INSPECT

The two-year-long devastating COVID 19-pandemic has transformed daily practices in Nordic schools and has challenged the schools’ strong tradition around establishing the best conditions for the individual student’s learning, well-being and development in both a Bildung and a lifelong learning perspective. Previous studies show that restrictions and insecurities have negatively affected many students' learning and well-being. Furthermore, COVID 19 has disturbed some of the fundamentals of students’ existence (their worldviews, understanding of themselves, and educational aspirations and plans). Previous studies find great variations in how the consequences have manifested themselves between different groups of students in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and family conditions during the period. This means that the schools are
struggling to ensure the pivotal values of equality. 

Further research is needed. It is difficult to generalize from international studies to Nordic contexts, due to the special Nordic model of education. Across Nordic studies there is limited and contradictory evidence regarding the consequences of the pandemic. This is due to the studies being fragmented and based on different designs. Adding to this, time is a factor that can amplify or mitigate immediate consequences, which means that the
medium to long-term consequences of COVID 19 cannot be easily deduced from the short-term consequences that we have experienced and researched so far. 

The aim of the INSPECT project is to understand the medium to long-term consequences of COVID 19 and to develop knowledge and prepare the Nordic schools to ensure societal security going forward. INSPECT
conducts comparative studies of the varied responses (strategies and approaches) applied in different national, regional, and situational contexts across the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. Furthermore, based on a multidisciplinary, mixed method design, INSPECT investigates the medium and long-term-consequences of COVID 19 as they take form in an interplay between responses and student characteristics. Finally, the project collects systematic knowledge about and conducts a research-based overview of the lessons learned from alternative learning situations that have been applied during the pandemic. The project’s knowledge is brought into practice through various dissemination channels and through co-creating innovation seminars.