RAPID: Pandemic School Closures and Teacher-Student Relationships

本项目评估因COVID-19大流行而制定的新努力和行动战略如何挑战或加剧学生之间已有的差异。现有学者预测，在危机期间，个人和组织会制定新的行动战略。由于COVID-19大流行，超过一半的美国学校已经关闭，并过渡到在线学习。这构成了一个独特的自然实验，探讨危机和不确定性如何影响师生关系（tsr），以及这些关系反过来如何影响差异。目前的危机可能会加强tsr，因为教师和学校以新颖的方式向学生伸出援助之手，通常非学术问题，如学生的健康和在家上网成为优先事项。这项研究将帮助政策制定者和学校官员了解2019冠状病毒病大流行和由此导致的学校关闭对不同学生群体的影响，为纠正这场危机的影响和为未来灾害制定计划提供信息。该项目扩展了在弗吉尼亚州两所高中进行的为期六个月的人种学观察（在学校关闭之前进行），其中包括2020年春季和夏季的在线观察、访谈和每周学生时间日记和摄影日记，以及2020年秋季恢复的亲自数据收集。总的来说，该项目通过展示1)学校和教师在危机期间如何接触学生的策略来促进知识的发展；2) tsr在危机时刻如何变化，3)这些变化如何影响学生经历和结果的差异。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？(4)这种反应的影响如何根据学生的背景而变化？为了解决这些问题，本研究的数据收集包括八个月的观察（当学校重新开放时，包括虚拟和亲自），收集每周学生日记和照片日志（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。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。

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.