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RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: Governments across the world were forced to impose social distancing and lockdown measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, caused by coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that emerged in December 2019. Following the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic, the disruptions, including restrictive measures such as school closures had severe impacts on the physical, emotional and mental health of all people, especially children with special needs. There was also scant data, particularly in low-to-middle-income countries. Existing literature stems mostly from western countries, thus the need to perform a comprehensive review on this topic. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The primary objective of the systematic review is to understand the impact of COVID-19 and restrictive measures such as school closures on the educational outcomes and physical and mental health of school-going children with special needs. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: This systematic review used the PRISMA 2020 checklist where four databases and grey literature were searched for full text articles, peer reviewed publications in the English language that were published during January 2019–December 2021. RESEARCH RESULTS: The literature search identified 1294 publications, of which 25 key papers were selected. These studies investigate the impact on children with special needs across the globe, with a majority of papers from Europe. We found that COVID-19 and the digitalization of schooling had severe impacts on the physical and mental health of children with special needs and their parents/caregivers. CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND APPLICABLE VALUE OF RESEARCH: These studies highlight the need for an inclusive school environment to ensure that the learning outcomes for children everywhere are achieved. Further, a hybrid model that includes classroom learning with novel inventive methods would be beneficial for children with special needs.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the hybridization dynamics of the Third sector at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. The progressive contamination between the State, market, family and Third sector spheres has long been subject of interest of the scholars. This paper aim at analysing these dynamics through the case study of Fondazione Banco Alimentare (Italian Food Bank Foundation). The case helps in investigating the impact of the pandemic on the role, logics and actors that make up the Third sector (both organizations and people) and its relation with the other subsystems. The empirical analysis shows that the pandemic and its consequences has enhanced the role of Fondazione Banco Alimentare, thanks to its relevance during the food emergency that also increased its visibility in the media. There are more institutional and non-institutional donors, more beneficiaries and help requests that resulted also in an accelerated professionalization and training of volunteers and employers. In conclusion, the Italian Food Bank and its network dealt with processes of digitalization, institutionalization and professionalization. These transformations resulted in a new positioning of the organization in the public sphere and redefined its relationship between local, national and European institutions.

The COVID-19 crisis had a huge impact on education and became the subject of many scientific studies. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the opinions of professors and students on the quality of teaching and satisfaction with e-learning during the COVID-19 crisis. The aim of the research is to answer the question to what extent professors and students are satisfied with the quality of e-learning in higher education institutions, as well as their expectations in the future. The research was created on the research platform 1KA and conducted in the period from November 12, 2021 to February 12, 2022 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A survey questionnaire was used as a research instrument, which was sent to 192 addresses, 101 publics and 91 private faculties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and included 132 professors and 202 students. The results of the research showed that the quality of teaching is positively influenced by the satisfaction and level of usefulness of the tools used among professors, but also among students. The results also confirmed that more work experience leads to lower e-learning expectations in the future. The paper presents empirical research that was conducted on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina about the impact of COVID-19 on the quality of e-learning. The scientific contribution of the paper is reflected in the fact that it can be used in research related to the impact of crises on teaching in higher education institutions, as well as potential future emergency situations of crisis and uncertainty that result in new models of teaching that combine classroom and e-teaching.

This paper attempts to show that the surge of a world pandemic known as COVID-19 has allowed the local languages of Cameroon to supplant the official languages, English and French in their daily use to fight against the pandemic or to prevent the population from the threat. To reach the people at the grassroots, local languages have been used as the main channel. The pandemic is therefore looked at as a contributor to the dynamics of small languages, mainly in Cameroon, favouring their greater use for better communication and sensitisation. Relying on the community-based approach, triggered by personal observation and community involvement, the paper demonstrates that COVID-19 has allowed the enrichment of the local languages or national languages of Cameroon with new words, and has vivified their use in an environment where they are dominated by some world killer languages like English and French. The paper concludes that the dynamics of the local languages would also benefit a lot from an interconnectedness among language committees and health care specialists who will develop entangled discourses in the local languages to reach a larger majority of peoples at the grassroots, and by doing so, creating more new words that will perpetuate the lexical dynamics of the involved languages.

The majority of recent research studies show the emotional state of language learners at the onset of the Covid-19 . Although the language students themselves identified issues limiting their learning, such as lack of interaction, lack of motivation and feedback, isolation, problems with the Internet, language teachers have admitted their concerns about students learning and confessed to being flexible, tolerant, and more humane. Today, there is a need to follow up on those student issues regarding their language learning beyond the Spring of 2020. This paper sheds light on the evolution of life, emotions, and wellbeing of the students, and their language learning beyond the rapid transition in Spring 2020 from forced unplanned teaching to the planned teaching during the pandemic of Fall 2020 and Spring 2021. This study explores the perceptions of 68 foreign language students in an American context through a survey. The results report on college language students’ needs, their emotions and wellbeing, and their recommendations to administrators based on their needs and perceptions.

In Algeria, adopting e-teaching at the tertiary level could be quite challenging especially in the EFL context. In Fact, English courses in the different specialties - except English departments had been delivered exclusively online during both the first and second wave of the pandemic. This paper aimed to shed light on the efficiency of the online English courses from three angles: a. identifying the obstacles faced by the EFL teachers in course delivery, b. analyzing the students’ involvement, c. measuring the teaching achievement. In order to collect data, an online questionnaire was destined to 42 EFL teachers in Algeria. Results revealed that: first, the principal hurdles that EFL teachers encountered in course delivery refer to the lack of ICT training, internet quality, and the lack of technological tools. Second, despite the different strategies employed by our EFL teachers such as syllabus adaptation, online platforms, and both synchronous and asynchronous methods, students displayed less involvement and interest than expected. Finally, many EFL teachers couldn’t reach their teaching goals. The findings imply that more consideration should be given to our EFL teachers in terms of ICT training and digital resources for better courses delivery. Besides, teachers should find more adequate strategies to foster students’ motivation for successful e-learning applications.