“Sus metas son mas grandes”: Peruvian parental perspectives on students’ goals, achievement, well-being, and teacher practices post-Covid

• In Event: National education policies vis-à-vis Indigenous student outcomes

Proposal

BACKGROUND
Rural Indigenous communities in Peru have long lacked access to quality educational opportunities (e.g., Authors; Cortina, 2017; Sumida Huaman, 2017; Valdiviezo & Lopez, 2018; Kvietok Dueñas, 2019). While students in Peru writ large perform poorly on international assessments like PISA, scores are disproportionately lower in under-resourced rural communities (OECD, 2023), where most Indigenous people live.
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of Peru’s school buildings for the full 2020 academic year and restricted mobility in the country. In response, the Ministry of Education implemented an online curriculum platform, called “Aprendo en Casa” (“I learn at home.”), which most rural communities could not access due to lack of technology and telecommunications infrastructure (Authors, 2021). These and other mandatory social distancing measures greatly exacerbated pre-existing inequities and created new ones. Rural students in the Andes and Amazon – the vast majority of whom are members of Indigenous communities – faced greater obstacles to continuing formal education than students in more urban and affluent parts of the country.

Since students returned to in-person schooling in March 2022, little research has explored how education has been experienced by rural Indigenous students.

Our prior research has illuminated the important role that parents’ perceptions of their children’s education in Peru can play on educational attainment (Authors, 2020). If parents believe in the importance of schooling and see its value in their child’s life, they are more likely to encourage their children to continue their schooling beyond compulsory education. So, understanding how parents perceive schooling post-Covid is important for supporting Indigenous student trajectories in Peru.
This paper answers the following question: How do parents of Indigenous children in rural Peru perceive schooling post-pandemic? In particular, this paper explores parents’ perceptions on student achievement and well-being, teachers’ classroom practices, and the evolution of students’ goals. In doing so, it illuminates promising and problematic realities in Peruvian schooling.


CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Our approach to leadership and education change is founded on the belief that change initiatives are most effective when they involve leaders, teachers, students, and communities. One of the most powerful and yet often overlooked stakeholders for improving schools is the school community itself (parents, elders, alumni, and students). Community members have important knowledge to identify and address challenges, as well as significant power to support or stifle school improvement projects, yet that knowledge is often not mobilized (Balarin & Cueto, 2007).
Indigenous communities in the Amazon and Andes have historically been excluded from decision-making, yet Indigenous traditions center community members as important knowledge holders and leaders on matters that affect them (Sumida Huaman, 2020; Smith, 2000; Hornberger, 2007).


METHODS
To honor the collaborative traditions of the Indigenous communities we work with, we enact principles of Community-Based Participation Action Research (Stringer & Aragon, 2020). CBPAR is a collaborative approach to research that involves engaging community members, researchers, and other stakeholders as partners in developing and implementing solution-oriented action.

The procedures and data discussed in this paper represent a small piece of a large-scale, ongoing CBPAR project. In Summer 2024, we surveyed parents of school-aged children who live in the rural Andean highland community of Pallata, in the District of Ollantaytambo, Peru. The community of Pallata is home to 54 families and the researchers have worked with community members since 2016 to facilitate culturally-grounded educational opportunities for their youth. Part of this work has included operating a non-profit education center, which provides supplementary education (after school, summer classes) for children ages 3-18. Approximately 34 families, whose children attend six different area primary and secondary schools during the day, attend the education center.

To recruit participants, we invited all families to the education center and asked them to share their thoughts on their children’s education. 19 parents, all mothers, showed up and took part in this survey. While this sample is comparatively small, it is incredible within this context, particularly given the historical silencing of Indigenous perspectives, especially mothers, in educational research in Peru (Authors, 2020).

Our 12-item survey, given in Spanish, gathered information on: demographics (mother or father); the participants’ children (including number and ages of children, the schools they attend, and their grade levels); and parental perspectives on student learning and participation, classroom practices, and students’ goals since schooling resumed post-Covid. Responses related to a 5-point Likert scale (much worse than before the pandemic to much better than before the pandemic). The survey ended with open-ended questions regarding students’ future goals and parents’ desired changes.
Due to parents’ busy schedules and competing priorities, and not wanting to create survey fatigue, each parent was asked to complete the survey only for their oldest school-aged child.


FINDINGS
We present a summary of our findings and analysis below.

On average, parents report that learning and participation, wellbeing, and classroom practices either improved or remained equal since returning to school post-pandemic. Emotional well-being and implementation of technology showed the most improvement (avg. 4.065 and 4), while academic grades showed the least (avg. 3). Parents also reported slight improvements in student engagement (3.75), learning (3.6875), access to technology (3.6875), and the overall quality of teaching (3.9375). No significant differences existed across ages or schools, which can be attributed to our small sample size.

Finally, parents perceive that the pandemic has affected their children’s goals in troubling ways. Across responses, parents generally agreed that students’ goals have grown since the pandemic (“sus metas son mas grandes”), yet parents perceive that their children may be less likely than before to achieve those goals (avg. 2.8).


SIGNIFICANCE
These findings show that post-Covid recovery in Peruvian schools, at least from parents’ perspectives, is a mixed bag, and there is still important change to be accomplished. Given the vast inequities experienced by Indigenous students in Peru pre-Covid, it is troubling to see that, even despite slight increases in most categories and growing goals, parents are still doubtful of their children’s futures. These findings highlight the ongoing, growing need to support educational improvement initiatives in under-served, marginalized communities.

Authors

• Kayla Johnson, University of Kentucky

• Joseph Levitan, McGill University