Understanding How the COVID Pandemic Has Changed Students' Perceptions of Themselves and Their School

• In Event: Motivated Students, Motivating Contexts: Building Clarity About the Nature and Mechanisms of Motivational Climate

Abstract

The COVID pandemic has dramatically changed students’ school experiences. Students, teachers, and parents, have done their best to adjust to the constant transitions between no, online, hybrid, and in person school. Whereas the majority of focus in the public media and education literature has been on the effect of COVID on students’ academic outcomes (Kuhfeld et al., 2020), concerns have been growing on the effect the pandemic has had on students’ social emotional wellbeing. Still left out, is how students’ perceptions of their school environment have changed over the same period.

In understanding these multifaceted effects, we were interested in understanding whether (RQ1) there were differences in students’ perceptions of their social emotional learning (SEL) and school culture climate (SCC) between Fall 2019 (pre pandemic) and Fall 2020 (during the pandemic) and (RQ2) whether changes in students’ perceptions of their SEL and SCC between Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 were similar to what we would expect during a “normal” school year.

We use data from a sample of secondary students (N=1,644; 4th through 12th grade) from primarily small public charter schools across the country. The sample is 56% male, 56% African American, 18% Hispanic, and 21% White.

The surveys consisted of self-reported items on a 1-5 Likert scale measured twice a year on the following constructs: Teacher student relationships, sense of belonging, engagement, learning strategies, rigorous expectations, growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-regulation, and social awareness. Table 2 shows the constructs, alpha coefficients, and an example item.

To answer RQ1, we conducted OLS regressions where we used Fall 2019 to predict Fall 2020 controlling for school as well as student-level covariates (gender, race/ethnicity, etc.). We centered students’ survey responses on the mean for their grade of the previous year resulting in a student’s deviation from the average of students in their grade in the previous year. For RQ2, we will draw on propensity score matching and difference and difference models.

Results suggest that students’ perceptions of student-teacher relations differed the most during the pandemic. We found statistically significant differences in students’ reports of teacher-student relationships in Fall 2020 (b = .38, SE = .09, p < .001), self-regulation (b = .23, SE = .05, p < .001), engagement (b =.21, SE = .08, p < .001), and learning strategies (b = .23, SE = .08, p < .001). We have just received the Spring 2021 survey data and analyses for RQ2 are still underway.

Whereas much of the focus outside of academic achievement has been on students’ social emotional well-being, results from this study show that perceptions of teacher-student relationships were most changed during the pandemic. Notably, our findings suggest that teachers have gone above and beyond to ensure that students are doing okay and feel supported. The presentation will also evaluate whether Fall-Spring changes during a pandemic year, mimic Fall-Spring changes we would expect from a “normal” year. We hope that these results will encourage policymakers, schools, and school administrators to continue to measure and consider climate and environmental constructs.

Authors

• Katerina Schenke, Katalyst Methods

• Johanna Leslie, Transforming Education

• Katie H. Buckley, Transforming Education