Editorial: Systemic Perspectives on New Alignments During COVID-19: Digital Challenges and Opportunities

This overview of the articles presented in this issue considers the digital challenges and opportunities of the systemic perspectives on new alignments resulting from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. New challenges and opportunities were addressed by the 13 working groups of EDUsummIT2019 prior to the pandemic. However, the evidence and analyses presented in this issue have built on those originally identified perspectives by reviewing recent (2020/2021) research, development and practice across many educational sectors and contexts. We have shown that the status quo in the majority of education systems across the world has been thrown out of kilter. This has resulted in new alignments needing to be made to take account of the enforced remote learning when schools have been closed and blended learning has become widely practised even at school level. The most prominent of these have been caused by changes in digital equity which consequently imposes new challenges to policy makers, teachers and learners. This special issue stimulates reflection in and on practice as well as help problematizing new research challenges.