Mapping the Pandemic Learning Landscape
As COVID-19 continues to bear down on the United States and infection rates continue to rise, many schools and districts are feeling compelled to open the school year a distance or hybrid learning format. With more students accessing public education away from a physical school community, families and communities are grappling with how to meet a whole new set of needs and challenges.
Given structural racism and other forms of oppression, the challenges students and families face depend greatly on their zip code, income level, and race. While distance learning is a challenge for all families, lower income families, and disproportionately families of color, are doubly burdened in trying to meet the basic learning needs of their children as they also struggle with day-to-day survival during this pandemic.
ALL kids and families need more than just the basics. If we are to use this moment to move through this portal towards equitable reinvention of our systems and society, we must design towards the conditions that will help all of our kids and communities to thrive.
In this article, I’ll explore and map the rapidly emerging pandemic learning landscape — from micro-schools and pods, to third-space learning hubs and new school-based initiatives. I also briefly discuss the opportunities and challenges of each structure. In future articles, I’ll dive more deeply into the pros, cons, and players that are emerging with each pandemic learning structure.
Mapping the Pandemic Learning Landscape
The announcement of distance learning has led to an onslaught of pandemic learning structures — from co-op pods to learning hubs to COVID learning centers. While all of these innovations attempt to provide students and families with some form of childcare and educational/enrichment support given the need for social distancing and/or sheltering in place mandated by the pandemic, there are key differences as well as challenges inherent in each. To help to make sense of this growing landscape, this article sets forth a framework to help to describe, compare, and analyze the many different pandemic learning initiatives.
The pandemic learning landscape can be broken into three general categories that are defined by who initiates and/or operates the learning structure. These three categories include:
- Family-Caregiver Pandemic Learning Structures
- Third Party Pandemic Learning Structures
- School/District Pandemic Learning Structures
Family-Caregiver Pandemic Learning Structures
Family-Caregiver Pandemic Learning Structures are formed, operated, and/or controlled by parents or family units for the benefit of their own children. These entities tend to take three different forms — pods, homeschools, and microschools. These three structures may differ from one another depending on a variety of factors, including who is teaching or facilitating the entity, and the extent to which the teacher/facilitator is using an existing school’s distance learning program or developing and implementing their own academic program model. The chart below illustrates some of these key features and the different variations for implementation within each.
Third Party Pandemic Learning Structures
Third Party Pandemic Learning Structures are formed, operated, and/or controlled by a public or private entity for the benefit of students from a given community or set of clients. My research has identified five different types or formation/operation pathways for this type of learning structure, ranging from hubs developed by civic or non-profit agencies to private sector enterprises, as well as a mixture of two or more through as a collective impact strategy.
Some of these structures are emerging due to a range of equity-related concerns. Some learning hubs or pandemic learning centers are emerging as part of covid-survival strategy, where a business and/or city agency has iterated its programmatic offering or redeployed staff in order to keep its doors open and/or its employees working.
In some cases, pandemic learning hubs, such as the programming launched by the Oakland Reach, seek to serve both students and families by acting as resources and training centers and offering stipends or job training support to families who have been most critically impacted by the pandemic.
The vast majority of these learning structures provide services and supports to supplement a school or district’s distance learning program, rather than seeking to offer a new or different education model and curriculum. Many, however, also provide additional services such as enrichment activities, access to technology and reliable wifi, food distribution, and/or programming for families.
The chart below illustrates some of these key features and examples of each type of learning hub we have identified as emerging to date.
School/District Pandemic Learning Structures
School/District Pandemic Learning Structures are programs and partnerships that are formed, operated, and/or controlled by a district and/or school to enhance or improve the delivery of distance or hybrid learning formats and better support their students and families.
As compared to parent/family and third party initiatives, these learning structures have been slower to develop and come on line. This is not surprising given that most districts have been inundated with making the decision to and then executing on a viable plan to open in a distance learning format. There is much potential in this model, but it is well behind the others in terms of existence and development.
The chart below illustrates some of these key features and examples of how this type of pandemic learning structure might be initiated and/or operated by a range of players in a district or school, including a few emergent examples where they are available.
Pandemic Learning Landscape: Opportunities and Challenges
Each of the pandemic learning structures have a set of opportunities and challenges. How we, as parents, educators, citizens, and potential funders grapple with these considerations will influence the direction of educational systems and institutions as we move through and past the pandemic.
The following chart lays out the opportunities and challenges of each of these structures and their potential to enable or inhibit students and families — particularly those who are furthest from opportunity and power — to meet access baseline needs and/or the healthy learning conditions that we all need to thrive despite and beyond the pandemic.
Next Steps and Conclusion
Regardless of the type, pandemic learning structures require significant investment of the resources, time, and capacity. Stakeholders need to carefully consider the range of pandemic learning structures and the implications of each. In particular, we encourage all stakeholders to carefully contemplate the equity opportunities and challenges inherent within any model they are considering investing in, and to consider how they might contribute to the creation of models that enable ALL students and families to thrive.
