Creative Destruction in School Education during COVID-19

Abstract

Lockdown measures and school closures due to coronavirus forced governments, schools, and teachers to rapidly find new ways to ensure learning continuity. Based on Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction, we argue that COVID-19 was a powerful and accelerating force for innovation in schools. Through the analysis of in-depth interviews with school principals in Argentina, we explore and discuss the consequences of COVID-19 on pedagogy and school institutions, particularly the relationship between socioeconomic conditions and possibilities of innovation in education. Our findings suggest that in an eight-month period, private, high socioeconomic composition schools, which hold large amounts of financial resources and broad decision-making margins, developed distinct organizational methodologies that disrupted school’s time, space, and order. These methodologies, in turn, allowed these institutions to thoroughly sustain the educational process of their students and to provide more efficient learning opportunities. We suggest possibilities of incorporation of these experiences in the future when schools reopen.