This open access book discusses how cultural literacy can be taught and learned through creative practices. It approaches cultural literacy as a dialogic social process based on learning and gaining knowledge through emphatic, tolerant, and inclusive interaction. The book focuses on meaning-making in children and young people's visual and multimodal artefacts created by students aged 5-15 as an outcome of the Cultural Literacy Learning Programme implemented in schools in Cyprus, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, and the UK. The lessons in the program address different social and cultural themes, ranging from one's cultural attachments to being part of a community and engaging more broadly in society. The artefacts are explored through data-driven content analysis and self-reflexive and collaborative interpretation and discussed through multimodality and a sociocultural approach to children's visual expression. This interdisciplinary volume draws on cultural studies, communication studies, art education, and educational sciences. Tuuli Lähdesmäki is an associate professor at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Jūratė Baranova was a professor at the Department of Continental Philosophy and Religious Studies, Vilnius University, Lithuania. Susanne C. Ylönen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Aino-Kaisa Koistinen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Katja Mäkinen is a senior researcher at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Vaiva Juškiene is a junior researcher at the Institute of Educational Sciences, Vilnius University, Lithuania. Irena Zaleskienė is a senior researcher at the Institute of Educational Sciences, Vilnius University, Lithuania.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused institutions to rethink traditional practices and consider new ways of learning and approaching students, faculty, and staff. Though not always embraced in the past, colleges and universities turned to online education in order to keep students enrolled as the health of students had to be prioritized. For institutions that may not have had health services on campus, such as community colleges, these needs called for more planning and options for referral of services. Education Reform in the Aftermath of the COVID-19 Pandemic educates individuals regarding the impact of COVID-19 on higher education institutions internally and externally and considers the lessons learned as well as what could be next. The book also presents solutions to the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic wrought on universities and colleges and looks toward using those solutions for future applications. Covering a range of topics such as student engagement, enrollment, and virtual spaces, it is an ideal resource for administrators, educators, mental health professionals, faculty, universities, and students.

COVID-19: Cultural Change and Institutional Adaptations provides critical insights into the impact of the pandemic on the relationship between cultures and institutions. The scholarship presented in this volume examines such important issues as the impact on health-care workers, changes in the interaction order, linguistic access, social stigma, policing, new understandings of social class, and the role of misinformation. Brought together, these insights can help us better understand both the micro- and macrochanges that have been brought about by the pandemic. Drawing on the expertise of scholars from around the world, the work presented here represents a remarkable diversity and quality of impassioned scholarship on the impact of COVID-19 and is a timely and critical advance in knowledge related to the pandemic.

This collection explores the changing meaning and enactments of care in teacher education in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, from preservice teachers and teacher candidates to in-service teachers and education faculty. Over fifty international teacher educators explore the complicated concept of care in different content areas, learning contexts, and communities of learners, using different conceptual frameworks and methodological orientations. Throughout, this book situates research and reflection at the nexus of teacher education, care, and COVID-19 in order to reconstruct care in post-pandemic teacher education. Timely and incisive, this collection raises important questions and offers relevant examinations to consider how post-pandemic teacher education as a field will move forward in preparing and caring for those who will, in turn, care for their future students. The book is essential reading for teacher educators, scholars, and anyone interested in the notion of care in education.

The American Psychological Association (2020) reported that some 81% of teenage children (13 to 17 years-of-age) were negatively impacted in a range of ways due to school closures in connection with COVID-19, including 47% who indicated that they “didn’t learn as much as they did in previous years” (para. 21). That perhaps many more than 47% of teenage children in the United States did not learn as much as they did in previous years was documented in the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report which found that “the national average score declines in mathematics for fourth- and eighth-graders were the largest ever recorded in that subject” (Wilburn & Elias, 2022, para. 1). The National Center for Educational Statistics Commissioner commented somewhat hyperbolically that the results showed that “every student was vulnerable to the pandemic’s disruptions” (Wilburn & Elias, 2022, para. 5) and called for a single-minded emphasis on ways to assist students to recover from their trauma and accelerate their learning. Wilburn and Elias (2022) joined those who have pointed out that the learning declines associated with COVID-19 did not occur equitably. The likelihood of a single-minded policy response to change the system and address the achievement gaps exposed by the range of responses to COVID-19 seems small. On the one hand, doubting the sustainability of innovative responses, education historian Larry Cuban referenced the dominant stability of schooling which, if anything, “produces this huge public and professional need to resume schooling as it was” (Young, 2022, para. 18). On the other hand, diverse political agendas will diffuse concerted efforts. Grossman et al. (2021) discussed a pertinent example from Michigan where “public health data, partisanship, and collective bargaining” (p. 637) each played a role in determining school reopening decisions. On this same issue of school reopening, there is credible evidence from Massachusetts that the much maligned and politically explosive masking policies implemented in some schools may have saved lives (Cowger et al., 2022). Roy (2020) asserted that “historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next” (para. 48). The chapters in this volume attest to the willingness of individuals to collaborate in stepping through that portal.

This is the first handbook devoted entirely to leisure theory, charting the history and philosophy of leisure, theories in religion and culture, and rational theories of leisure in the Western philosophical tradition, as well as a range of socio-cultural theories from thinkers such as Adorno, Bauman, Weber and Marx. Drawing on contributions from experts in leisure studies from around the world, the four sections cover: traditional theories of leisure; rational theories of leisure; structural theories of leisure; and post-structural theories of leisure. The Palgrave Handbook of Leisure Theory is essential reading for students and scholars working in leisure studies, social theory as well as those working on the problem of leisure in the wider humanities and social sciences.