COVID-19 and Developing a Critical Sense of "Normalcy"

• In Event: (Re)Conceptualizing Education Grounded in Student Experiences and Perspectives

Abstract

This paper draws on data (field notes, interviews, and artifacts) from a participatory action research (PAR) study conducted by the author and the classroom community members (children, teachers, and caregivers) of a multi-lingual, multi-age (6-8-year-old), “inclusive” classroom, the “New School,” in France over the course of the 2019 – 2020 school year. The participants of this study worked together to explore what it would look like to take a CDS informed approach to “inclusive” early childhood education. This paper describes how the classroom community navigated the COVID-19 pandemic, and how this disruption impacted their ideas about what it would mean to create a CDS informed classroom community.

Author

• Nicole Eilers, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill