The Future of Education

The debilitating effect of COVID-19 on education has prompted a global rethink of schooling. Yet, by making resilience—or bouncing back—its sole goal, the pervasive ‘build back better’ discourse (World Bank, 2020; Reimers and Opertti, 2021) has failed to sufficiently focus on the fortification of education systems against future crises. Moreover, efforts to highlight ‘successful’ educational pandemic responses have tended to centre mainstream schooling (see for example Reimers and Opertti, 2021). Against this backdrop, my paper will present qualitative evidence from a special education centre in New Delhi, gathered as part of ongoing doctoral research. In particular, it examines the adaptive innovations, and consequent evolutions, that occurred within the institution in responding to COVID-19 and navigating the challenging transition to virtual learning for students with special needs. Adopting a qualitative phenomenological approach, the research is anchored conceptually by Nassim Taleb’s (2012) notion of antifragility, or adversity-induced growth, to investigate 1) how special education was impacted by COVID-19; and 2) the variables implicated in producing an antifragile organisational response to the pandemic. To this end, primary qualitative data collected through non-participant observation; artefact analysis; and semi-structured interviews with 14 teachers, staff and management, was assessed through thematic analysis. The findings suggest that for all stakeholders, pandemic-induced pressure to manage a more complex role alongside personal challenges elicited an antifragile response, i.e., an upgradation in skill and effort to fulfil their respective roles. Outcomes associated with this response include greater institutional cohesion, operational streamlining, enhanced trust and cooperation between stakeholders, as well as evolved pedagogical toolkits, heightened self-efficacy, and improved digital skills among teaching staff. The research spotlights the potential of adversity to be leveraged as a catalyst for constructive transformation, enabling a departure from entrenched practices and perspectives. Suggesting the need for further investigation into the factors that enable antifragility in educational institutions, it is argued that the significance of this study lies in 1) its novel application of antifragility to education; 2) the foregrounding of a form of education whose experience of the pandemic has remained largely in shadow; and 3) its suggestion of an avenue for imagining post-COVID educational futures that pushes the debate beyond the prevailing but static notion of resilience.