Addressing Student Isolation During the Pandemic: An Inquiry into Renewing Relationships and Reimagining Classroom Communities on Remote Instruction Platforms

We began this pandemic cycle of inquiry by acknowledging that we all viewed relationships with our students as foundational to the teaching and learning process (i.e., Elmore, 2004; Fullan, 2007; Noddings, 2014; Rimm-Kaufman, et al., 2014). While we had well-established strategies for creating caring classroom communities in our face-to-face classrooms prior to the pandemic, we were all searching for new online strategies for keeping relationships vital when faced with the abrupt transition to remote instruction and the isolating effects of the Spring 2020 lockdown, both for ourselves and for our students. Hence, we committed to documenting and sharing with one another, the innovative strategies we were employing across our elementary and secondary school contexts. Through the use of informal sharing time and Zoom breakout rooms, we were able to connect personally with our students and to revitalize teacher-to-student and student-to-student relationships in our virtual classroom space.

Students’ Lived Experiences During the Pandemic: Their Expressions through Art and Poetry

Blake, a language arts teacher, and Susan, a visual arts teacher, were both committed to connect our students’ lived experiences of the pandemic with their academic learning in our new virtual classroom environments. Through this inquiry cycle, we were reminded of the critical role teachers play in addressing the social and emotional needs of their students, and seamlessly integrating those needs with academic goals. We chose to make our remote instruction platforms work for the individual needs of students rather than use a standardized curriculum enacted on an online platform (McQuirter, 2020). Our students responded, as evidenced in this essay, with meaningful works of art, communicating their pandemic experiences through poetry and photography. Teaching and inquiring into teaching through the pandemic provided us with an even better understanding of using students’ lived experiences to achieve academic goals, rather than the other way around.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Inquiring Into, About, and During Covid-19

One of the most pervasive ways the inquiry movement has needed to be reshaped since its inception is as a mechanism to respond to a global pandemic. As COVID-19 necessitated an abrupt transition to remote delivery of instruction, teachers needed a powerful form of professional learning to understand and respond with changes to serve their students during this challenging time. At P. K. Yonge Developmental Research School, a K-12 school, the leadership team designed a Canvas website devoted to teacher inquiry, enabling teachers to share experiences, collaborate, and address issues regarding the abrupt transition to emergency remote instruction. In this issue, five pandemic inquiry teams present their reflective essays, to describe their collaborations to re-imagine classroom communities; empower students to express their views of the pandemic; re-construct curricula to capture essential learnings; modify for struggling students, and bridge the opportunity gap for students of color.

Teachers as Instructional Designers: Unearthing the Essence of the Primary School Curriculum for Delivery within the Remote Learning Classroom

Moving our elementary curriculum to emergency remote instruction presented numerous challenges to our elementary school, as teachers recognized that elementary-age children could not be expected to spend the amount of time on computer screens that they had spent in face-to-face classrooms. Working with our colleagues, we adopted a “less is more” approach, using inquiry processes to make systematic and informed choices as to which state standards would be covered. We acted as instructional designers to develop coherent learning units for remote instruction, using inquiry processes to study the effectiveness of our lessons and adjust instruction accordingly. This work could only transpire because we viewed ourselves (and were viewed by our administration) as professionals, rather than technicians. At, P. K. Yonge, we were empowered to critically examine our curriculum, to modify and adjust our lessons in response to the crisis, and to design innovative ways to deliver our curriculum. Conceptualizing teachers’ work as professional was foundational to our ability to be effective during the pandemic.

A Quest for More Equitable Experiences for All Students During a Global Pandemic: An Inquiry into Remote Delivery of De-Tracked Chemistry and Biology Classes

Through our collaboration, we helped one another rethink and adapt the delivery of our de-tracked science courses for remote instruction as we finished out the 2019-2020 school year, with a particular focus on developing remote instruction practices that would support our learners struggling in our secondary science de-tracked classrooms. We derived three actions to take to target the needs of our students who struggled and to differentiate our instruction. We reduced the amount of material being covered to allow for deeper dives into content, prioritized depth of learning over breadth of learning; connected our remote lessons to our students’ real-world experiences; and capitalized on remote learning technologies to work with our students who were struggling individually. These adjustments resulted in larger than expected attendance and engagement, as evidenced by students’ written responses to our lessons and their summary responses to the question of whether and how science was relevant to their lives.

Building Resiliency with Students of Color During the Pandemic: Providing Remote After-School Activities

As two Black male teachers, we knew the risks for our Black male students in our culture and the importance of keeping them safe and attending school. Keeping our students involved in our school community took on a new urgency when the pandemic hit and the country struggled with racial issues after the shooting of unarmed Black men and women. We adapted our after-school mentoring and leadership programs (that had been f2f) for young Black males and transformed them to after-school remote platforms. Secondary students participated in a remote football practice and training program. They were able to socialize with friends, receive support from their coaches, and retain academic eligibility. Elementary students enrolled in a leadership group were able to maintain connections with peers and mentors in one-on-one or small-group sessions. Our remote adaptations enabled our Black male students to connect with our school community during national crises that significantly impacted the Black community.

Collective Teacher-Researcher Inquiry: Localizing School-Based Curriculum Development in Diversified Hong Kong Schooling Contexts

Responding to a recent call for turning a focus on advancing practices in curriculum studies, this paper reports collective memory work that disrupted academics’ hegemonic voices in School-Based Curriculum Development (SBCD) studies and elicited teachers’ stories about their school-based curriculum development (SBCD) practices. With post-colonialism as the theoretical underpinning, we explored how the Western-centric construct of SBCD was recontextualized in various Hong Kong school contexts. Findings revealed teachers’ struggles with hegemonic discourses that constrained their autonomy in SBCD projects to benefit diverse learners, such as the accountability mechanism, linguistic imperialism, Western-centrism, and top-down curriculum decision-making. Situated in the local realities of Hong Kong schooling, teachers’ SBCD projects also illuminate productive, hybrid spaces where new forms of knowledge, identity, and culture come into being.

Building Collaborative Teacher Education: Integrating UDL through a Faculty Learning Community

Teacher educators have focused reform efforts on preparing graduates to address increasingly diverse K-12 students. Collaboration among general and special education faculty is seen as beneficial for preparing teacher candidates who can teach diverse learners, yet it is not the norm. This practitioner research study explored a curriculum reform effort that employed a faculty learning community (FLC) to engage general and special education faculty to collaboratively integrate Universal Design for Learning (UDL) into two teacher education programs. Faculty perceptions of the collaborative reform process and resulting curriculum enhancements are presented. Findings indicated the process was valued by our faculty, promoted a stronger culture of cross-disciplinary collaboration, and resulted in systematic curriculum improvements coordinated across content and field courses. This study offers guidance to teacher education faculty interested in collaborative curriculum reform.

Practicing Policy: Preservice Teachers’ Experiences with a Proficiency-Based Education Model

Varying policy on the implementation of proficiency-based education (PBE) presents a challenge in the preparation of future educators. It becomes critical to include structures and strategies in teacher education programs that support learning and application in different assessment frameworks. This study explores a piloted PBE model in a university teacher preparation course to better understand the enactment of PBE in classrooms, and the associated teaching and learning implications in a university setting. Results point toward reflection, choice, and standards as objectives as benefits of a PBE model, while challenges include time and scalability in classrooms. Implications focus on the instructional practices identified as benefits in a PBE model and the implementation of those practices in teacher preparation.

Encouraging Practitioner Research Engagement: Overcoming Barriers

Despite a body of evidence showing the vast benefits of practitioner engagement in higher education research, the literature suggests that many practitioners do not regularly engage in research activities due to three main barriers: the busyness of daily practice, perceived irrelevance of research to practice, and inadequate training to engage in research. This article reviews the literature on each of these three barriers, providing practitioners in higher education insight into how to overcome these barriers to successfully engage in regular research. Through an analysis of current literature, this article furthers the understanding of practitioner research engagement despite common barriers.