Is Summer Learning Loss (SLL) a Social Problem? How SLL Lacks “Typification” and Inability to Overcome Powerful Social Constructions

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: Division L Section 7 Poster Session

Abstract

Because Summer Learning Loss (SLL) effects are cumulative not acute, advocates struggle to make claims that frame SLL as a self-contained social problem. Based on a qualitative study of mothers whose children experienced a 10-12 week summer vacation, findings provide explanations for why SLL rarely receives earnest attention from influential policymakers. First, mothers’ perceptions of summer out of school time are heavily influenced by powerful social constructions: childhood, motherhood and romanticism of summer itself. Second, using Best’s (1995) interpretation of constructionism, the researcher steers the issue of SLL away an independent social problem and instead frames it as a social issue with effects that more accurately resemble social problems.

Author

• Marcy Milhomme, The Pennsylvania State University