Helping Students to Cope with the Mental Health Challenges of COVID-19

Hint: Properly Designed Small-Group Instruction Can Meet Students’ Need for Interpersonal Support and Enhance Their Engagement in Online Learning

In addition to all the other challenges created by COVID-19, children and adolescents are suffering from widespread school closures, which has relegated students to learning at home in physical isolation from one another. A recent review of 63 studies involving 51,576 students found that the social distancing and isolation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic was linked to higher levels of stress, fear, boredom, loneliness, anxiety, depression, and related mental health problems. This extended social isolation can have adverse effects on children’s long-term mental health, and negative effects can develop months or years after social isolation.

With regards to academics, estimates are that students could lose between 0.3 and 0.9 years of education due to school closures during the pandemic, and these estimates become more severe the longer that the pandemic continues. In addition, close to 7 million students could drop out of school. Students from low-income and underrepresented families are particularly vulnerable, and there is a widening gulf across economic and social classes.

Mitigating Student Stress and Mental Health Problems
If social isolation is a significant source of stress for children and adolescents, then positive social contact can be an important protective factor. Online learning that involves interaction with a variety of peers in activities such as sharing knowledge and collaboratively solving problems can boost student engagement. In addition, student-centered forms of instruction (i.e., cooperative or peer learning), in which students teach and learn with one another in small groups, can have significant positive effects on student engagement and academic achievement as compared to typical whole-class instruction or individual seatwork. In addition, the positive social interactions during peer learning can create reductions in stress, improvements in student mental health, and elevated levels of prosocial behavior and social-emotional skill development. Positive peer interactions have also been linked to elevated levels of self-esteem and well-being among both children and adolescents.

Implementing Peer Learning
Peer learning lessons are engaging because they give each student a unique role in a small group of peers, with the success of the group depending on each member’s contributions. The peer expectations associated with that unique role can motivate students to be an active participant in their learning. For example, in a jigsaw lesson, each student becomes an expert in their own portion of the lesson content and then teaches other students in their group.

In such lessons, each student can be held accountable for their specific role, while at the same time each student contributes to the success of other students in the group. Moreover, the lesson can fulfill students’ need for social interaction while they learn. This lesson structure can be a solution to the limited time that teachers can spend with each student in an online environment – if the teacher cannot provide all the support required for student learners, then a well-designed small-group lesson enables peers to step up and fill the gap.

The quality of small-group lessons can be enhanced through the implementation of specific strategies aimed at increasing student motivation to collaborate. For example, teachers may require a single deliverable for a group (goal interdependence) and may offer a reward to the group if everyone achieves above a certain threshold on an end-of-unit quiz or test (reward interdependence). The lesson plan may require that each member of the group be issued different materials that they must share in order to complete the lesson (resource interdependence), each member of the team may have a different role to play (e.g., reader, note-taker), or students may take turns performing an activity (role interdependence). Each group member may have a unique task that must be completed sequentially, like an assembly line, in order for the lesson to be completed successfully (task interdependence). These strategies can be layered upon one another in a single lesson, increasing the incentive for students to collaborate.

Peer learning specifies that students are given opportunities for self-disclosure to support the development of positive relationships, and ensures that there are opportunities for all students to participate and contribute by taking turns, with the order often specified at random. Peer learning also calls for explicit coaching in collaborative skills, where the teacher (a) explicitly scaffolds positive small-group behavior, and (b) monitors student interactions to identify and reward examples of such behavior. Peer learning should include reflection and discussion of group performance after the lesson is completed, in which the group discusses what they did well, sets targets for improvement in the future, and provides one another with positive reinforcement for behavior that contributed to group success.

This approach is in contrast to a more typical small-group lesson or breakout room, where students are not given specific roles or tasks, but only a shared deliverable (or sometimes just a vague directive, such as “talk about it” or “help one another”). There is little incentive for students to collaborate, and no accountability if students do not engage. There is also no scaffolding of collaborative social skills, and no opportunity to reflect on group performance. In such a lesson, there can be disagreement or conflict over the group’s activities, or a high degree of disengagement. Attempts at social dominance can lead to microaggressions against less assertive students. If such things are occurring in a small group, it is likely that incorporating design features from peer learning can address the situation.

Enhancing Student Mental Health While Boosting Achievement
Research on peer learning suggests that the mental health (and academic) problems experienced by children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic can be mitigated through a series of positive learning experiences with peers that are designed to enhance peer relations and promote engagement. These learning experiences, designed using the framework of peer learning, can reflect local learning standards and content requirements, and can be implemented throughout the school day at any grade level. Thus, the on-going social isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic argues for an increased emphasis on peer learning as a school-wide prevention program that can enhance social-emotional, behavioral, academic, and mental health outcomes for students of all ages.