A worldwide review of the impact of COVID-19 disruptions on learner development and resilience

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated school closures and movement restrictions that disrupted holistic development and adaptive  coping in learners worldwide. Adaptive coping is also referred to as resilience. Holistic development covers the biophysiological,  psychological, social, spiritual and educational domains of child development. Several researchers have explored the impact of  developmental risks caused by school closures and movement restrictions on learner development. With this article we aim to present a  synthesis of these reviewed papers. We reviewed 81 peer-reviewed papers that were published globally from 2020 to 2023. The focus of  these papers was on biophysical, psychological, social, religious and academic development in learners. We did not develop a priori  themes to guide us; instead, themes emerged from the articles that were reviewed. The findings show that although the lockdown  restrictions were aimed at preventing the spread of the virus and saving lives, the imposed restrictions affected the development of  learners in biophysiological, psychological, social, educational and religious domains. Furthermore, the findings show that the impact of  the lockdown necessitated multisystemic interventions on different levels to enable learners to overcome backlogs and promote  resilience.