In an ever-changing world, it is difficult to predict the future. A significant proportion of children entering school today will eventually engage in jobs that do not even exist today. School and education must equip future generations with knowledge, skills and abilities which may not even be known today. To meet this goal, the use of digital technologies in class, the replacement of frontal teaching with progressive methods and the emergence of school-based development of new areas of knowledge and skills have become increasingly common in various school systems around the world. Then at the beginning of 2020 we threw all this out of the window, as a whole new era began: the pandemic posed an unprecedented challenge to every single participant in education at every level. In an attempt to respond to the new situation, stakeholders attempted to adapt the already existing methods and tools they used in a primarily face-to-face environment to the online interface with more-or-less success. The changed environment of communication, learning and social relations has raised a number of new questions for educational researchers and provided a new conceptual framework for the main theme of the conference defined two years ago, in the spring of 2019. The aim of the 21st National Conference on Educational Sciences is to provide a platform for the presentation of and comprehensive introduction to scientific results achieved within educational sciences in their original, broadly conceived sense as well as on the frontiers of the field. Tomorrow’s effective education is inconceivable without a stronger emphasis on the practical integration of research results.