The COVID-19 crisis as a collective biographical disjuncture: Understanding the pandemic as a learning experience

Abstract

This paper examines the COVID-19 pandemic as a disorienting social experience and as an opportunity to engage in learning processes that may critically examine the dysfunctional assumptions that have consequentially emerged from it. The first part of the paper based on the theoretical perspectives of Peter Jarvis develops a framework for the definition of a social experience as a collective biographical disjuncture. Based on that definition, the paper exposes the assumptions that have been challenged during the pandemic era in the areas of social interaction, education, and employment. Finally, the paper argues that critical learning may provide to adults with the necessary cognitive "antibodies" to overcome the side-effects of the pandemic in our social life in the postpandemic period.