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

据估计，全国超过95%的学童因应对COVID-19大流行的社交距离规定而离开教室。几乎在一夜之间，家庭不得不开发和支持新的做法，在家里学习的地区争先恐后地满足其社区的学术，社会和情感需求。 现在就必须收集数据，以便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/几个月内继续这样做-他们遇到的麻烦，以及他们产生的解决方案。回顾性的叙述可能会掩盖所经历的关键特征，从而最大限度地削弱国家为未来构想和建立更强大、公平和变革性学习生态的能力。 强调解决方案开发的公平方法，这项研究将记录家庭如何参与创造性的做法，以产生强大的学习基于当地的需求，价值观，背景和历史，在目前的危机。它将解决以下问题：（1）学校提供什么资源，家长如何引导和扩展这些资源，以维持他们的孩子的学习？(2)家庭如何探索与大流行病有关的科学和数学概念？(3)家长和家庭如何学习适应（例如与教师的沟通;更广泛的社交网络），他们面临哪些挑战（例如订阅费用;可靠的互联网）？(4)研究团队策划的STEM数字资源如何用于学习？紧急关闭学校暴露了在获得互联网和通信设备方面的巨大差距，以及父母/照顾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记工具，覆盖全国各地的家庭。支持移动电话的远程日记工具使其能够接触到连接不足的家庭，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助系统奠定基础，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（小学低年级和高年级）住在家里的父母。这项研究和随后的虚拟研讨会与其他研究人员谁也使用远程方法来研究学习将有助于建立一个更广泛的研究议程，以具体说明条件下，社会技术系统有效地提高了家庭的创新能力和学习时，传统的共同定位的学校设置消失。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NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

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.