RAPID: Pandemic School Closures and Teacher-Student Relationships

这个项目评估了由于新冠肺炎疫情而产生的新的努力和行动战略如何挑战或加剧学生之间先前存在的差异。现有的学术预测是，在危机期间，个人和组织会制定新的行动战略。由于新冠肺炎疫情的蔓延，超过一半的美国学校已经停课，并过渡到在线学习。这构成了一个独特的自然实验，即危机和不确定性如何影响师生关系(TSR)，以及这些影响如何反过来影响差异。当前的危机可能会加强TSR，因为教师和学校以新颖的方式接触学生，通常情况下，学生的健康和在家上网等非学术问题成为优先事项。这项研究将帮助政策制定者和学校官员了解新冠肺炎大流行及其导致的学校关闭对不同学生群体的影响，为应对这场危机的影响和应对未来灾难的努力提供信息。该项目扩展了对弗吉尼亚州两所高中(在学校停课前进行)为期六个月的民族志观察，在2020年春夏期间通过在线观察、访谈、每周学生时间日记和摄影日记进行，并在2020年秋季恢复面对面的数据收集。广泛地说，这个项目通过展示1)学校和教师在这场危机中接触学生的策略是如何被接受的；2)TSR在危机时刻如何变化，以及3)这些变化如何影响学生经历和结果的差异来促进知识的发展。具体的研究问题包括：(1)TSR如何塑造危机对学生参与和结果的影响？(2)TSR的持续影响如何因学生背景而异？(3)学校对危机的反应如何影响教师与学生的联系？以及(4)这种回应的影响如何因学生背景而异？为了解决这些问题，这项研究的数据收集包括八个月的观察(包括虚拟和学校开学时的面对面观察)，收集每周学生时间日记和摄影日记(N=80)，以及对管理人员(N=20)、学生(N=120)和教师(N=60)的深入半结构化访谈。这项奖励反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project assesses how new efforts and strategies for action, developed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, challenge or compound pre-existing differences among students. Existing scholarship predicts that during crises, people and organizations develop new strategies for action. As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half of America’s schools have closed down and transitioned to online learning. This constitutes a unique natural experiment in how a crisis and uncertainty can affect teacher-student relationships (TSRs) and how these in turn can affect differences. The current crisis may strengthen TSRs as teachers and schools reach out to students in novel ways and normally non-academic matters such as student’s health and access to the internet at home become priorities. This study will help policymakers and school officials understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting school closures on different groups of students, informing efforts to redress the effects of this crisis and plan for future disasters.This project expands upon six months of ethnographic observations in two Virginia high schools (conducted prior to school closures) with online observations, interviews and weekly student time diaries and photojournals during the spring and summer of 2020, as well as resumed in-person data collection during fall 2020. Broadly, this project advances knowledge by showing 1) how school and teacher strategies to reach students during this crisis are received; 2) how TSRs change during moments of crisis and 3) how these changes inform differences in student experiences and outcomes. Specific research questions include: (1) How do TSRs shape the impact of the crisis on student engagement and outcomes? (2) How does the ongoing impact of TSRs vary by student background? (3) How does school response to the crisis affect teachers’ connections with students? and (4) How does the impact of this response vary based on student background? To address these questions, this study’s data collection includes eight months of observations (both virtual and in-person when schools re-open), collection of weekly student time diaries and photojournals (N=80), and in-depth semi-structured interviews with administrators (N=20), students (N=120) and teachers (N=60).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.