"The Best Is Getting Out of the Classroom": Expanded Learning Opportunities During COVID

• In Event: Informal Learning Is Not Canceled: Research and Program Implementation During a Global Pandemic

Abstract

Objectives & Theoretical Framework : Children from underserved communities have unequal access to expanded learning opportunities beyond the school day (Saunders et al., 2017), a gap that is most likely widening even more during Covid19. Expanded learning opportunities during the school day that offer hands-on, and engaging student-centered learning may also be jeopardized by the current pandemic. In this paper, we report on an ongoing partnership with a community organization (CO), that offers enrichment activities to schools, afterschool family activities, and summer programming. All activities came to a halt in the middle of March 2020, due to Covid19. Some activities were concluded through virtual meetings. The organization also took it upon itself to pursue a survey of its participating schools to find out how they could best serve them in the fall, when schools are supposed to reopen with strict distancing measures in place. Given ongoing interest in the activities by the teachers, the instructors are now adapting their educational activities in ways they can then be delivered in a hybrid fashion (i.e., EducKits that are sent out weekly to the classrooms, live animations via interactive whiteboard activities, registered video clips, and a one-time “live” visit in the classroom to build relationships). The CO is currently adapting their activities in science, cooking, movie making, radio and chess. They also hope to offer the afterschool activities (robotics, cooking and arts) in their space more often than in the past, to accommodate smaller groups yet equal numbers of participants, given distancing measures. Grounding our work at the intersection of informal and formal science education (Avraamidou & Roth, 2016), we document the manner the adapted activities support on-going collaborations between the organization and schools in ways supportive of expansive learning for the students, teachers and instructors (Adams et al., 2012).

Method: We rely on a video-ethnography of the program activities, next to interviews of instructors, teachers and a subset of students, methods that will also be adapted in ways to ensure that we can document student engagement in the activities, the role of tools and resources that are made available through the partnership, and the manner these activities expand learning in and through supportive relations.

Results & Scientific Significance: We will compare the data collected in the fall with data from the past two years, to address the implications of the health crisis on education. As the director of the program summarized in an informal conversation, “it will be a crazy year and an year far apart from what our community organization stands for and aims to do.”At the same time, we note the forming of deeper relations between schools and the CO, as they work together to address the current situation. The study responds well to the meeting theme Accepting Educational Responsibility, as the involved teachers and instructors are deeply committed to offer their students quality education. They care about equity and are working together as partners to strategically address complex social and educational problems, still further exacerbated by the pandemic.

Authors

• Jrene Rahm, University of Montreal

• Ferdous Touioui

• Laurent Fahrni, Université de Fribourg