Transformative University-Community Partnerships Facilitating Resilience Processes in Vulnerable Schools During COVID-19 in Spain (Poster 11)

• In Event: University-Community Engagement as a Strategy for Dismantling Racial Injustice and Co-Constructing Educational Possibilities

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to describe, through two case studies, how long term collaboration between university and community have helped the emergence of coping strategies for difficulties generated by the COVID-19 pandemic in schools categorized as “highly vulnerable” in Spain, mainly serving children from Roma families.

The university-community partnerships where our action research takes place could be inscribed in a tradition of Social Design Experiments (Gutiérrez, 2018) where research, social intervention and teaching interlace within the same activity. Their aim is to address learning in meaningful communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) that enhance the engagement of all participants in an identity group, fostering transformation in all of them. These participatory designs also challenge dominant views on educational and psychological processes, offering a critical view of learning and development, where traditionally non-represented "others", together with their cultural knowledge bring their own voices into the arena. It is through the active participation of people socialized in different “hybrid activity scenarios” (meaning, cultures, generations, nationalities, gender, social class, etc.) in a single interactive space, where these individuals generate shared motives and goals, that a dynamic of dialogue is generated among the different “knowledge systems” involved, potentially resulting in bidirectional social transformations. For this to happen a prerequisite is the possibility of emotional and empathic connection with “the other”, provided by tangible interpersonal interaction, (Author, 2022). With this, we challenge the idea of academic knowledge transforming educational settings and reinforce the idea of bidirectional collaboration and nourishing.

Within this framework, we focus our gaze on the COVID-19 challenges period, the difficulties that emerged around it in our university-community partnerships as part of UC Links consortium in Barcelona and Seville (Spain), and the schools involved in them. Our analytical strategy was a qualitative content analysis of ethnographic material and in-depth interviews with different educational agents and community members using a deductive–inductive nature supported with Atlas-ti software.

Our results show that the innovative educational strategies tested by schools in the periods prior to the pandemic facilitated the generation of specific strategies for addressing problems arising from the pandemic. We found three key elements: the personalization of teaching, the meaningful use of digital tools, and the notable role of community networking as fundamental strategies to move forward after the crisis (Author, 2023).

The results of our study relate to the idea of “Community Socio-Educational Resilience” defined by Iglesias et al (2022) as “the involvement of different social, cultural and educational agents in the design and implementation of creative-transformative educational responses to situations of adversity and uncertainty” (p.2). The schools analyzed played a fundamental role in vulnerable social environments providing affective security as they care for the built relationships; they legitimized cultural differences through practices that link the community world to the school world; and they included students and their families within their institutional framework and connected them to a social network.

These strategies contributed to cushioning the increased racial and social inequality exacerbated by the pandemic.

Authors

• Beatriz Macias Gomez-Estern, Universidad Pablo de Olavide

• Jose Luis Lalueza, Autonomous University of Barcelona

• Virginia Martínez-Lozano, University Pablo de Olavide

• Ibis Álvarez-Valdivia, Autonomous University of Barcelona