Four in the Core: How Instructional Materials Support Educator-Family-Student Partnerships and Student Learning

• In Event: Families at the Center of Learning

Abstract

For decades, scholars and practitioners have agreed that learning takes place within the instructional core—a set of key relationships between teacher, student, and content that propel student learning. Our study of nine school systems across seven states during the 2020–2021 school year reveals that the pandemic fundamentally transformed the instructional core to include a fourth anchor: families. Families served as co-producers of instructional design and delivery, with tech-enabled and standards-aligned instructional materials providing an essential coordinating structure, and with the pair facilitating improved learning experiences that better honor students’ unique capabilities, needs, cultures, and communities.

Authors

• Elizabeth M. Chu, Columbia University Law School

• Andrea Clay, Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL), Columbia University

• Grace McCarty, Columbia University