of collaboration among
different areas of FGV that focus on elementary and secondary education.
1.6.2 Chile: Pontical Catholic University ofChile (PUC)
In response to a request from the Chilean government to support efforts in coping
with the pandemic, an advisory committee was established under the leadership of
the Presidents of the Catholic University of Chile (PUC) and the University of Chile
(UCh). One of the tasks of this ad hoc committee has been to work on proposals and
specic guidelines to help the school system with the necessary measures to provide
socioemotional and academic support to elementary and secondary students and
their parents. Since PUC and UCh are the oldest, most prestigious, and most selec-
tive higher education institutions in Chile, collaboration among them, in general, is
relatively limited. However, the pandemic provided a unique opportunity to estab-
lish a successful partnership with the hopes that future collaboration may emerge in
the post-pandemic world. One of the results of the partnership is the development of
specic and adaptive guidelines to implement a prioritized curriculum in schools
that will be implemented for the 2020 and 2021 academic years. Also, in
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
18
conjunction with other universities, two documents with guidelines for adequate
management of schools during the pandemic, and policies for curriculum adjust-
ments, were drafted and disseminated. Finally, at PUC, the system of practical train-
ing for students at the Faculty of Education was rapidly adapted into a virtual
education environment allowing the design of new materials, coaching of students
in schools, etc.
1.6.3 Chile: University ofChile (UCh)
During the pandemic, the University of Chile (UCh) redesigned and maintained an
ongoing public-private alliance between the Arauco Educational Foundation, the
Center for Advanced Research in Education (CIAE-Universidad de Chile), and
Andalien Sur Local Public Education Service (SLEP) with the goal of preventing
school exclusion (repetition and dropout) in public schools. The program has been
supporting education in a group of 12 schools through pilots, with the ultimate goal
of further implementing successful practices in a larger number of public schools in
the country. Although UCh has participated in several initiatives in support of con-
tinuation of education in elementary and secondary schools, the program “Desafío
TEP” was of particular interest, considering the risk that the pandemic would
increase drop-out rates in public schools. Within the rst 2weeks after schools were
closed, the team organized online meetings, resulting in adapting the program,
adjusting the work cycle, establishing more efcient communication mechanisms
with school representatives, and further rening the gathering of information on
school engagement. Key lessons learned by UCh from the adaptation of the pro-
gram include the need for ensuring that students feel satised and motivated to keep
learning, strengthening the communication with families, supporting teachers to
make them feel competent and safe, using all technological resources available, and
making visible the achievements of students and schools.
1.6.4 China: Tsinghua University (TU)
Tsinghua University is a public university in Beijing, China, with more than 50,000
students, a number of hosts within its main campus, and a network of schools,
including Tsinghua University High School (TUHS), International School, Primary
School, and Kindergarten, covering all pre-K to Grade 12 for both national curricu-
lum and AP courses. The fact that TUHS implemented a blended learning approach
in 2016 supported the transition to online learning due to the pandemic, and it
helped to accelerate the restructuring of the curriculum. Another initiative, the
Innovative Talent Cultivation Open Forum (ITCOF) hosted by K-16 Technology
and Engineering Education Alliance (K-16 Alliance)—a collaborative partnership
of TU and the Ministry of Education with the goal of building a stronger tie between
K-12 and higher education—involved the participation of educators, researchers,
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
19
and practitioners from universities, schools, and governments to share insights into
education for innovative talents. ITCOF hosted 18 online public talks in 6weeks,
with speakers from TU, Beijing Normal University, high schools, and ed-tech com-
panies. The talks covered a variety of topics, including education research, policy
review, education outlook, learning and teaching strategies, and best practice review.
Also, the Student Development Center of TUHS hosted the Minds of Youth (MoY),
a learning camp designed during the pandemic with the goal of creating online col-
laborative learning communities for students from different parts of China, from 6th
graders up to undergraduate students. MoY is a 5-day online learning camp aimed
at providing opportunities for participating students to learn how to stay positive
while learning at home, away from friends and teachers. As indicated in preliminary
responses, participants expressed having acquired new perspectives.
1.6.5 Colombia: EAFIT University
EAFIT, a private university based in Medellin, Colombia, illustrates how long-
standing capacity-building support, provided by the institution to local governments
and schools as part of an ongoing collaboration with the National Ministry of
Education (MoE), and with the city government of the national capital, was quickly
expanded and adapted in the Covid-19 pandemic. This collaborative work between
a university and government is derived from the 2012 EAFIT’s development of the
UbiTAG model, a holistic approach to digital maturity and change management in
schools that has been implemented through ongoing long-term projects in more
than 400 schools. Based on this experience, right before the pandemic, EAFIT sup-
ported the MoE on the development of Aprender Digital, a strategy that became
highly useful in response to the Covid-19 emergency. The collaboration of EAFIT
with the government is focusing on collectively dening the actions needed for the
successful continuation of academic activities in schools, which is in its early stages
of implementation. The role of EAFIT has consisted of providing orientation in the
creative adaptation of traditional learning methodologies, and transferring the les-
sons and strategies provided by the UbiTAG model, in order to enhance the continu-
ity of the educational processes of students from their homes. The involvement of
EAFIT in support of the government has fostered increased communication and
collaboration among different units and schools at EAFIT, although still the connec-
tion of the project with the teaching-learning side of the university remains to be
enhanced.
1.6.6 India: Symbiosis International University
In the case of India, Symbiosis International University (SIU) illustrates the involve-
ment of a higher education institution with elementary and secondary schools to
ensure continuity of teaching and learning during the pandemic for which
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
20
experience using remote means to interact with teachers and parents became very
useful. Symbiosis Society is a trust that encompasses Symbiosis Schools and
Symbiosis International (Deemed University). Symbiosis Schools includes elemen-
tary and secondary schools with which SIU has worked during the pandemic. In
addition, 23 public rural schools established in Lavale village, the neighborhood
surrounding the main campus of SIU, have been “adopted” by SIU even before the
pandemic. This occurred through offering training programs for schoolteachers,
making technological platforms for the remote delivery of teaching available to
schools, and installing solar panels to make possible the use of electronic equipment
in cases where no regular electricity is available. During the pandemic, most efforts
were devoted to training teachers on how to integrate the Collaborative Online
International Learning (COIL) approach into their curriculum. Efforts have been
easier to implement in urban schools, with serious difculties remaining in rural
schools. A key element of SIU’s related work is to systematically monitor these
efforts through hosting regular meetings with the heads of the schools, attending
online sessions to review the quality of implementation, receiving feedback from
students and sharing it with teachers, and processing feedback from parents.
1.6.7 Japan: Keio University
Based on research and practice, Keio University developed expertise in implement-
ing distance learning. This know-how was mobilized to support Japanese K-12 edu-
cation’s efforts with distance learning for education continuity. In addition, a
pre-existing partnership between the Ministry of Education and university had the
power of changing old regulations and dening the technical specication to carry
out a new ICT system to support distance learning. Building on a pre-existing part-
nership with the Ministry of Education, Keio University developed a model that
enables K-12 schools to implement distance education in ways which are socially
acceptable and economically feasible.
1.6.8 Mexico: Autonomous University ofPuebla (BUAP)
The Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP) is a comprehensive public univer-
sity in Mexico at which almost 20% of the 96,409 students are enrolled in 24 high
schools located in different cities in the state of Puebla. Prior to the pandemic,
BUAP dened an academic model in which entrepreneurship is one of the skills to
be prioritized among its students, resulting in the offering of “EmprendeBUAP,” a
six-semester face-to-face program which, since its inception, has beneted 16,400
students. As the pandemic forced the closure of facilities, BUAP’s team rapidly
transitioned the training program into an online format to guarantee educational
continuity. In its new format, “EmprendeBUAP” has reached 18,000 beneciaries
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
21
including not only students but also faculty members and parents, and it is planned
to reach an additional 10,000 students by the end of the year. The redesigned online
program was developed after extensive consultation with faculty members and
school principals, and with participation of instructional design specialists and
entrepreneurial consultants. In addition, in observing the challenges faced by stu-
dents, parents, and faculty members, the team decided to develop another initiative
named “Sal de la Curva” (Spanish for “Get out of the curve”). This initiative con-
sists of a series of mentoring sessions with the goal of supporting students in the
development of self-knowledge, resilience, and family well-being. To increase its
impact, a partnership with universities in Central and South America was estab-
lished, and it is offered to BUAP’s students as well as to a group of 120 elementary
and middle schools in the state of Puebla.
1.6.9 Mexico: Tecnológico de Monterrey University
The case of the Tecnológico de Monterrey University in Mexico illustrates the
advantages of having in place an academic model based on the concepts of exibil-
ity and digital pedagogies, which allowed the multi-campus institution to quickly
support academic continuity during the pandemic. Specically, the case describes
the experience of two Tecnológico de Monterrey middle schools as they imple-
mented the Flexible-Digital Model (FDM). Since FDM was originally designed to
support teaching-learning during the pandemic at the higher education level, some
concerns about its applicability in lower secondary education were present among
teachers and institutional administrators. Evaluations conducted during the imple-
mentation processes helped to identify challenges by teachers (need for training,
access to platforms, security, modied assessment, etc.), students (Internet access
failures, emotional attention, distraction at home, etc.), and parents (lack of experi-
ence with and training on the use of platforms, frustration and anxiety, exibility,
etc.) Preliminary evaluations indicate that a majority of students have been either
satised or very satised with the modied learning experience.
1.6.10 Mexico: University ofGuadalajara (UdeG)
The University of Guadalajara (UdeG) is the second largest public university in
Mexico, which includes 71 upper-secondary schools, accounting for 50% of the
total enrollment at this level in the state of Jalisco. Before the pandemic, academic
collaboration between upper-secondary and higher education institutions within
UdeG was not systematically monitored and supported, mostly due to the internal
governance of the university. However, the pandemic opened opportunities to
address the problem and led to a series of actions, including the massive training of
around 6000 full-time faculty, 1400 of whom are upper-secondary teachers, on the
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
22
use of technology and active-learning approaches by faculty members from the
higher education side of the university (professors). In addition, related teacher’s
training programs, aimed at discussing and rethinking the academic model of the
university, were designed for the rst time without separating the upper-secondary
and higher education levels, engaging all in discussions and joint solutions by fac-
ulty members from both levels to address the challenges of the pandemic. This col-
laborative approach resulted in a series of recommendations for the university
leadership, including the need to build common teaching capacities for the entire
academic community (an approach defended mainly by the professors of upper-
secondary schools but supported by the higher education faculty members) and the
need to make the transition between upper-secondary and higher education levels
more effective and easier for students.
1.6.11 Morocco: Al Akhawayn University
Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane (AUI), Morocco, located in a low-income, moun-
tainous, and rural area, implemented several student and faculty-led projects aimed
at alleviating poverty and exclusion, especially in K-12 education. Many of these
projects have beneted primary schools in the area, and some have even had a
national impact, some of which occurred in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.
For instance, the CITI (Center for Information Technology Innovation) project
developed a platform that houses middle school science teaching materials, which
is available nationwide to students and teachers and continues to update the materi-
als with mediated contributions from teachers. This platform with the digital materi-
als proved to be a strong resource for online education during the pandemic.
1.6.12 New Zealand: Massey University
At Massey University in New Zealand, as part of a pre-existing research program on
mathematics education, faculty members have been providing support during the
pandemic to school leaders and teachers to engage them in a range of new and dif-
ferent ways to teach mathematics to traditionally underserved Māori and Pāsika
students in Aotearoa. The pandemic provided a unique opportunity to mitigate tra-
ditional inequity in education for indigenous and Pacic Islanders by involving not
only students but also members of their families. While supporting teaching, Massey
University researchers examined and explored opportunities to develop a richer
understanding of students’ funds of knowledge. While recognizing the clear digital
divide in access to devices and connectivity, educators participating in the project
ensured that families were provided with culturally sustaining mathematics activi-
ties at home. The teaching of mathematics using online modalities allowed research-
ers to observe how engaged family members were in the learning of students, and
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
23
how benecial this involvement was for the improvement of the educational experi-
ence of the students. The whole process enabled teachers to gain a better apprecia-
tion of family members’ involvement in the learning of students. As the lockdown
has ended, and schools are in the process of reopening, educators are attempting to
nd ways to continue the positive relationships they had across their students’ com-
munities, which, ultimately, will result in a more equitable mathematics education
for underserved populations.
1.6.13 Portugal: University ofLisbon
The Institute of Education of the University of Lisbon (IE-ULisbon) adapted its
research and outreach efforts with schools during the pandemic. With a long history
of participation in partnerships with elementary and secondary schools, IE-ULisbon
continued working with schools during the pandemic with positive results, as indi-
cated in interviews conducted with school principals, teachers, and partnership
coordinators. IE-ULisbon implemented a pre-pandemic training on digital compe-
tencies provided to teachers from a school cluster in the Lisbon district, which
resulted in a Digital Action Plan that was recently developed with teachers. Due to
the lockdown, work on this topic transitioned from face-to-face to remote. Thanks
to the continuous guidance and involvement of IE-ULisbon, the process was con-
cluded successfully, resulting in an easy adaptation of the use of digital technologies
by teachers, students, and parents. Another related experience at IE-ULisbon was
the “Let’s GoSTEM” project involving 60 teachers and 800 elementary and second-
ary students with the aim of assessing the impact of a STEM approach on learning,
motivation, and interest in further STEM careers. The training phase of the project
was scheduled to be held in a face-to-face format as well as the related interaction
with students. Both activities were quickly adapted to a remote format. Preliminary
ndings signal a successful transition and implementation.
1.6.14 Qatar: Qatar Foundation (QF)
Due to its unique role as the primary driver for innovation and educational develop-
ment at national level, the Qatar Foundation (QF) became involved in supporting
education continuity in all levels of the educational system. Universities established
at QF’s Education City rapidly set up activities aimed at transitioning their existing
outreach programs into a virtual delivery mode. At the same time, QF entities sup-
porting the government on the professional development of schoolteachers, devel-
oped and conducted massive training programs on the use of technological platforms.
The main support efforts from QF consisted of online delivery of teaching, develop-
ment of online resources, professional development of teachers and principals,
research efforts in connection with the continuation of education, and supporting
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
24
policy at the national level. In addition, a signicant number of activities aimed at
supporting delivery of education among the K-12 schools established at Qatar
Foundation were made available to outside schools and the public writ large. The
whole experience led QF to develop a framework for analysis of actions, which is
being used to evaluate effectiveness of interventions, lessons learned, and ways to
sustain efforts in the post-pandemic new “normal.
1.6.15 Russia: HSE-National Research University Higher
School ofEconomics
The case of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE)
in Russia underscores the importance that previously established relationships with
secondary schools played in supporting the continuation of activities during the
pandemic. The different units at HSE have in the past worked at promoting the
development of the Russian education system, providing methodological support
for education and working with high school students and schools across the country
on the use of digital technologies, among other activities. The latest work involved
conducting research and analysis and disseminating knowledge, promoting best
practices, enabling discussions on experiences and training practices in the pan-
demic, training schoolteachers and principals, providing online instruction and
assistance to students, and helping parents to support education at home. Such work
was made possible by the ongoing cooperation of HSE with schools in Moscow and
other Russian regions through initiatives, such as the “HSE School District” project,
the HSE Distributed Lyceum School, a distance-teaching web site created ex-
professo during the pandemic, YouTube, and other social media-based educational
resources. Additionally, HSE conducted a variety of monitoring and research activi-
ties aimed at learning from teachers, students, and authorities on their perspectives
about the transition to remote education. The leading role of HSE supporting pre-
university education during the pandemic prompted the Russian Ministry of
Education to request HSE to prepare a report on the status and context of the educa-
tion system during the pandemic. Also, an interesting development described in the
case is the involvement of HSE students who were recruited to support teaching and
provide tutoring to secondary school students.
1.6.16 Spain: Universidad José Camilo Cela
The Camilo José Cela University (UCJC), a private university located in Madrid, is
part of the larger organization, SEK Education Group, which administers elemen-
tary and secondary schools in several countries. While the collaborative involve-
ment of UCJC with those schools has been in place for a while, due to the pandemic,
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
25
several related activities were either adapted or developed to guarantee the continu-
ation of education. One of those activities was the involvement of a group of UCJC
university education students as Teacher Assistants supporting the online teaching
of primary and secondary teachers. This effort helped high school students directly,
but also served as an opportunity for further training and awareness of participating
university students. A related activity was the offering of personalized online teacher
training programs for schoolteachers, with active involvement of the Teacher
Assistants. Additionally, UCJC has been able to continue supporting vulnerable
refugees residing in Spain during the pandemic through a network of volunteers,
providing counseling, online tutoring, and online socioemotional or mental health
support to students and teachers. UCJC has also partnered with local NGOs to sup-
port parents and students from vulnerable sectors, and it is remotely supporting the
provision of education to refugees in Kenya, especially through female teachers.
The whole experience of UCJC’s involvement during the pandemic has helped fos-
ter innovation and entrepreneurship among students and faculty members, and it has
also strengthened the social commitment of the academic community.
1.6.17 Turkey: Bahçeşehir University (BAU)
Bahçeşehir University (BAU), a private higher education institution with six cam-
puses in Istanbul, is part of BAU Global Education Network, which includes two
chains of K-12 schools with 180,000 students and 21,000 teachers in about 280
campuses around Turkey. The Faculty of Education at BAU has worked with these
schools before the pandemic, through the program “University within School.” This
earlier engagement made it easier to collaborate with schools during the lockdown
providing training to mitigate the anxiety of parents, students, and teachers. Because
of the magnitude of the task, the instructors teamed up with master’s and PhD stu-
dents and supervised the counselling of students voluntarily provided in individual
and group sessions. Also, a massive dissemination effort was held using social
media to share good practices and recommendations. In addition, as a result of a
survey conducted in schools, BAU’s Faculty of Education set up a wide array of
virtual dissemination sessions for parents, teachers, and students focusing on psy-
chological resilience and coping with anxiety. Other activities included leadership
skills training for school principals, showcasing technological applications and
methodologies to enrich online learning, and an online training on computer tech-
nologies for teaching, offered to teachers working in state schools with the collabo-
ration of the Ministry of Education. The overall volunteer work of faculty members
from BAU supporting elementary and secondary schools has helped to strengthen
the collaboration between the university and schools, and also helped to rene col-
laboration between different departments of the university.
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
26
1.6.18 USA: Arizona State University
The case shared by Arizona State University (ASU) describes how different units at
ASU mounted rapid responses to the pandemic that provided elementary- and
secondary- level students resources and learning opportunities to which they would
otherwise not have had access. Those units include ASU Preparatory Academy (a
tuition-free school serving students in grades K-12 chartered by ASU), ASU Prep
Digital (a exible online school offering a path toward college admission), the Gary
K.Herberger Young Scholars Academy (a learning environment for intellectually
gifted students), and ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. Actions focused on
assuring a direct provision of education to K-12 learners; supporting schools with
human and intellectual capital resources; and curating and making available free
educational resources to learners, families, and schools. As ASU has a long- standing
experience of partnerships with elementary and secondary schools, many of the
existing long-term commitments helped the university develop capabilities that
could be quickly applied to help elementary and secondary learners during the pan-
demic. A key enabler of collaboration with K-12 schools is that ASU has in place a
formal institutional vision to universal learning that demands a university be ready
and able to deliver instruction in many modalities to all learners.
1.6.19 USA: Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology
The case study of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) describes the
efforts and impact of an initiative aimed at supporting remote collaborative learning
for K-12 students, parents, and educators. Known as Full STEAM Ahead (FSA), the
program was implemented in response to the pandemic and included the offering of
weekly themed packages with developmentally appropriate activities for students,
and the development of a summer program for middle school students. Both initia-
tives were established targeting at-risk students with the assumption that MIT can
contribute to improving K-12 remote collaborative learning experiences through
developing and sharing meaningful curriculum, and by leveraging existing struc-
tures and projects within MIT in support of partnerships with the community. FSA’s
activities have demonstrated that such a collaborative approach has helped to fulll
existing goals and that interaction and community-building are fundamental. It is
expected that the resources already developed and the expertise gained in imple-
menting the project will support more effective future outreach efforts of MIT.
1.6.20 Vietnam: University ofEducation (UEd)
The Department of Educational Sciences at the University of Education (UEd) in
Vietnam has a history of ongoing support to K-12 education with a variety of col-
laborative teaching and research activities; it also has the role of training teachers,
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
27
educational specialists, and managers of educational institutions. During the pan-
demic, due to such involvement with the sector, the UEd immediately started col-
laborating with the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) and UNICEF to
provide digitally based mental and socioemotional support for K-12 teachers and
students, through webinars, social network channels, and TV shows, and by dis-
seminating printed materials. Faculty members from UEd participated in this effort
on a voluntary basis. The entire set of initiatives has been well-received by bene-
ciaries leading to the further development of other training and counseling materials
aimed at supporting students through Covid-19. Further monitoring of the different
interventions shows that demand for counseling among students during times of
crisis is signicant, that parents should be involved, and that teachers’ demand for
psychological and mental health support is as high as the support requested from
students. The success of the support in response to the emergency has reinforced the
need to develop plans, drafted from experiences and lessons learned, for a sustained
effort beyond the pandemic.
1.7 The Results fromtheSurvey1
Relying on our institutional networks, we administered a survey to university senior
administrators (the survey is available in Appendix A). We received 101 responses
to the survey, half of them from public and half from private institutions, from 21
different countries, as shown in Table1.1. The survey was administered in June of
2020, just 3months since the pandemic had been declared.
1 This section draws onapreviously published article by Reimers, 2021.
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
Argentina
Bolivia
Botswana
Brazil
Canada
Chile
Colombia
Dominican…
Ecuador
Guatemala
Honduras
Italy
Lebanon
Mexico
Nigeria
Paraguay
Peru
Portugal
Spain
Turkey
United States
Private Public
Table 1.1 Universities that answered the survey by type and country
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
28
Given the way the survey was administered, to an intentional sample of col-
leagues, it cannot be considered representative of any known population of institu-
tions. The respondents seem to represent primarily teaching institutions. Only a
third of the universities which responded indicated that research is the highest insti-
tutional priority in the university, a key criterion to hire and tenure faculty. An addi-
tional third indicated that it is a priority to some extent. In contrast, 76% of the
respondents indicated that teaching represents the highest institutional priority.
Most respondents see engagement with pre-collegiate education a part of their
mission. When asked whether they agreed with this statement, “This university does
not see engagement with elementary and secondary schools as part of its mission,
only 20% of the respondents expressed total or partial agreement, with 50% express-
ing total disagreement and 14% expressing some disagreement. Consistent with
this, 69% of the respondents report that there is a tradition in the university of part-
nering with primary and secondary schools for research or extension. To be sure,
that they tend to see such engagement as part of their mission does not mean that
they see it as an easy endeavor. The respondents report a variety of experiences
developing collaborations with pre-collegiate institutions. Two in ve respondents
indicated that elementary and secondary schools are not particularly receptive to
collaborating with universities, while a third of the respondents disagreed with
that idea.
One of the ways in which universities engage with schools is through programs
of teacher education and maintaining a department of education. Fifty-nine percent
of the universities offer a program of pre-service education of teachers, and 74% of
them have a department or school of education.
The pandemic did cause most university leaders to reach out to schools. Sixty-
four percent of the respondents report that after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out,
university leaders or faculty engaged in conversations with institutions involved in
elementary and secondary education to explore whether they would welcome or
require support from universities to continue to educate during the pandemic, and
61% indicate that the university is engaged with elementary and secondary schools
during the Covid-19 pandemic to support those schools in continuing to teach dur-
ing the pandemic.
The type of school with which universities have developed partnerships to sup-
port instruction during the pandemic are presented in Table 1.2. Most university
school partnerships involve schools which are part of the same “system” as the
university, or schools with which universities had partnerships predating the pan-
demic. Less frequent are partnerships with schools with which no prior relation-
ships existed as well as supporting governments at the local, state, or national level.
The majority of these schools are located in the same State in which the univer-
sity is located, with 18 cases where the schools are located in a different State in the
same country and 4 located in another country.
Most of these collaborations were initiated by the university, or jointly by the
university and the schools. Very few of them were initiated by the schools them-
selves or by governments.
The efforts during the pandemic were an opportunity to integrate pre-existing
collaborations across units in the university and schools, according to 60% of the
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
29
respondents. Half of the respondents see the collaborations between schools and the
university as opportunities to help students in the university gain valuable skills.
More than half of the respondents see the collaborations with schools as opportuni-
ties to foster connections across various departments in the university.
The collaborations, focused primarily on designing products or making available
resources and training teachers or staff to support educational continuity during the
pandemic, are shown in Table1.3.
Over half of the respondents report that there were many challenges in establish-
ing these collaborations with schools. While the decision to initiate the collabora-
tions involved principally senior university leadership (presidents and deans) and
faculty, the implementation of the collaboration involves a broader range of con-
stituents, including faculty, staff, and students. The initiative involves, to a similar
extent, the ofce of the president and provost, the ofce of outreach and extension,
the school of education, and other departments or faculties. In most cases, these
efforts are funded by the university. The primary motivation to undertake the col-
laboration was to be of service to society (66% of the cases). In a great majority of
cases, this collaboration is aligned with the university’s strategic plan.
Table 1.2 If the university has been engaged with elementary and secondary schools during the
Covid-19 pandemic, which type of schools did this include? (more than one response is possible
per university)
Frequencies
Total
dataset
Private
universities
Public
universities
A.Schools which are part of the university or of the same
“system.” These schools and the university are under the
same governance
36 19 17
B.Elementary and/or secondary schools with which it
had robust prior partnerships but that are not part of the
same “system”
47 26 21
C.Elementary and/or secondary schools with which it
had no signicant prior relationships
21 13 8
D.Local governments to support them in the development
and implementation of strategies for elementary and
secondary schools during the pandemic
24 15 9
E.State governments to support them in the development
and implementation of strategies for elementary and
secondary schools during the pandemic
22 13 9
F.National governments to support them in the
development and implementation of strategies for
elementary and secondary schools during the pandemic
16 13 3
G.Other intermediary organizations—Networks of
schools, organizations that provide support to schools,
and foundations—To support them in the development
and implementation of strategies to educate during the
pandemic
26 16 10
No answer 20 7 13
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
30
When asked if there is a clear strategy or theory of action guiding these collabo-
rations, the responses are equally divided between those where there is a clear strat-
egy (about a third of the cases), those where there is an emerging strategy, and those
where there is not a strategy as shown in Table1.4.
In most cases (60%) the collaborations were designed as rapid prototypes that
are being improved on the basis of experience. In a similar proportion of cases, there
is a monitoring system that allows continuous improvement. While there are moni-
toring and formative evaluations in three quarters of the cases, impact evaluations or
Table 1.3 What was the focus of the collaborations of the university with primary and secondary
schools included (more than one responsible is possible per university)?
Frequencies
Total
dataset
Private
universities
Public
universities
a. Designing solutions and products that would support
learning and teaching during the pandemic
49 27 22
b. Translating research so that it could be used by
schools, or others in support of schools so they could
continue to teach during the pandemic
21 8 13
c. Conducting research directly relevant to those
schools as they continued to teach during the pandemic
13 6 7
d. Transferring practices to schools that allowed them to
continue teaching during the pandemic —For instance,
sharing lessons learned in teaching online
47 30 17
e. Making available educational, technological, and
logistical resources that would support the teaching
efforts of schools
37 21 16
f. Training elementary and secondary schools, teachers,
staff, and/or principals
48 29 19
g. Other, specify 15 6 9
No answer 20 6 14
Table 1.4 Is there a strategy, or a “theory of action,” or “logical framework” guiding these
collaborations of the university with elementary and secondary schools?
Frequencies
Total
dataset
Private
universities
Public
universities
These are efforts without an integrated university
wide “theory of action” or “logical framework”
30 15 15
There is an emerging “theory of action,” evolving as
we embark on these efforts
25 15 10
There is a clear “theory of action” or strategy
guiding these efforts
30 15 15
No answer 16 5 11
Total 101 50 51
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
31
academic research based on those collaborations are less frequent, as seen in
Table1.5.
In about half of the cases, the collaboration is visible or highly visible within the
university and outside the university.
1.8 Conclusion
The Covid-19 pandemic upended life as we knew it, causing disruptions in many
areas of life. Facing those disruptions, universities sought not just to make adjust-
ments so they could continue to carry out their teaching mission, while attending to
the restrictions caused by the pandemic and measures to mitigate it, including the
restrictions to in-person instruction; instead, universities reached out to schools to
support teaching and learning. They did so in a variety of ways, in most cases build-
ing on pre-existing relationships with schools, school networks, and school sys-
tems. They did this in the spirit of rapid prototyping, prioritizing timeliness in the
response, and gradually rening and improving their engagement.
While universities engaged with schools because they saw service to society as
part of their mission, such engagement also served to advance knowledge, outreach,
and the education of university students, in effect promoting greater integration
among these three goals. It also served to connect various efforts across the univer-
sity. While it is too early to determine the effectiveness of those efforts, or whether
they will be sustained in the long term, they illustrate the university’s capacity to
respond quickly to changes in the external environment and to not only adjust to the
global crisis caused by Covid-19 but to participate in creating a better future. The
following chapters present in detail how 20 universities engaged in these efforts and
what those efforts mean about the evolving role of the university’s purpose in a
world made more challenging and uncertain by the pandemic.
Table 1.5 Have these efforts been evaluated in any way? (more than one responsible per university
is possible)
Frequencies
Total
dataset
Private
universities
Public
universities
a. We have collected evidence that has been used to
manage and improve those collaborations
56 30 26
b. We have conducted formative evaluations of those
collaborations
22 13 9
c. We have evaluated the impact of those
collaborations
15 10 5
d. These collaborations are the basis of applied or
academic research carried out by academics at the
university
20 9 11
21 8 13
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
32
Appendix A: Survey Administered toanIntentional Sample
ofUniversities inJune 2020
GEII_HigherEducation_K12
Q1 This is an invitation to participate in a study on the role of higher education
institutions supporting educational continuity at the elementary and secondary
school levels during the Covid-19 pandemic. The purpose of this survey is to
examine whether, to what extent, and in what ways, universities have supported
elementary and secondary schools [1] in the delivery of education during the
Covid-19 pandemic. Please complete the survey before August 7, 2020. This
study is conducted by the Global Education Innovation Initiative at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education with participation from colleagues in the Qatar
Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, and 25 uni-
versities around the world. The survey should be lled out by a person who
has information on the overall engagements of the university with elemen-
tary and secondary schools. This could be a senior administrator with a
broad overview of university engagements, or a faculty member involved in
such efforts. If you do not have information about those broad efforts, please do
not ll out the survey, and forward it to the person in the institution that has such
knowledge. The results of this survey will be presented in an academic book that
examines whether the Covid-19 pandemic created and/or strengthened collabo-
rations among schools and universities around the world. The results will be
reported in aggregate form, with categories that group universities by type
(public- private, research-teaching), size, and geography. No individual level
results for any participating university will be reported. Names of universities
participating in the survey may be identied in the description of the methodol-
ogy, only if they so authorize this in this survey. Participation in this survey is
voluntary. The survey includes 50 multiple option questions and should take
about 30min to complete. Your results will only be transmitted once you press
submit at the end of the survey; you can suspend participation at any time.
[1] Our denition of “elementary and secondary schools” includes all formal levels
of education before the ones offered at the undergraduate level in colleges and
universities. ISCED Levels 0, 1, 2, and 3.
Q2 Your name:
Q3 Email address where we may contact you?
Q5 Name of the university
Q6 May we contact you with follow-up questions, if we have them?
Yes (1)
No (2)
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
33
Q7 Would you be interested in receiving a copy of the report based on this survey?
Yes (1)
No (2)
Q8 This university is …
It is a Public university, a State institution (1)
It is a Private university (2)
Q9 Country
Q10 In what year was the university established?
Q11 Total undergraduate enrollment (these are students in degree granting programs
at the bachelors or equivalent level ISCED level 6)
Q12 Total graduate enrollment (these are students enrolled in masters or doctoral
programs ISCED level 7)
Q13 Total enrollment in community, junior college, or associate degree (ISCED
level 5)
Q14 Total enrollment in secondary, primary, or preprimary school (ISCED levels 4
and below)
Q15 Approximately what percentage of the university budget comes from tuition
revenues?
Q16 Approximately what percentage of the university budget comes from research?
Q17 Approximately what percentage of the university budget comes from donations
or returns on investments of donations?
Q18 Approximately what percentage of the university budget is a public subsidy or
appropriations?
Q19 Focus on research. To what extent is this university one in which carrying out
research is the highest institutional priority, a key criterion to hire and tenure
faculty members, and a signicant part of the university budget?
To a great extent (1)
To some extent (2)
Neutral (3)
Not much (4)
Not at all (5)
Q20 Focus on teaching. To what extent is this university one in which teaching is the
highest institutional priority and a key criterion to hire and tenure faculty
members?
To a great extent (1)
To some extent (2)
Neutral (3)
Not much (4)
Not at all (5)
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
34
Q21 To what extent do you agree with this statement: “In this country or region,
elementary and secondary schools are not particularly receptive to collaborations
with universities”?
To a great extent (1)
To some extent (2)
Neutral (3)
Not much (4)
Not at all (5)
Q22 To what extent do you agree with this statement: “This university does not see
engagement with elementary and secondary schools as part of its mission”?
To a great extent (1)
To some extent (2)
Neutral (3)
Not much (4)
Not at all (5)
Q23 To what extent do you agree with this statement: “In this university we have a
tradition of partnering with primary and secondary schools for research or
extension”?
To a great extent (1)
To some extent (2)
Neutral (3)
Not much (4)
Not at all (5)
Q24 Does the university have a program that offers pre-service education of
teachers?
Yes (1)
No (2)
Q25 Does the university have a department or school of education?
Yes (1)
No (2)
Q26 After the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, did university leaders or faculty
engage in conversations with institutions involved in elementary and secondary
education to explore whether they would welcome or require support from uni-
versities to continue to educate during the pandemic?
Yes (1)
No (2)
Don’t know (3)
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
35
Q27 To what extent did this university engage with elementary and secondary
schools during the Covid-19 pandemic to support those schools in continuing to
teach during the pandemic?
To a great extent (1)
To some extent (2)
Neutral (3)
Not much (4)
Not at all (5)
Q28 If the university has been engaged with elementary and secondary schools dur-
ing the Covid-19 pandemic, which type of schools did this include? (select all
that apply)
a. Schools which are part of the university or of the same “system.” These
schools and the university are under the same governance. (1)
b. Elementary and/or secondary schools with which it had robust prior part-
nerships but that are not part of the same “system.” (2)
c. Elementary and/or secondary schools with which it had no significant prior
relationships. (3)
d. Local governments to support them in the development and implementa-
tion of strategies for elementary and secondary schools during the pan-
demic. (4)
e. State governments to support them in the development and implementation
of strategies for elementary and secondary schools during the pandemic. (5)
f. National governments to support them in the development and implementa-
tion of strategies for elementary and secondary schools during the pan-
demic. (6)
g. Other intermediary organizations—networks of schools, organizations that
provide support to schools, and foundations—to support them in the develop-
ment and implementation of strategies to educate during the pandemic. (7)
Q29 If the university engaged in collaboration with primary and secondary schools,
where were those schools located? (select all that apply)
a. Within 10 kilometers of the university (1)
b. In the same State where the university is located (2)
c. In other States in the same country where the university is located (3)
d. In other countries (4)
Q30 What was the focus of the collaborations of the university with primary and
secondary schools included? (select all that apply)
a. Designing solutions and products that would support learning and teaching
during the pandemic. (1)
b. Translating research so that it could be used by schools, or others in support
of schools so they could continue to teach during the pandemic. (2)
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
36
c. Conducting research directly relevant to those schools as they continued to
teach during the pandemic. (3)
d. Transferring practices to schools that allowed them to continue teaching
during the pandemic—for instance, sharing lessons learned in teaching
online. (4)
e. Making available educational, technological, and logistical resources that
would support the teaching efforts of schools. (5)
f. Training elementary and secondary schools, teachers, staff and/or princi-
pals. (6)
g. Other, specify (7) ___________________________________________
__________
Q31 How many elementary schools were reached by these efforts?
Q32 How many secondary schools were reached by these efforts?
Q33 How were those collaborations initiated? (select all that apply)
a. They were initiated by the government (1)
b. They were initiated by schools (2)
c. They were initiated by the university (3)
d. They were initiated jointly by schools and the university (4)
e. Other, specify (5) __________________________________________
__________
Q34 To what extent do you agree with this statement: “the engagement of the
University with elementary and secondary schools during the pandemic created
an opportunity to integrate a number of collaborations with elementary and sec-
ondary schools taking place in various units across the university into a more
coherent effort”?
To a great extent (1)
To some extent (2)
Neutral (3)
Not much (4)
Not at all (5)
Q35 To what extent do you agree with this statement: “the collaborations with ele-
mentary and secondary schools provided new opportunities to help students in
the university gain valuable skills”?
To a great extent (1)
To some extent (2)
Neutral (3)
Not much (4)
Not at all (5)
Q36 To what extent do you agree with this statement: “the collaborations with ele-
mentary and secondary schools created opportunities for collaboration across
departments in the University”?
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
37
To a great extent (1)
To some extent (2)
Neutral (3)
Not much (4)
Not at all (5)
Q37 To what extent do you agree with this statement: “there were many challenges
in establishing and implementing collaborations between elementary and sec-
ondary schools and the university”?
To a great extent (1)
To some extent (2)
Neutral (3)
Not much (4)
Not at all (5)
Q38 Who was involved in the institutional decision to collaborate with schools?
(select all that apply)
a. Senior university leadership (President and Deans level) (1)
b. Faculty members (2)
c. University trustees (3)
d. Heads of non-academic departments (4)
e. Students (5)
Q39 Who is involved in the implementation of the collaboration? (select all
that apply)
a. Administrators of the university (1)
b. Professors (2)
c. Institutional support staff (3)
d. Students (4)
Q40 What units or departments in the university have been involved in this initia-
tive? (select all that apply)
a. Office of the President or the Provost (1)
b. Office of Outreach or Extension (2)
c. School or Department of Education (3)
d. Other Schools or Departments (specify) (4)
Q41 Who is funding these efforts? (select all that apply)
a. Funded by the University (1)
b. Funded by the beneficiary Schools (2)
c. Funded by the Government (3)
d. Funded by Foundations or Donors (4)
e. Other, specify (5) __________________________________________
___________
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
38
Q42 What was the primary motivation for the university to undertake this initiative?
a. It was an opportunity to be of service to society (1)
b. It represented a research opportunity (2)
c. It was an opportunity to enhance the education of students in the uni-
versity (3)
Q43 To what extent is this collaboration with schools aligned with the University
strategic plan?
To a great extent (1)
To some extent (2)
Neutral (3)
Not much (4)
Not at all (5)
Q44 Is there a strategy, or a “theory of action,” or “logical framework” guiding these
collaborations of the University with elementary and secondary schools?
a. These are efforts without an integrated university wide “theory of action”
or “logical framework.” (1)
b. There is an emerging “theory of action,” evolving as we embark on these
efforts. (2)
c. There is a clear “theory of action” or strategy guiding these efforts. (3)
Q45 To what extent do you agree with this statement: These collaborations were
designed as rapid prototypes which are being improved as the result of what is
being learned during implementation?
To a great extent (1)
To some extent (2)
Neutral (3)
Not much (4)
Not at all (5)
Q46 Is there a monitoring system of these efforts that is used for improvement of
those efforts?
Yes (1)
No (2)
Q47 Have these efforts been evaluated in any way? (select all that apply)
a. We have collected evidence that has been used to manage and improve
those collaborations. (1)
b. We have conducted formative evaluations of those collaborations. (2)
c. We have evaluated the impact of those collaborations. (3)
d. These collaborations are the basis of applied or academic research carried
out by academics at the university. (4)
F. M. Reimers and F. Marmolejo
39
Q48 How visible is this collaboration within the university?
Highly visible (1)
Visible (2)
Not very visible (3)
Largely unknown (4)
Q49 How visible is this collaboration outside the university?
Highly visible (1)
Visible (2)
Not very visible (3)
Largely unknown (4)
Q50 By what name is the initiative recognized among those who are involved?
Q51 Can we include the name of the university in the list of institutions acknowl-
edged in the methodology section of the report?
Yes (1)
No (2)
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Fernando M.Reimers is the Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice of International Education
and Director of the Global Education Innovation Initiative and of the International Education
Policy Master’s Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. An expert in the eld of
Global Education, his research and teaching focus on understanding how to educate children and
youth, so they can thrive in the twenty-rst century. He is a member of UNESCO’s high-level com-
mission on the Futures of Education.
He has written or edited fortyacademic books, and since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic
steered the Global Education Innovation Initiative to carry out research that can sustain educational
opportunity or contribute to building back better. With his graduate students, he has developed
three curriculum resources aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which are trans-
lated into multiple languages and widely used by schools and school systems around the world.
Francisco Marmolejo is Higher Education President at Qatar Foundation (QF), where he leads
QF’s support and coordination activities to the unique ecosystem of eight prestigious universities
offering in Education City in Doha, Qatar, more than 70 undergraduate and graduate programs to
students from 60 countries. Previously (2012–2020), he worked at the World Bank, where he
served as the Global Higher Education Coordinator, based in Washington, DC., and more recently
as Lead Higher Education Specialist for India and South Asia, based in New Delhi. From 1995 to
2012, he served as founding Executive Director of the Consortium for North American Higher
Education Collaboration, a network of more than 160 universities mainly from Canada, the United
States, and Mexico, based at the University of Arizona, where he also worked as Assistant Vice
President, Afliated Researcher at the Center for the Study of Higher Education, and Afliate
Faculty at the Center for Latin American Studies. Previously, he has been American Council on
Education Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Academic Vice President of the University
of the Americas in Mexico, and International Consultant at OECD in Paris. He has received honor-
ary doctorate degrees from his Alma Mater, the University of San Luis Potosi, and the University
of Guadalajara in Mexico.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate
credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and
indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.
1 Leading Learning During a Time of Crisis. Higher Education Responses to…
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Conference Paper
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The processes of innovation that organizations of the knowledge society need to implement are often oriented towards achieving higher levels of well-being, benefits for society, sustainable development, etc. Higher education institutions maintain a relevant role in this context because of the impact they can generate from establishing linkage projects; these can be established from paradigms such as open innovation and the quadruple helix model. Thus, the training models of higher education institutions must be aligned with the type of human capital that society requires, that is, people with innovation and entrepreneurial competencies that impact on social benefits for the community. The purpose of this document is to present the current status of a doctoral thesis research plan regarding the development of competencies for social entrepreneurship from the linkage in higher education institutions. To comprehensively understand the research problem, a literature review is presented, as well as a mixed-methods study with a sequential, concurrent design to collect qualitative and quantitative data. The results are expected to set guidelines to propose a training model for the development of social entrepreneurship competencies from linking projects. The progress of this research accounts for contributions of the theoretical framework and a first look at the method.
Book
This book provides an analysis of university missions over time and space. It starts out by presenting a governance framework focusing on the demands on universities set by regulators, market actors and scrutinizers. It examines organizational structures, population development, the fundamental tasks of universities, and internal governance structures. Next, the book offers a discussion of the idea and role of universities in society, exploring concepts such as autonomy and universality, and the university as a transformative institute. The next four chapters deal with the development of universities from medieval times, through the Renaissance, towards the research universities in the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States. The following five chapters analyse recent developments of increasing external demands manifested through evaluations, accreditations and rankings, which in turn have had effects on the organization of universities. Topics discussed include markets, managers, globalization, consumer models and competition. The book concludes by a discussion and analysis of the future challenges of universities.
Chapter
In the era of “world class” universities and “best practices” for higher education, an idealized American university is often a global benchmark. The message for many universities worldwide is that they should become more socially embedded, shifting away from a state-shielded historically grounded institution. The chapter contends that the American cultural and political matrix facilitated the earlier rise of American universities, which became attuned to multiple “stakeholders” and the necessity of coping with changing environments thereby emerging as organizational actors. This chapter identifies and discusses three university organizational developments: increased entrepreneurship linked to individual advancement goals; increased individual empowerment linked to ideas about individual rights and human potential; and increased legalization as cultural adaptation to increased entrepreneurship and empowered individuals. These developments intensified the socially embedded character of American universities. The chapter concludes by sketching research directions designed to ascertain the degree to which universities in different national contexts adopt these organizational developments and the mission statements that co-vary with them.