Editorial

Research Resilience in the COVID era

Rajendran Govender

Copyright: © 2022. The Author(s). Licensee: AOSIS.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

In the previous two years, we had to grapple with an unforeseen global COVID-19 pandemic and ensure our business continuity. The pandemic made us rethink a lot of what we thought we knew in the academic research field, while coping with the impact of the pandemic on our lives and health and on our families. Since the cataclysmic effects of the pandemic experience are still with us, it would be remiss not to reflect on its impact on publication in Pythagoras in 2020, 2021 and now in 2022.

Firstly, it has been refreshing and encouraging to have witnessed the growth in the number of submissions to Pythagoras, from our beginner researchers in the field of mathematics education in collaboration with their supervisors to senior research collaborators, which after a rigorous review process have been published in Pythagoras. Congratulations to all the authors, who may rest assured that their publications will help in enhancing meaningful teaching and learning across mathematics classrooms at school and tertiary levels. Secondly, some of the articles published in this issue provide new insights into how to respond to and engage in the new normal brought about by COVID-19. For example, the article ‘Exploring low-tech opportunities for higher education mathematics lecturers in an emergency techno-response pedagogy’ puts forth a conceptual framework for emergency remote teaching of mathematics in higher education environments that could enable academics and students to better prepare for future pandemics that may affect physical access to the classroom.

The contestation of the role of home language in the learning of mathematics is ongoing, and this volume brings to the fore the benefits that accrue when learners’ home languages are taken into account in mathematics teaching and learning. In addition, the article ‘Weathering the storm: Learning strategies that promote mathematical resilience’ illuminates the importance of learners setting aside time to study mathematics successfully, despite the adversities and challenges they are exposed to in their daily lives. It is the distilling and articulation of findings of this kind that may enhance the quality of the teaching and learning of mathematics across schools and higher education institutions and even catapult it into a changing world.

Going forward, it will be interesting to explore the design and execution of online assessment mathematical tasks that probe higher-order thinking and stimulate creative and innovative ways of working.