Our most popular education articles of 2022 explore how to help students feel connected to each other and cultivate character strengths like curiosity and humility, amid the many stressors and pressures that young people are facing today. They also offer support for educators’ and school leaders’ well-being, and reflect on hopes for transformative change in education.
If you are looking for specific activities to support your students’ and colleagues’ social and emotional well-being in 2023, visit our Greater Good in Education website, featuring free research-based practices, lessons, and strategies for cultivating kinder, happier, and more equitable classrooms and schools. For a deeper dive into the science behind social-emotional learning, mindfulness, and ethical development, consider our suite of self-paced online courses for educational professionals, including our capstone course, Teaching and Learning for the Greater Good. Or join one of our new communities of practice that focus on educator well-being, offering space for rest, reflection, togetherness, and hope—and some science, too!
Here are the 12 best education articles of 2022, based on a composite ranking of page and editors’ picks.
According to students themselves, they are yearning for opportunities to connect with friends and peers as they head back to school
Several articles directly or indirectly related to the pandemic and its effects made the top-20 list.1 article, "Pandemic Parent Survey Finds Perverse Pattern: Students Are More Likely to Be Attending School in Person Where COVID Is Spreading More Rapidly," by Michael B.West reported on what the article called "a troubling pattern: students are most likely to be attending school fully in person in school districts where the virus is spreading most rapidly." The article explained, "To be clear, this pattern does not constitute evidence that greater use of in-person instruction has contributed to the spread of the virus across the United States.It is equally plausible that counties where in-person schooling is most common are places where there are fewer measures and practises in the wider community designed to mitigate COVID spread."Other articles whose findings related to the pandemic or had implications for education amid or after the pandemic included "A Test for the Test-Makers," "The Shrinking School Week," "The COVID-19 Pandemic Is a Lousy Natural Experiment for Studying the Effects of Online Learning," "The Politics of Closing Schools," "Addressing Significant Learning Loss in Mathematics During COVID-19 and Beyond," and "Move to Trash: Five pandemic-era education practises that deserve to be dumped in the dustbin."Articles about race-related education issues also did well with readers."Critical Race Theory Collides with the Law," "Teaching About Slavery," "Ethnic Studies in California," and "Segregation and Racial Gaps in Special Education" all dealt with those topics.Perhaps the conflicts over pandemic policies and critical race theory helped provide a push for school choice.Choice—whether in the form of vouchers, scholarships, or charter schools—was the subject of several other articles that made the top 20 list, including "School Choice Advances in the States," "School Choice and the "Truly Disadvantaged," "What’s Next in New Orleans," and "Betsy DeVos and the Future of Education Reform."We hope for our readers that the year ahead is one of good health and continued learning.We look forward to a time when pandemic-related articles no longer dominate our list.
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