As the Covid-19 pandemic has progressed, mounting evidence has highlighted its marked impact on children and young people’s mental health. Now that lockdowns are gradually easing across the UK and classrooms are re-opening, young people are having to adapt once again.
Even if they are pleased to be back at school, they may have new worries and anxieties, or still find challenges in navigating the change to their ways of living and studying over the past year.
At this time of readjustment, how can families and schools support young people’s social and emotional wellbeing, to smooth the transition and help them with the continued uncertainties brought by the pandemic? We’ve asked our experts to share their insights and take your questions.
Join them to put your questions to our panellists, Dr Lisa Fridkin and Dr Katie Quy.
Speakers
Dr Lisa Fridkin
Lecturer (Teaching) at UCL Institute of Education (IOE)
Lisa is a developmental psychologist and Lecturer in the Thomas Coram Research Unit in the IOE's Social Research Institute. Her primary research interests investigate the relationship between motivation and learning, and also emotional wellbeing using mixed methods. Her current projects explore the effects of the pandemic and switch to online learning on these areas in undergraduate learners, and the impact of Covid 19 on the social and emotional wellbeing of young children.
Dr Katie Quy
Lecturer in Psychology at UCL Institute of Education (IOE)
Katie Quy is a lecturer in Psychology in the Thomas Coram Research Unit in the IOE’s Social Research Institute. Her research combines quantitative and qualitative methodologies to explore coping and social and emotional wellbeing in children and young people.
Chair: Dr Sandra Leaton Gray
Associate Professor of Education at UCL Institute of Education (IOE)
Sandra is an applied sociology of education specialist and has published extensively on issues of education professionalism, professional training, education policy, the knowledge economy, curriculum, biometrics and children, artificial intelligence in education and conceptions of time in education.
She has served as an education consultant and advisor to national and international organisations including the UK Government, the European Commission, the International Baccalaureate Organisation and the UK's Royal Colleges of Medicine. Sandy is currently directing the My Life Online research project, investigating young people and their social media algorithms.
Prior to joining the IOE, she held posts at the Universities of East Anglia and Cambridge. Her recent publications include Invisibly blighted: the digital erosion of childhood (2017, with Andy Phippen) and Curriculum Reform in the European Schools: Towards a 21st Century Vision (2018, with David Scott and Peeter Mehisto).