Flexible Research Practices in After-School Programs in the Face of a Global Pandemic

• In Event: Research in Informal Learning Environments During COVID-19

Abstract

Since the early 2000s, universities have doubled community partnerships with afterschool organizations in response to family desires for more varied and interest-driven learning opportunities (Akiva et al., 2020). Undergraduate students serving as facilitators for these programs are a critical resource for these university outreach efforts and often are the direct point of contact with the community. Education research on these programs thus far has focused primarily on youth participants rather than the undergraduate facilitators. Community work through university outreach programs has the potential to greatly benefit undergraduate students; however, we need to understand the lived experiences of undergraduate students to develop effective support systems for these undergraduates in their roles as facilitators. This is especially true in recent times as undergraduate students and the afterschool programs they serve navigated immense challenges during the global COVID-19 pandemic. This paper examines the methodology used to understand the lived experiences of undergraduates before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and considers how these findings can be used to inform future research on undergraduate facilitators for afterschool programs.
This study began in January 2019, when we interviewed 13 undergraduate facilitators who supported a literacy-based afterschool program. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to capture their academic backgrounds, experiences as a facilitator, and perceptions of the program they supported. In December 2020, we recruited four additional participants who supported one of five different afterschool outreach programs during the Winter 2020 academic quarter. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to capture the lived experiences targeted in the January 2019 protocol as well as undergraduate experiences during the pandemic. For this study, we examined the recorded interviews, interview protocols from 2019 and 2020, and email correspondences between researchers to understand how our study evolved in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this paper we discuss three areas of contradictions within the activity of conducting this research that led to “challenges and possibilities” (Engeström, 2001, p. 133) for our study as a result of the pandemic. The first was a shift in the positionality of researchers within the programs from coordinators to external researchers which complicated the recruitment process. Secondly, the focus of the data collection shifted from understanding the interactions between youth and facilitators to understanding the role of undergraduates in creating effective virtual learning environments. Thirdly, the emergent coding process revealed richer insights into initial themes from the 2019-2020 study while also uncovering aspects of the undergraduate experience that were exacerbated by the pandemic.
This study highlights the affordances and limitations of conducting research in informal learning environments during a global pandemic. Our findings may be useful for other researchers interested in investigating the role and experiences of undergraduate facilitators in university partnerships with afterschool organizations. Coordinators of these partnerships may also find this study of use in understanding how they can better support their undergraduate facilitators in both in-person and virtual environments.

Authors

• Alexandria Muller, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Devon Michaela Christman, University of California - Santa Barbara