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This special issue focuses on the experiences of educators and students returning to the classroom post-lockdown. We have included contributions from lecturers, students and academics to capture a diverse range of voices. The work was a product of our January 2022 conference, Transitions, wellbeing and mental health: Education after lockdown

It is important to mark lockdown as a significant transition which educators and students experienced. In line with multiple and multi-dimensional transitions theory (Jindal-Snape, 2012), we view transitions as multiple and multi-dimensional as well as linear and sequential. We all, to varying degrees, experienced a range of social, cultural and psychological transitions during the first and subsequent national lockdowns. Educators and students were required to adapt quickly to new ways of learning and reduced social contact, and many experienced ongoing anxieties about the global pandemic.

Normative transitions were disrupted and therefore events which are usually fixed in the academic calendar to signify a person’s achievement (examinations, graduations, leaving assemblies and proms) did not take place. Within this context of ongoing uncertainty, returning to the classroom was never going to be easy for some.

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