Organizing to Support Learning Pods Across Diverse Family Contexts

• In Event: Community Organizing During the Pandemic: Partnerships With Leaders, Teachers, and Families

Abstract

Objectives
Pandemic learning pods are small groupings of children for socialization, education, and play. Pods have the potential to be an innovative solution for families faced with remote learning in the COVID era, but are also a potentially problematic practice perpetuating educational inequities. In this project, we document a working group formed through a partnership between a university and local community schools and nonprofits. This arrangement afforded the opportunity to explore how pods create specific contexts for diverse communities to come together to meet multiple needs.

Theoretical Framework
As pods are community-based endeavors, we adopt a sociocultural approach to this study (Nasir & Hand, 2006). This approach allows us to attend to power dynamics and manifestations within and across pods in differing communities; as well as critically examine podding motivations, goals, and designs. Recognizing that communities have different resources, we take a funds of knowledge perspective (Moll et.al, 1992) in framing our exploration. This approach allows us to look at the resources and wealth that differing communities bring and use for shared goals.

Method
We used an embedded case study design at the group (pod) and community to explore multiple narratives and counter narratives in the ways and means by which families across communities with diverse cultural and socio-economic contexts organized themselves into learning pods.

Data
Data sources included semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 16 families across three communities: Citrus, a socio-economically diverse community of families of children with exceptional needs; Las Nubes, a primarily working-class Spanish-English bilingual Latinx community; and Summerville, an affluent, predominantly white, community.

Findings
Common motivations for podding among families across all three communities included concerns about children’s socialization and gap increases in learning and development. These concerns were addressed differently based on power manifestations across families.

• Citrus Families - Motivation for podding stemmed from behavioral needs and accommodations that preemptively made remote instruction untenable for some children. Podding was seen as a viable solution for mitigating isolation, particularly for medically fragile children.

• Las Nubes Families - Motivation for podding among Las Nubes families centered on its similarity to collective forms of familial and community organizing, a tradition in which Las Nubes families are historically steeped in. Historically marginalized and primarily working class, Las Nubes families viewed podding as an opportunity to secure collective support for their children’s academic, social, and emotional development and growth.

• Summerville Families - A primary motivation for Summerville families was ensuring supervision, accountability, and fidelity of implementation of their school districts’ remote learning program. For many of these families, podding was seen as affording a much needed reprieve, so that they could attend to other details of familial life—an affordance they sought by using disposable income to secure professional teachers or tutors as pod leaders.

Scholarly significance
Communities were found to leverage multiple resources—both financial and community-based—in diverse ways. These findings hold implications for the creation of pods, individually and at scale, in formal and informal COVID-era learning across families, communities, and schools.  

Authors

• Yenda Prado, University of California - Irvine

• Doron Zinger, University of California - Irvine

• June Ahn, University of California, Irvine

• Taffeta Wood, University of California - Irvine