RAPID: Using remote diary methods to understand how families navigate COVID-19-driven schooling at home

据估计，由于为应对COVID-19大流行而强制要求保持社交距离，全国95%以上的学龄儿童都无法上课。几乎在一夜之间，各个学区都在努力满足社区的学术、社交和情感需求，家庭不得不开发和支持新的在家学习方法。现在有必要收集数据，以更深入地了解学校和家庭如何适应这些变化，并将在未来几周/几个月继续这样做-他们遇到的麻烦，以及他们产生的解决方案。回顾性的叙述可能掩盖了所经历的关键特征，从而使国家概念化和为未来建立更强大、公平和变革性的学习生态的能力降至最低。强调解决方案开发的公平方法，本研究将记录家庭如何参与创造性实践，以在当前危机中基于当地需求、价值观、背景和历史产生强大的学习。它将解决以下问题：(1)学校提供什么资源，家长如何使用和扩展这些资源来维持孩子的学习？(2)家庭如何探索与疫情有关的科学和数学概念？(3)家长和家庭如何学习适应（例如与老师沟通；更广泛的社交网络）以及他们面临哪些挑战（例如订阅费用；可靠的互联网）？(4)由研究团队策划的STEM数字资源如何用于学习？学校紧急关闭暴露出在获取互联网和通信设备方面的巨大差距，以及家长/照料者和社区利用技术在危机时期维持与健康有关的学习的能力。该项目将使用一种基于智能手机数据收集平台的新型远程日志工具，覆盖全国各地的家庭。支持移动电话的远程日记工具可以帮助那些没有联网的家庭，而不仅仅是那些拥有强大技术基础设施的家庭。随着危机的发展，收集的数据将为建立新的社会技术支持系统奠定基础，这些系统将根据不同家庭的经验提供信息。将招募大约200名有学龄儿童（小学低年级和小学高年级）住在家里的家长。这项研究和随后与其他也使用远程方法研究学习的研究人员的虚拟研讨会将有助于建立一个更广泛的研究议程，以具体说明当传统的同址学校环境消失时，社会技术系统有效地增强家庭创新和学习能力的条件。它将促进我们对人类学习如何适应意外变化的学习环境的理解。这项研究借鉴了远程数据收集的进步和研究设计创新的新分析工具。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

It is estimated that over 95% of all school children across the country are out of the classroom due to social distancing mandates in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost overnight, families have had to develop and support new practices for learning at home as districts scramble to meet the academic, social and emotional needs of their communities. It is essential to collect data now to develop a deeper understanding of how schools and families are adapting to these changes and will continue to do so in coming weeks/months - the troubles they encounter, and the solutions they generate. Retrospective accounts may mask critical features of what was experienced, minimizing the country’s capacity to conceptualize and build more robust, equitable and transformative learning ecologies for the future. Emphasizing an equity approach to solution development, this research will document how families engage in creative practices to generate powerful learning based on local needs, values, contexts, and histories in this present crisis. It will address the following questions: (1) What resources are schools providing and how are parents navigating and extending these resources to sustain their child’s learning? (2) How are families exploring science and math concepts related to the pandemic? (3) How are parents and families learning to adapt (e.g. communication with teachers; broader social networks) and what challenges do they face (e.g. subscription costs; reliable Internet)? (4) How are digital resources for STEM, curated by the research team, utilized for learning? Emergency school closures are exposing significant gaps in access to the Internet and communication devices, and the capacity of parents/caregivers and communities to capitalize on technology to sustain health-relevant learning in a time of crisis. This project will use a novel, remote-diary tool based on a smartphone-enabled data collection platform, to reach families across the country. Mobile-phone-enabled remote diary tools make it possible to reach families who are under-connected, not just those with robust technical infrastructure. The data collected will lay the groundwork for creating new socio-technical support systems informed by diverse families’ experiences, as the crisis unfolds. Approximately 200 parents with school age children (early and upper elementary grades) living at home will be recruited. This study and a subsequent virtual workshop with other researchers who are also using remote methods to study learning will help establish a broader research agenda to specify the conditions under which socio-technical systems productively augment a family’s capacity to innovate and learn when traditional co-located school settings disappear. It will advance our understanding of how human learning adapts to unexpectedly changed learning environments. This study draws on advances in remote data collection and new analytical tools for innovation in research design.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.