Youth Participatory Action Research as a Window Into Student Experiences of School Climate During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Student and Educator School Climate Perceptions: Dynamics and Correlates

Abstract

School climate drastically changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the shift to virtual learning. This change exacerbated issues of educational inequity, with Latinx and low-income students less active in their online classes than their white and higher-income peers. In order to understand how students were experiencing school climate during the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted a youth-participatory action research (YPAR) project with an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse middle school. Drawing upon transcripts from three months of project meetings, we highlight which school climate issues were of importance to middle school students during this unprecedented time and how students wanted to improve these issues. Our results provide insight into the school climate experiences of diverse students during virtual instruction.

Author

• Jennifer R Renick, University of California - Irvine