When home turns into quarantine school – new demands on students with special educational needs, their parents and teachers during COVID-19 quarantine

The worldwide school lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic has caused major challenges for the school system. For teachers, parents and students the current situation proves to be extremely challenging. Teachers have had to adapt their instruction to distance learning at short notice (e.g. Reimers et al. 2020). Parents (who might be working from home and supporting their children at the same time or who might have lost their jobs) all of a sudden have had to take on a new pedagogical role (e.g. Wu et al. 2020). Finally, students themselves have faced many challenges: e.g. they do not have their usual workspace, they do not have face-to-face support from their teachers, they might be in difficult situations at home and they cannot interact with their peers as usual (OECD 2020a). Within this situation, there are new specific challenges for students with special educational needs (SEN) who require special attention and individualised support from their teachers. Therefore, educational stakeholders need to develop strategies to minimise the potential risk of ‘losing’ students during ongoing and future school lockdowns on an institutional level (Harris 2020; König, Jäger-Biela, and Glutsch 2020). In this context, the OECD (2020a) highlights the importance of monitoring students’ educational commitment through their ‘attendance, behaviour and learning progress’, reducing challenges that may impede students’ commitment, e.g. by providing supporting resources such as digital devices as well as designing teaching and learning situations individually tailored to the individual needs of students. As several studies are investigating the general situation of educational stakeholders during homeschooling, the special issue will shed light to the inclusive education sector by including the voices of different representatives of inclusive education who are having a diagnosis of SEN themselves or who are concerned with students having SEN in relation to teaching and learning during the pandemic. Against the background of this special situation, opportunities and challenges considering the development and experience of students, parents and teachers in line with the homeschooling situation are to be examined. Additionally, implications and strategies for creating resilient educational systems and schools are to be examined to ensure that no student is left behind due to obstructive institutional conditions (OECD 2020b). In considering the context of the COVID-19 quarantine and the new educational demands, the Special Issue encompasses empirical as well as theoretical papers addressing a wide range of topics dealing with inclusive education during homeschooling. Thus, this Special Issue offers opportunities to reflect and discuss the urgent needs in the context of inclusive education that have arisen during these unprecedented times.