Home Work For All: working and learning as the pandemic evolves

• In Event: Where are we going? Education in a post-COVID world

Proposal

In the short period since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, human society has experienced tremendous social, economic, and cultural deviation. The societal changes that emerged as a result of the pandemic have demanded profound alteration in the overall social system that humanity has built over the past 100 years. As a result, governments and school administrators alike have been forced to mandate new protocols suitable for this “new normal” while students and teachers faced the ensuing challenges attached to the integration and adaptation of educational alternatives, such as those of online and hybridized education, into their classes. Observations of the needs of families with school age children throughout the course of the pandemic have provided an opportunity to focus on new possibilities and in so doing, education, which experienced relatively slow transformation in the pre-pandemic era, has undergone major changes with respect to the shifts in the perception of educational stakeholders and the heightened awareness of the structural vulnerability of the traditional education apparatus.
As COVID-19 continues to maintain a significant presence across the globe, families and households have assumed the role beyond the typical functions of a traditional homestead (Kong, et al., 2021). In the era of the necessity for “social distancing” as a means to prevent the transmission of the virus and the closing of traditional schools, homes through the Internet have served as “virtual schools”, libraries, and workplaces. This study captures a snapshot of the experiences of families living and working together throughout various phases of the pandemic and learning to “live with” COVID-19.
In addition, the investigation compares and contrasts school and familial adaptation in both China and the United States. While not conclusive, considering the varieties of cohorts within each respective population, the study will examine normative standards and adaptations, including spatial arrangement, access and provision of necessary technology, governmental support, and family relations, which impacted learning. These are significant countries to compare because of their differing responses to the pandemic. In the case of the United States, which, emphasizing autonomy, established a strategy of concentrating its economic power and the capabilities of the entire social system on vaccines and dissemination, whereas, in China, the government actively intervened to reduce the reproduction index of infected people. In terms of education, in the United States, in the early days of the Pandemic, all educational institutions did not show a unified appearance due to the absence of an emergency response manual compared to China’s stronger governmental response. Recognizing the differing demands, cultural perspectives, and governmental regulatory structures impacting national learning during COVID-19, this study builds upon aspects of research presented at CIES in 2021.
This research has been organized around the following research questions: 1.)What are the spatial and temporal organizations of learning and working in the home in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic? 2.) How is technology altering the spatial and temporal organization of learning and working of families in children in the home? 3.) What are the alterations in the educational processes in the United States and China as a result of the Covid-19 response?
This study employs the use of approximately 60 minute ethnographic interviews, throughout the course of which themes related to the additional educational responsibilities that were and are based in the home in the context of the pandemic will be discussed. We are primarily focusing on parents, caretakers, and guardians 18 years and older since this study is focused on how adult parents/caretakers/guardians are adapting to educational responsibilities for children having been or currently being centered in the home during the pandemic. The semi-structured audio recorded interviews were conducted internationally and remotely predominantly on video conferencing platforms. Questions related to how certain responsibilities for one’s children and or family members’ academic education has shifted to the home as well as how social interactions in the home, due to COVID-19, have changed over time will be asked. In tandem with their interview, participants in the visual research phase will be asked to take pictures of their family’s work and or living spaces with their own devices. They will then show us their photographs during their interview and elaborate upon the corresponding spaces where learning and working take place in their home. Our analysis phase will revolve around coding our collected and transcribed data using inductive & deductive codes that had emerged during the data collection phase.
Data Analysis has begun on our first phase of interviews, conducted in the Spring of 2021. Emerging themes include: Changes in spatial organization, technological issues, parents assuming primary responsibility for child education, concerns around the socialization with other children, access (or lack thereof) to outside spaces, misuse of technology, changes in behavior over time, behavior management, transition to a post pandemic new normal.
As the pandemic, vaccines and public safety measures continue to evolve, the experiences of families learning to live with COVID as they work and learn in person and remotely evolve as well. We will gather further data aiming to capture this evolution. To this end we have amended our interview protocol as we move forward with future interviews. We will also be revisiting some of our initial participants for second interviews to understand how the learning and working situation within their family has changed over the course of the pandemic recovery. The next round of data collection will take place October 2021 - December 2021. Data analysis will be ongoing through March 2022. We anticipate expanding upon our preliminary findings from both rounds of data collection and having them available for presentation at CIES 2022.
This study will draw the attention of academic researchers, educational policy makers, and government education bureaucracies to review their decision making hypotheses, research, suppositions, and decisions as to “virtual learning” principally in the home during COVID-19, to potentially recommend areas of further research, and to encourage the establishment of “best practice”protocols for home based “virtual learning” in an increasingly challenged global environment.

Authors

• yanghwan choi, Columbia University Teachers Colleg

• Isaely Echavarria, Teachers College at Columbia University

• Brittany Kenyon, Teachers College

• Junjian Gao, Columbia University Teachers College

• Ling Qiu, Columbia University Teachers College