EDITORS: TERI MARCOS, LINDA PURRINGTON, & CLOTILDE LOMELI AGRUEL

This is the Fall 2020 newsletter of one of the Action Research Communities (ARCs) of the Action Research Network of the Americas (ARNA). Our ARC is Supporting the Teaching of Action Research (STAR-C). We are a group of professors who teach action research and who have met between ARNA conferences over the last few years to think about strategies, issues, and resources to support the teaching of action research. We created a website (star-arna-arc.org) as a forum for our Learning Circle discussions (onlinelearningcircles.org) around our own teaching of action research. The website provides resources to help support the teaching of action research including supportive topics, syllabi, examples of how action research fits in different programs, and both teacher and student resources.

While we missed seeing you at the 2020 ARNA Conference in Puerto Vallarta (canceled due to COVID-19) we look forward to seeing you June 2-5, 2021 in Puerto Vallarta!

Invitation to Join the STAR.ARC!

We also want to extend the invitation for you to join the STAR community. We invite your contributions to the ARNA-STAR Newsletter. Please submit short essays on any issue around the teaching of action research, your feedback on what you would like to see in the newsletter, or books, conferences, or resources you would like us to add. Please send your submissions to the STAR-ARC website and an editor will be in touch. We have also launched a blog to encourage more discussion around topics. Please join us at: https://actionresearchteaching.home.blog/

Supporting Student Learning Online: One Professor’s Story of Transitions and Lessons Learned

By Linda Purrington

The current global pandemic, for all of its misfortunes and hardships, has also had a profound and positive influence on how we connect, work, learn, and play. It has pulled and pushed us to think and act in new ways. Encouraged to shelter-in-place and restricted from face-to-face interactions with others, technology has become a lifeline. We see this dramatically in education as traditional Pre-K through 12 schools have scrambled under immense pressure to quickly transition from face-to-face to online learning. Colleges and universities have also had to re-think undergraduate and graduate programs, whether moving from face-to-face learning to online or from some form on online learning to being fully online. The challenges and opportunities have been plentiful. As a university professor in a graduate school of education and psychology, I participated in collaborative efforts to transition M.S. degree and Ed.D. Degree educational leadership programs from face-to-face to online learning environments. Our work began over 16 years ago and what we learned as a result is still relevant today. For the purposes of this newsletter, I offer ideas that I hope might help others who are transitioning to online learning or who want to improve current online programs.

Program context. After spending many months looking at online learning programs, professional literature, and inviting graduate student perspectives, we concluded that a blended model would best serve our students. We chose a 60:40 blend, 60% face-to-face and 40% online. This blend translated into students coming to campus for an in-depth weekend of multiple course sessions every six weeks and continued learning online, asynchronously and synchronously, between face-to-face sessions. I taught action research via a strand of courses that spanned multiple terms. Looping with students gave me an overall perspective into what students experienced. Valuable lessons learned as we transitioned from face-to-face to online learning relate to mindset, community, collaborative culture, access, engagement, accountability, and seamless integration. We chose a blended model, but I suggest that these ideas are equally useful and important for fully online learning.

Mindset. Teaching and learning online begins with mindset. It means letting go of trying to do the same things in the same way in an online setting you have done in a face-to-face setting in the past. This does not mean that online learning is secondary or sub-standard to face-to-face learning, rather each setting has its unique context and circumstances supported by distinct strategies and activities. There are strategies and activities best suited for face-to-face settings, others for online synchronous mode, and yet others for asynchronous learning. There is both a science and an art to blending the different learning modalities so they are each purposefully constructed and integrated seamlessly. For example, hosting an online synchronous session for the same number of hours you might teach face-to-face is a recipe for disaster. Students tune out. The alternative is to make your synchronous time very purposeful and active by expecting advance preparation so students come to class ready to engage.

Flipping the classroom is a term used in K-12 and higher education to describe advance prep that students do “outside” of face-to-face or virtual synchronous time so that when they do come together they can actively apply and share what they have learned. Advance prep can take many forms including but not limited to required reading with question prompts, written assignments, researching online, watching media, generating media, journaling, blogging, and engaging in small groups/learning circle activities. In my first term with action research students, I had them construct an action research e-portfolio they developed over multiple terms to include all course work. E-portfolios linked to our SAKAI Courses action research course. I also formed students into learning circles. One example of advance prep for a synchronous session involved students reading the text, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, to learn about learner mindset. I asked them to meet in their respective learning circles and respond to directed questions before a synchronous session. Questions included:

-What is Question Thinking?

-How might Question Thinking contribute to leading/co-leading a change initiate in collaboration with others?

-What does “change your questions, change your results,” mean? Why is this relevant?

-What is QStorming? Where could you use it (identify your own sphere of influence)?

Students posted their collective summary in their e-portfolio with additional individual reflections about their learning circle meeting. When we came together as a whole group for our synchronous session, learning circles participated in reciprocal sharing of their summary highlights and discussed possible applications for their inquiry work. The synchronous session was student led for the most part.

Community. Developing a sense of belonging and identity and investing in and taking responsibility for self and group learning are important elements of a healthy learning community. For this reason, we began our program with a retreat in which we participated in activities to get to know one another in deeply meaning ways. Two sample activities were Cultural Portraits and Strengths Bombardment. I share these activities in more detail in our STARc May 2019 Newsletter in article titled, “Fostering Student Engagement and Inclusive Communities in Online Learning Environments”.

We intentionally decided to continue community building throughout the program. At the beginning of each face-to-face and virtual synchronous session, we took time to check in with one another, settle in, be present, and engage in a learner mindset. We concluded each session with a closing circle in which students reflected on the session learning in a round robin sharing. Students worked in learning circles as micro communities within our larger community. Dr. Margaret Riel is a pioneer of learning circles. She wrote about Learning Circles in our STARc May 2020 Newsletter in a piece titled, “Action Researchers’ Collaboration through Learning Circles”. We drew on her work to guide us.

Collaborative culture. Collaboration, like community, is important in any learning setting. Different from cooperation, collaboration means taking initiative, being actively and continuously involved and contributing to shared activities in meaningful ways. In addition to Learning Circles, developing shared norms for collaboration and revisiting the norms in every session was a powerful means for promoting and sustaining collaborative behaviors in our face-to-face and online action research learning. For more information about norms for collaboration visit our STARc May 202O Newsletter in an article titled “Learning Circle Norms for Collaboration”. In the article, I discuss the Seven Norms of Collaboration based on the work of The Center for Adaptive Schools. The Norms are pausing, paraphrasing, posing questions, putting ideas on the table, providing data, paying attention to self and others, and presuming positive intentions. Rubrics are available for self-assessment and group assessment of collaborative norm practice.

Access. Access to learning technologies and continuous support for learning and using learning technologies is foundational for successful online learning. We ensured that all students had up-to-date laptops and current programs and applications with access to tutorials before students began their initial program sessions. A 24-hour technology hotline was available, as was easy access to staff and professors for questions and needs. Special attention was given to scheduling course sessions to accommodate students from different time zones across the United States and internationally.

Engagement. In addition to reviewing professional literature on engagement and studying other programs, we found that the best source of learning what engages students in online learning is observing and asking the students themselves about their experiences and perspectives. Eight themes evolved from an analysis of student feedback.

1. Preparation and support. Students expressed the importance of clear guidelines regarding hardware, software, and connectivity. They wanted to be set up for success and have easy access resources for questions and trouble shooting. In collaboration with our Information Technology team, a virtual tech prep program was set up for student access before coursework began. What we had once done face-to-face and on campus to orient students to guidelines, tools, and support resources; could now be accessed by students at their convenience. This freed up class time once devoted to orientation. We then embedded new learning technologies developmentally in courses with associated assignments for application of new learning.

2. Communication in multiple formats. Students reported they appreciated regular communication and in diverse formats. We used the traditional means of email, course announcements, broadcast text messaging, and discussion boards and added private Facebook groups, embedded audio and video, chat rooms, messaging, and screencast videos. Professors communicated with the whole group, with small groups, and 1:1 per schedules, additionally.

3. Clear and consistent expectations. Our graduate students are working professionals. They have many entities competing for their time. They are high achievers and want to know exactly what is expected of them and by when. Some strategies we practiced to clarify expectations included sharing syllabi in advance, communicating schedules and timelines in advance, providing opportunity for questions, and checking for understanding. Faculty provided clear objectives and desired outcomes for sessions and related learning activities. Holistic and criteria rubrics were used for assessment and shared in advance. A common writing rubric, co-developed by professors and our writing support team, was used in all courses. Writing support provided workshops within courses related to key elements of our common writing rubric as they related to specific course assignments. Students were encouraged to revise and re-submit assignments for credit.

4. Relevant, rigorous, and active learning. Students engaged most when learning connected to real world issues, tapped into their personal and professional experience, and when it “stretched them to grow”. Students were very motivated when learning was active. Inquiry, problem-based activities, case studies, and fieldwork connected student to issues they believed to be highly relevant. Our action research project engaged students in working on actual problems and opportunities within their work settings over a meaningful time of multiple terms.

5. Collaboration. Students were very motivated when asked to lead activities and discussion. Norms for collaboration, as shared earlier in this article were introduced initially and re-visited regularly in courses. Learning circles, also discussed earlier in this article, and provided students with a micro-community for learning and support. Leadership rotated among circles. Students received individual and group grades for group work.

6. Opportunities for choice and creativity. Students communicated their appreciation for choice related to certain assignments. I encouraged students to let me know if they found an assignment less-than-relevant to them so we might discuss and adapt. Students enjoyed opportunities to be creative and to innovate. Performance activities made learning interesting and fun as did gamification in some courses.

7. Timely and practical feedback. Students shared that timely and practical feedback was paramount. They welcomed written feedback, audio feedback, 1:1 conferences, small group conference, and check ins; all given promptly so they might revise and improve their work.

8. Teacher presence. Not all students contacted faculty outside of class time, but many did, and they all wanted to know they could have access if they needed it. Most of my outside of class time interactions with students were in the late evening and on the weekends as this was when they were most available. Faculty involvement in activities contributed to student motivation. Students did not want to feel like their course was on autopilot. Rather, they wanted faculty presence. Students appreciated faculty outreach to check in, share additional resources, and offer support.

Accountability. Clear expectations for all assignments, collaborative performance-oriented work, required check ins, timely and meaningful feedback, and regular self-assessment contributed to students shared responsibility for self and group learning. Our graduate students were busy working professionals. They wanted to know expectations so they could plan and coordinate their time. Multiple types of rubrics including holistic, criteria-based, and other provided clarification. Working with others on performance outcomes helped to developed shared responsibility. Group work has challenges. It helped to assess students based on their individual contributions to group work and giving a group grade. Not everyone reached out when they had questions or needed help, so we structured regular check-ins for the whole group, small groups (learning circles), and scheduled one-to-one connections. Students indicated that timely and meaningful feedback throughout a course was important, particularly given they were taking multiple courses simultaneously while working full time. Regular feedback gave them direction and the opportunity to do their best work. Self-assessment at key points during a course, prompted students to think about their learning, their performance, and to adjust objectives and behaviors as needed.

Seamless integration. Consistent policies and practices, thoughtfully mapped curriculum across the program, professor understanding of the mapped curriculum, and careful attention to student program experience contributed to a more seamless integration of learning experiences. Almost nothing is more frustrating to students then inconsistent policies and practices within and across courses. This relates again to wanting very clear expectations. We mapped our curriculum so the learning experiences for each term built upon those of the prior term. As faculty, we regularly and intentionally discussed our curriculum map, shared syllabi and readings for our courses, and brainstormed opportunities for students to make learning connections. Our action research strand spanned multiple terms and became the ideal means for discussing what students were learning in all of their courses and how what they learned applied/might apply to their action research work. As faculty, we also spent a portion of each meeting responding to the question, “How are our students doing?”

This article provided highlights related to seven ideas we learned about and gave attention to as we transitioned our graduate educational leadership program from a face-to-face to a blended learning program. The ideas included mindset, community, collaborative culture, access, engagement, accountability, and seamless integration. These same ideas are also relevant for fully online learning courses and programs and hope they are informative and useful for those transitioning to online teaching and learning or who want to improve existing online programs.

References

Adams, M. (2009). Change your questions change your life: Ten powerful tools for life and work. San Francisco:CA. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Brame, C., (2013). Flipping the classroom. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved 9/16/20 from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/.

Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: NY. Ballantine Books.

Garmston, R. & Wellman, B. The seven norms of collaborative work. Retrieved 9/16/20 from http://theadaptiveschool.weebly.com/7-norms-of-collaborative-work.html.

Purrington, L., (May, 2019). Fostering student engagement and inclusive communities in online learning environments. STAR ARC Newsletter. Retrieved 9/16/20 from https://spark.adobe.com/page/EV3MaeU9MGYIw/

Purrington, L. (May, 2020). Learning circle norms for collaboration. STAR ARC Newsletter. Retrieved 9/16/20 from https://spark.adobe.com/page/YnuLb4ceebzHQ/.

Riel, M. (May, 2020) Action researchers’ collaboration through learning circles. STAR ARC Newsletter. Retrieved 9/16/20 from https://spark.adobe.com/page/YnuLb4ceebzHQ/

Reflecting from an Action Research Perspective on Remote Education Praxis under Pandemic Circumstances in Venezuela.

By Geitza Rebolledo Márquez (PhD)

I am reflecting on remote (online) educational praxis under pandemic circumstances within the Venezuelan context from an action research perspective. I will explore how remote or virtual education has been implemented in a country that is under a catastrophic political and economic situation that is directly affecting the education of millions of students. I will describe how things are, and how they might have been otherwise overcoming the challenges of a pandemic. I examine this educational practice from my experience as a professor at The Pedagogic University, (UPEL IPC), in Caracas and from the discussions gathered of several online meetings with colleagues from my university. UPEL has a long tradition, of more than 80 years preparing new teachers. I begin by describing how Remote Education is being implemented at basic schooling, particularly the Pedagogical praxis implemented through tv and its effects on new Venezuelan generations. This analysis begins by raising a set of questions:

What is the teacher praxis that has evolved within remote or virtual education in the Venezuelan context concerning the public schools and the private school sectors?

Is the goal of remote or virtual education just to provide some education activity to the people without attending to the social, economic, and political formation of a new generation?

How might these circumstances be addressed by action research?

Though universities have been closed for the last nine months, for this reflection, it has been possible to gather information from my university colleagues in online meetings* and reports recently published internationally.

The Venezuelan background of Remote Virtual Education

The Ministry of Education of Venezuela is responsible for the planning, teaching, and evaluation of Education in the country. It is responsible for oversight of both public and private schools After the illegal presidential election of 2018, the country's socio-economic conditions plunged making the living conditions similar to those from the 1920s. Venezuela is facing the highest inflation on the planet which has negative effects on the country's infrastructure. The country suffers from shortages of food, oil, gas, water, and even electricity. The political and socio-economic catastrophe has driven five million people to leave the country as refugees to different Latin American countries like Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Chile, and Panamá. There are political struggles to the point of killings of thousands of people this year by the government police (United Nations Report 2020).

Currency devaluation creates another difficult challenge for the people of Venezuela. At the time of this writing, one US dollar equals 370 Bs (Bolivars). People that have access to dollars pay goods with this currency which forms the unofficial currency. Under these conditions, the primary school teacher’s salary in state schools is no more than ten dollars per month, and public universities professors' highest pay scale status is only thirty dollars a month. With the cost of a dozen eggs approaching two dollars, it is easy to understand that educators are now living in extreme poverty. The news reports indicate that teachers are massively retreating from work in public state schools and Universities. Hence education and specifically remote education under the pandemic has become a very complex matter.

Remote (online) Education in Public Schools during the Pandemic

To understand the context of remote education one has to start by understanding how the Ministry of Education has centralized the school curriculum of the country. This means they are responsible for the design of education curriculum programs and its administration together with teaching implementation, including evaluation. Hence, under pandemic circumstances, the Ministry of Education has been charged with implementing remote education in the country. However, due to its recent developments, the quality of the curriculum implementation of remote education is under discussion by society. Newspapers, radio and TV programs have published many critics.

In 2005, The Ministry of Education had created the Canaimita Project to supply children of the public primary schools with small computers. However, support for the Canaimita Project faded away in primary schools, because of a lack of investment in resources for education in recent years. This was particularly true for efforts to implement computers for remote education in the public school sector. An additional challenge is that there are no official computer platforms for Education. Hence, remote education implementation in Venezuela according to CEPAL –UNESCO (2020) is classified as the live classes transmitted through TV with support from the computer application- WASUP. This implementation strategy of remote education must rely on families' and teachers' connections to television and cell phones. The majority of the families and teachers own very basic cellphones in a country with the slowest internet in South America and with a shortage of electricity. According to the Education Teachers Association, only 10% of teachers own "smart" cellphones. The teachers and families of the children attending the public schools are called on to support remote education. Additional challenges of electricity shortage in the country, also directly affect remote education. Thus the lack of equipment, as well as infrastructure has negative effects on remote education (CEPAL 2020).

Public Universities are also affected by the lack of equipment to implement remote teaching and learning. Since 2018 there have been shortages in the education budgets for public universities. This limited funding makes it more difficult for Universities like UPEL to provide economic support for remote learning in the country.

The Ministry of Education efforts at the implementation of remote education curriculum is to provide schools and teachers with the “Collección Bolivariana." These are Encyclopedic books that cover all curricular subjects and provide the course program. However, not all the schools were provided with these texts at the beginning of the school year. For those teachers and students who do have access to the books, the suggested method of teaching and learning is to have the students read and memorize the content and respond to the questions that are contained in the books.

In areas with little or no access to televisión or cellphones or who live in places without consistent electricity, the students have to go to their schools to copy the homework and questions written by the teachers, and when they finish their homework those have to be returned back to school. In small towns, teachers also have to go to the children's homes to collect and evaluate children's homework. Groups of parents have been protesting the length of the homework given by some teachers. It is also the case that parents might be completing the task without involving the students. It is impossible to know how much work is being completed by the students.

Similarly, there are many challenges to the continuous evaluation of children's progressive learning. It is hard for teachers to gather evidence of students' progress. This leads to a low-quality evaluation of the students learning process. There has been public criticism on the educational TV of the teachers' low-quality praxis in relation to curriculum contents, like in Mathematics. Particularly criticism has been level about the way in which fractions were being taught without deep conceptual understanding. Instead, students were just memorizing content that they do not know how to use in mathematical reasoning.

Teachers had little professional preparation for teaching their classes online. Without this education, it can be more difficult than in planning for in-person teaching. In addition, as students are used to TV dynamic programs like cartoons and movies, they might find teachers' first efforts to use technology boring. Teachers need to have access to videos, movies, etc., that could be used in order to motivate students towards learning in a more dynamic way.

Another important dimension of the effort to move remote education online is that it relies on parents to support student learning at home. Many of those living in more rural areas have a lower formal education level. They are less likely to be computer literate so they cannot communicate easily with the teachers. Hence, instead of education providing a way for new generations to progress, the move to online education might be developing disadvantages for educational progress.

So that are three serious problems that challenge remote teaching. First, there is the issue of inadequate access to online learning technology, electricity, and programming, second, the teachers have not been prepared to teach online, and finally, good teaching paxis requires a deep understanding of the students themselves incorporating individual students interests into the teaching and learning process. The implementation of remote education has been challenging in all of these respects.

Remote Education Private Sector Schools During the Pandemic

The private school sector has more resources and has adopted a different strategy of implementation than the one described for public state schools during the pandemic. In addition to providing extra economic support for teachers, the majority of the private schools own better building infrastructure and equipment. Also, students' families own computers and have better living standards. Teachers are sending tasks via computers to children and their families. Parents help them to send back their homework and are supporting the whole educational process of their children. Many private schools are working with Google classroom programs.

There are some private schools, run by the Catholic Church, that are placed in deprived áreas of the big cities like Caracas that are attended by low income families. These schools like Fe y Alegría, are also implementing online education that is taking into consideration innovative methodologies like project work.

Also, a private industry like Fundación Polar has adopted some public sector schools from deprived áreas in Caracas, providing infrastructure, food for students, in-service courses, and better salaries for teachers. They have been supporting teachers and parents with online programs transmitted by WASUP about different ways of teaching values and the use of neuroeducation (Tovar 2019) to help students to learn at home. However, there is a need to research under the remote education scheme context, how the teachers are implementing in their classes the computer platforms provided and the WASUP courses mentioned.

Conclusions

I have reflected briefly on some aspects of the situation of the remote education in Venezuela from an educationist perspective. It is clear that there are great differences among the teaching in public and private school sectors in the country. The private sector still needs improving and more research, however, the situation of the public schools urgently needs to be considered. Otherwise, the gap between those with and without resources will continue to widen for the next Venezuelans generations. There are some ideas that can be developed for improving education from the perspective of action research. A central issue is related to the development of teachers' and schools' competence in designing and executing remote education of the students.

Among those are the following:

1. There is a need to urgently devised materials for teachers about planning classes under remote or virtual education that should be accessed through cell phones. These should be developed not only by the Ministry of education but also by the private sector that already has experience in working with schools together with recognized Universities in the field of Education like UPEL. This is needed in order to cope with demands on the professional practice of teachers

2. Collaborative circles of teachers could be formed in order to plan curricular activities utilizing project-based learning and adapted to the school context, pandemic situation, and the needs of the learners.

3. Collaborative learning circles can be created online among teachers and parents, in order to clarify educative situations affecting the students learning. In addition, more attention can be given to developing student responsibility for their learning.

4. Special short courses for parents and teachers should be devised, evaluated, and implemented on values and neuroeducation, like those applied by the private sector, mentioned earlier. These efforts might help teachers and students cope with positive teacher-student –parents relations under the pandemic circumstances in addition to foster practical learning.

5. Special support projects for families from underpriveleged situations should be specially considered.

6. Health consideration under pandemic circumstances should be developed in schools projects.

In conclusion, I have briefly discussed some of the aspects of the praxis of online education that are in urgent need of change in primary schooling in Venezuela. These ideas should work as a catalyst for future action research studies in order to deepen our understanding of teaching and learning in these challenging times.

Bibliography

CEPAL,UNESCO (2020).Informe COVIT 19.

Chirino,Y.(2016)La Química Verde en la Praxis del Docente de la Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador. Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas.

Ponte, P.Ax, J. ( 2007) Praxis: Analysis of Theory and Practice. Chapter 1 Critiquing Praxis. Conceptual and Empirical Trends in the Teaching Profession. Sense Publishers.The Netherlands.

Rebolledo,G.Requena,V.Melendez,E. Changing Teaching Practice Using Information and Communication Technology. In Promoting Change Through Action Research. (Eds). Franz Rauch, Angela Schuster, Thomas Stern, Maria Pribila and Andrew Towsend. CARN.Sense Publishers.

Riel, M.(2011) Learning Circles used in a Master Level Learning Technologies Program. Center for Collaborative Action Research. Pepperdine University. Assessed on Sep 30 2020, http://onlinelearningcircles.org.

Tesis Doctoral.UPEL- IPC.Caracas.Venezuela.

Tovar A. (2019) Corpus Teórico Orientado a la Formación Docente Basado en las Neurociencias Educativas. Tesis Doctoral. Universidad Pedagógica Libertador. Instituto Pedagógico Libertador. Caracas .Venezuela.

*My Thanks for excellent talks online about the Venezuelan Remote Education situation to Dr.Yusmeny Chirinos. Universidad Pedagógica Libertador Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas, and Dr. Angel Tovar. Universidad Pedagógica Libertador Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas.

Online Learning in the Shadow of a Worldwide Pandemic

By Margaret Riel

Personal Reflections:

Like everyone else, the unseen virus has altered my social life practices. Social distancing from family and friends is difficult. But for academic work, my changes have not been as intense as for others. I have worked online my whole career and enjoy the affordances of online interaction. I work with people from around the country and around the world. Sorting out time differences can pose a challenge, but once a common time has been identified, it is possible to work closing with people whom you might only have seen briefly at national or international conferences.

I was actively engaged with the very first educational uses of telecommunication in education in the 80's, (shared text messages and keyboard -ASCII- graphics). I have participated in the evolution of telecommunications over the decades to group video conferencing and full sharing of computer programing and applications. I have developed "Learning Circles" for working in groups online (onlinelearningcircles.org) and used it in a Master's level online program in learning technologies where action research was the culminating project. For decades I have been engaged in the International Education and Learning Network (iEARN) "Learning with the world instead of just about the world." Fortunately, the CO-VID19 virus arrived at a time when we have the tools to take learning online in engaging and exciting ways, even for the youngest students.

In my current retirement status, I work with two groups, global educators (iearnactionresearch.org), and the action research professors (Supporting the Teaching of Action Research-Community) as well as facilitate a range of action research activities. These groups meet and work online so my professional interactions are not greatly impeded by the pandemic. I do, however, sorely miss the reunion of groups in conferences that have been canceled as a result of the pandemic. These conferences are the blended part of online learning and without it, online learning is more difficult to sustain.

While I had both decades of experience and the availability of online programs and tools, many students and educators are completely unprepared for this engaging way of learning. For many principals, teachers, students, and parents this period has created an extremely steep learning curve as creating online learning is multi-faceted involving technology equipment and connections, integration of sets of programs, new learning materials, designs of social arrangements, and development of new methods of evaluation. Schools that have been using technology, connecting their students to people and experiences with these tools, have been able to evolve new learning plans. Unfortunately poorer schools where technology was less prevalent or students who have special needs that require much physical help have suffered the most during this process. Sending technology to homes to where families have not had the money or time to work with technology places parents in the difficult role of trying to teach their students a new language without the needed support. Just finding and keeping the students in class is a huge undertaking.

Structuring Online Learning

So what are the most important factors involved in moving from face-to-face teaching to learning online? The process engages one in rethinking her or his (1) conception of knowledge, teaching, and learning; (2) understanding the relative roles of the student and the teacher; and (3) methods for assessing progress and success. Since our community supports the teaching of action research, my examples will be drawn from this process, although they apply more generally to teaching multiple subjects and ages.

1) Conceptions of knowledge, learning, and teaching. These topics have challenged the thinking and writing of theorists and philosophers throughout the ages. Plato's conception of knowledge as "justified true belief" raises obvious questions about the meaning of each of these three terms. Efforts to resolve "what is knowable" raises doubts about the very possibility of intersubjective knowledge. Those who teach do not necessarily have to have extensive philosophical backgrounds with an extensive understanding of the nature of knowledge, although John Dewey might suggest otherwise. However, every teacher or professor has to decide on what is worth knowing and how this process of knowing is either shared or shaped by the learner-teacher interactions.

Moving teaching online provokes renewed discussions about what is important for a student to be able to say, think, and do. Learning theories vary in terms of how much importance they place on repetition and recall vs. integration and innovation. How one thinks about these issues will shape the type of learning context either in class or online learning. Moving online encourages teachers and professors to externalize their understanding of what counts as knowledge, teaching, and learning. Action research by it's nature suggests that knowledge is a social construction and that learning involves a praxis where theory and action are blended with inquiry and reflection. These conceptions of knowledge learning and teaching can help shape a dynamic online teaching and learning context.

2) The roles of the students and the professor. In face-to-face learning professors often dominate the class time sharing their knowledge by demonstrating the integration of ideas from multiple sources that they believe that the students will need to be successful. In the classroom, the students listen and take notes, later alone they will need to do the more difficult work of transforming information to knowledge and use this knowledge to accomplish their goals.

In blended or online learning, flipping these practices can be effective. The students can be charged to find the information. There are many online tutorials, books, or websites that can help them find and read information. The group time is most valuable for converting information to knowledge in more active dialogue. And because it is important that everyone is actively engaged, it is best if 4-6 students are placed in "learning circles." This balances the diversity of ideas with the time for everyone to lead a part of the discussion. Adults, by virtue of their diverse cultures, backgrounds, and ideas, bring different resources to the meetings. So each of them will understand even the same information in different ways. If the students are placed in charge of finding, reading and transferring information to knowledge, the professor's role shifts from sharing their knowledge to one of promoting and evaluating learning.

3) Methods of Assessment. This is often what teachers find most challenging as traditional timed tests are much harder to monitor online, especially if they are testing recall. Students online can cut and paste from resources on the internet providing information that has hardly been read, much less integrated into usable knowledge. So this form of testings is less effective. However online contexts enable many other forms of assessment that are linked with conceptions of constructed knowledge and shared cognition.

One dynamic way to assess learning is to examine learning products that the students create when they are online together. Since they have to share their work electronically, there are digital footprints as they externalize their thinking through dialogue and text. If students are given more latitude to teach and learn from each other, then teachers can use their time with students to raise reflective questions and recording how students respond to these questions. Like students, they can multitask taking notes as they listen to students discuss ideas. In action research, it is important for researchers to keep action research journals to chart their own changes over time. These blogs can document the learning process. The final reflection that is part of action research provides a window into how students assess their learning over time. If students in a learning circle take on the role of leading the group in an area or skill, then the resulting skills of the group reflect on the ability of the leader. When meeting with a circle for students, the teacher can ask evaluative questions to understand the group's progress. When not meeting with a circle, the circle record of their dialogue can also serve as a documentation of learning.

Specific Challenges in engaging in Action Research in Online Settings

While learning to do action research with colleagues or with other university students might not be too difficult, what are the additional issues that come from conducting action research online? These are a few of the issues that educators might face as they try to do action resarch within social settings that are mediated by online technology tools.

1) Scale -- A challenging aspect of action research is that it is a reflective process of iterative change over time. You cannot do action research on your whole working context. It is not a process of demonstrating how well a new program is working (evaluation research is better for this purpose). It is about learning from changes we make in complex systems and understanding how one change affects others. Finding an innovative action of the right scale to focus on is more difficult when everything is an innovation.

2) Baseline -- Setting up a completely new learning context that is multi-dimensional and without a history, makes it difficult to examine change. Action researchers examine change over time using past experiences as a baseline. When so much has changed, it may be difficult to make the comparisons that help one to understand a particular change.

3) Evaluation - Documenting the reactions to changes can be more challenging when the participants are all in different contexts. While it is difficult to understand what is involved in creating a learning organization, it is clear that having people isolated does restrict some of the informal learning patterns that might be essential for supporting effective and productive organizational learning.

4) Reflection - The learning in action research comes from reflection. To be in a reflective mode, one can not be operating in crisis mode. It takes quiet time to reflect. If one is overwhelmed and unable to do all of the things that are required it is doubtful a person will be able to find the time for reflection.

Given the changes we are currently experiencing in society, the shift to online learning is an opportunity to learn. We are problem solvers and the pandemic is giving us large and complex problems to solve. Rising to the occasion and finding novel ways to design our time and space together will produce new ideas that will spring us forward in our planning, acting and reflecting. This new ideas have the potential to reshape learning long after the pandemic fades from our lives.

Teaching Educational Action Research in Europe

By Christine Lechner

I have lived and worked in education in Austria for the whole of my working life, but have also worked in or cooperated on projects with colleagues from all E.U. and associated countries and including those Council of Europe countries not in the E.U. Over the past months we have seen how Europeans have experienced unprecedented upheavals in education everywhere and at all levels.

It is an honour to have the opportunity to contribute to this Newsletter on pandemic experiences from a European perspective. I begin by (1) commenting on my experiences learning and teaching action research in Austria, (2) describing recent experiences teaching action research across Europe, (3) discussing the impact on education, and finally, (4) sharing experiences that I have been making in my community work.

1. Teaching Action Research in Austria

a. My action research journey began in the early 1990s when I enrolled in a postgraduate action-research course as a practising teacher. The starting point for action research traditions in Austria was the immensely successful courses PFL courses established in the 1980’s at the University of Klagenfurt (https://ius.aau.at/de/pfl-paedagogik-und-fachdidaktik-fuer-lehrerinnen/). Courses were offered to teachers of different subject areas supporting them to investigate their own practices to further develop their teaching knowledge and competences as well as their theoretical understanding. In 1996 I was invited to join the team of the PFL-English course and later co-ordinated the course. Over the years, I experienced how many teachers found inspiration to do action research, to change their approaches in the classroom and to dare to embark on new career paths. Professional growth was nurtured within a community, which met face-to-face in different settings for a total of 24 days over a period of two years. Spending time together discussing professional issues as well as sharing meals and evenings was a part of the culture and for many the beginning of longstanding professional friendships.

The courses ran for over 30 years without interruption. However, following national restructurings at the political level there were delays in restarting the courses in 2018, which were then postponed until 2020. At this stage there were intensive discussions about how certain face-to-face elements might be replaced by online meetings, although this setting was difficult to envisage. The final application phase was scheduled to end on the 29th of March, 2020, which was two weeks into Lockdown in Austria. The situation has temporarily blocked further developments, but course organisers are working on re-establishing action-research trainings in the future. They will continue to explore if online meetings can be replaced by some face-to-face sessions involving journeys across the country are feasible.

2 . Teaching Action Research across Europe

I am the co-ordinator of a project on action research at the European Centre for Modern languages. The centre is an institution of the Council of Europe responsible for innovation and enhancement of language education in the 33 member states. All projects funded by the ECML focus on language education, however our project, Action Research Communities for language teachers is the only project which promotes action research (www.ecml.at/actionresearch).

At the beginning of 2020 the ARC project received funding for a further four years to hold two-day workshops for teachers and teacher educators in ECML countries with the aim to inspire classroom teachers and teacher educators to engage with action research. Workshops were scheduled to be held at universities in Denmark and Lithuania during the Spring of 2020 and planning was completed during the early part of the year. In March, as Lockdown was enforced in European countries, step-by-step and from different dates in different countries, it became clear that there would be no mobility in the Spring and the focus for face-to-face sessions shifted to the Autumn.

On the one hand, the experience was frustrating. We were ready to travel and excited about working with teachers in different national settings promoting action research but, suddenly, the world had changed. It was no longer possible to plan and carry out these workshops and life slowed down. On the other hand, this slowing down suddenly gave us all time to think. Instead of rushing around getting materials copied, finishing power-points and hopping on planes, we had time to really reflect in depth about the why and the how of our actions.

Traditionally, Training and Consultancy workshops mean that 2 team-members travel to a country arriving just in time to discuss last-minute organisation with local organisers and working intensively for two-days, then saying goodbye with hopes that participants would continue working on the workshop theme. The new situation has led to ideas that we could, very feasibly, prepare for the main workshop through an online pre-workshop, which would introduce the theme and give participants preparatory tasks. Main workshops will now take place on two consecutive days but will be much shorter than the traditional face-to-face sessions. Following the main workshop, participants will be asked to embark on small action research projects, taking first AR-steps based on the ARC-action research spiral supported online by course leaders. (Fig.1)

It is now clear that there will be an online follow-up during which participants will be able to share experiences and present mini-projects. This is a further innovation developed at a time of crisis.

We have just started to run the trainings and we are learning a lot. We are finding out that the online tools developed by the project www.ecml.at/actionresearch are particularly suitable to be shown online! We have learnt how to work in a very focussed way reducing time-slots and we have seen the importance of the functionality of the platform used providing facilities to show materials through screenshare moving flexibly from powerpoint to pictures and websites, to chat and record the chat, to allow participants to speak and to see everyone during the session, to allow discussions in breakout rooms with smooth movement into the breakout rooms and return to plenary. (Fig.2)

And there have been some unexpected benefits. In a recent training in Romania, teachers from different parts of the country were surprised by the invitation to participate in sessions organised by a CPD centre in Siebenbürgen held by international trainers. This would not have been possible within the normal programme of face-to-face training sessions and they were grateful for the opportunity. The feedback submitted in an online format was really encouraging. (Fig.3)

3. Impact on Education

Impact on education has varied tremendously across Europe and Lockdown was handled in different ways in different counties. The starting date stretched from early Lockdown recommendations in badly hit Italian regions from mid-February to late Lockdown in countries with a high number of cases such as the U.K. or no enforced national lockdown (only recommendations) in Scandinavian and Baltic countries where fewer cases were reported. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52103747)

In view of the differences in the levels of crisis and the ways in which the situation was handled by governments, I would only like to refer to one aspect here: concerns voiced in many places that it is the children who are left behind in normal circumstances who have suffered the most during Lockdown. In interviews with educational experts published in August in a reputable Austrian newspaper , it was estimated that two-thirds of children lost out during Lockdown. It is not only those with migration backgrounds, as frequently propagated, but all children living in difficult circumstances, where homes can become dangerous places in times of conflict. A number of children simply could not be reached through online learning. (https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000119654139/was-ein-schullockdown-anrichtet-zwei-drittel-unserer-kinder-haben-verloren). At the present moment in time, there are grave concerns as to how the situation will develop as the school year has begun with much uncertainty in these difficult times.

4. Community Work

At the beginning of the year I began to work with women in a hostel for refugees near Innsbruck on A1 German, helping them to make first steps in the language of the host country before official courses were granted. The women I worked with came from Middle Eastern and African countries. Due to the difficulty of working groups with varying levels of literacy, I met with the women individually. From the first meetings, it became clear, for example, that one young woman was focussed on acquiring German and had no problems reading worksheets and making notes. She always came to meetings on time, read through worksheets from previous sessions and was ready to concentrate on the next steps.

For other women, the process was very different. They explained to me with pride that women in their country do not work but keep house and one woman in particular found copying words from a worksheet very challenging. They were always late for our meetings, and I needed to look for them, call into the living quarters to remind them to come. Courses were interrupted by Lockdown and resumed after Easter. However, following a couple of Covid-19 cases in the refugee community in the Tyrol, although not in the hostel, no visitors to the hostel were allowed. The ban has been lifted temporarily, but is likely to be reintroduced unexpectedly at any time.

Thus, over the past weeks, I have been attempting to teach online. One problem encountered is that the residents in the hostel do not, in general, have access to a computer. Communication with the young woman works well, organisation of meeting times via WhatsApp is unproblematic and she accesses a learning platform on her cell-phone. The most complex issue here is that worksheets with pictures that are needed at A1 level, are very difficult to access on a phone whilst simultaneously speaking. Secondly, abstract concepts can only be understood by using a translation programme, which is installed on phones, but difficult to access at the same time as using the platform. Last week, I was thrilled to hear that a laptop had been donated to the hostel; however, this very keen student told me that there was no one in the hostel to help her learn how to use the laptop and without this assistance, it was of little use to her.

So far it has not been possible to reach the other woman online. Although they are registered on WhatsApp, they are never online at the agreed time and it is not possible to reach them in another way. We will need to find new creative solutions if we move back into a form of Lockdown.

On the other hand, new approaches are emerging all the time. One new development is the idea to meet the women in an adjacent park in fine weather. As long as the sun is shining, this is certainly a possibility and also leading to pedagogical developments. Here “Movement in the language classroom”, is a necessity, not a game. In the Autumn and Winter, one can only sit on a park bench looking at worksheets for a certain amount of time. So, we walk and talk, go over the information on the sheets, revise, discuss. In some ways this approach is more effective than sitting at a desk, because new words and structures need to be memorised before we start walking and the movement supports learning.

The pandemic has and is challenging all of us to rethink what we are doing and why we do it. The situation has led to some difficult situations, but it has also opened minds, led to some new learning experiences and creativity.

As expressed in a message written by a woman living in the hostel, there is hope!

Spanish Flu to COVID-19: a 100-Year Women's Narrative in America

By Teri Marcos

How has the ‘stilling’ of America affected women in the U.S. during COVID-19? What differences exist in women's issues as related to the current challenges of the global COVID pandemic and the Spanish Flu 1918-1920?

A Reflective Chronology-From COVID Backward:

While I currently serve at National University as the interim director for the Ed.D. in Organizational Innovation (San Diego, CA) I fondly remember my teaching years in Jr. high school when I taught 7th grade World Cultures and Geography, and 8th grade American History. It was then that I developed a desire to know and understand much more about the peoples of our world and how the world got to be as it was then. I am just as curious about how the world got to where we are currently.

In those days I was a young wife and mother. While teaching both levels of Jr. high history, I wondered how I would balance everything expected of me while prepping for two such different subjects, and somehow I did. I had wonderful support from home toward work, and wonderful support from work toward home to be a wife and mom. I loved my students and community and cherished a fabulous 20-year career in the same district, at two schools, as teacher, administrator, and district Coordinator of GATE programs.

I didn't understand the issues some women faced, however. I often taught history backwards asking my students to interview their parents, or grandparents, as related to a then current intersection of the curricular content and world, state, or local issues. My students would investigate a current problem of practice they found relevant within our world, ask their parents or grandparent/s for their perceptions, and report their findings. Many of their grandparents were veterans of one war, or another. Some of their grandparents were survivors of Nazi Germany. Some of their parents were single parents, and many of my students were children of prisoners. With four prisons in my town, and with California maintaining 33 state and 11 federal prisons with 115,000 incarcerated (formerly 170,000 prior to COVID) social emotional learning and supportive community partnered programs to enhance the psychological safety of students were on the rise, as they are today.

I learned in those years that I was a very privileged woman. My parents were still married and that made me privileged in the world in which I worked as many of my children had suffered, or were to suffer, the brokenness that comes when families are no longer. I learned that some moms really struggled to make ends meet and that getting to a helpful place around something as simple as homework became an uphill challenge. Yet, all the while these moms were struggling in multiple areas, they put their children first. They wanted their children to have the best teachers. They wanted their children to have the brightest future they could possibly have. This is hardwired into mothers over many generations.

COVID-19 notwithstanding, women face many challenges in our world. Looking backward, as I taught my students to do so many years ago, I reflect upon how different today is. In the 60s the U.S. Army penned the phrase VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous). I suppose if anyone is an expert in this area it would be a military organization charged to train up their clientele to defend the country. Yes, we live in a VUCA world. We begin the doctorate program at National University with this early conversation. Organizational Innovation is only accomplished when its context and purpose is both understood, and operationalized within the world it serves.

A hundred years ago the many innovations of products coupled with the critical discovery and development of mass production during the Industrial Revolution created economies to scale that even today continue to merit full coffers for America. The Industrial Revolution changed the nation, and the world. Yet, too, while women gained the right to vote during the height of the same period and entered the workforce through the need of factory owners to keep their assembly lines moving, current data reveal that perhaps very little has changed for women from the Spanish Flu to COVID-19. While, data show women and men are moving closer in earning equality in America, PEW reported in 2017 that 2/3 of men still earn more than women in two income families while women remain the primary caregivers of their children.

And, often, by choice.

Over the last century a plethora of literature has emerged around women's issues. While American women during the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919 were consumed with the then deeply hoped for possibilities that could only come from operationalized abolition and the subsequent realities of what suffrage could mean for women in the U.S., their lived experiences were as vastly different as the geographic regions in which they lived, not unlike today. The issues women faced 100-years ago included education, childbearing and child rearing, human trafficking, violence against women, opportunities to work, lead, and equal pay for equal work. Today, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of State, the United Nations, and others note that issues for women include the same list of topics, while scholarly literature as related to women's issues and women's studies continues to proliferate.

What happened to women in America during the 'stilling' of March 2020 just as COVID-19 medical experts and politicians called for Americans to begin to shelter in place? Schools and businesses closed. Children stayed home. Men and women worked from home, or stayed home as they lost their positions. Did women's independence become a silent victim of the pandemic?

Not only are women found to be historically the caregivers of children, they also care for their spouses, and parents. As the American economy soared before COVID-19 two income families were the norm while childcare was paid for out of their salaries. As the economy was adversely affected by closures and layoffs unpaid care decisions fell to parents with children, with women most often returning home to provide care for their families. This holds true at the writing of this article as many schools are still closed and online education is being delivered with at least one parent (or grandparent) in the home to ensure children are engaging with their teachers and peers. Although externally imposed during the COVID-19 crisis these types of decisions have historically been culturally framed and formed over time across many nations and peoples. For the American female the era of the 1950s and 60s saw women enter the workforce while exponentially increasing two income households across the nation. COVID-19 reversed these data as 52 million jobs were lost in America alone. Pew, Census 2020, CNBC, Congressional Research Service.

Although, as early as 1401, Christine De Pizan in her work, The Book of the City of Ladies, noted that oppression of women was founded on irrational prejudice, gender equality was not a phrase penned until the Women's Rights and Feminist Movements of the twentieth century. Women also gained property rights, particularly in relation to their marital status. Much of this is credited to the Married Women's Property Acts, a series of laws enacted in individual states in the U.S. beginning in 1889. These acts followed similar laws enacted by Parliament in Britain, Wales, and Ireland, (but not extended to Scotland) in 1882.

While these Acts during the 19th century were viewed as a middle foundation to the rights of women gained in the 20th century, the 18th century in America proved the original grounding for Women's Rights in the US. The Shakers, a branch of Quakers, left England, and while emigrating to America, began the practice of elders (men) and eldresses (women) separately ministering to their men and women congregants with the goal to balance the rights of the sexes and maintain gender balanced leadership. They accomplished this for over 200 years. Radical for the time, this practice laid the foundation for women to serve in the ministry, in leadership, in fulfilling a purpose other than childbearing and rearing, and opened opportunities to work together with other women's rights advocates.

The Spanish Flu of 1918-19 proved a progenitor to the advancement of American women. Women in the U.S., in particular, both possess and historically demonstrate a unique if not pathological drive to perform as evidenced during crises. The Smithsonian Institute and National Geographic report the lived experiences of American women during the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919. While women were vastly negatively affected by the loss of human life that the last pandemic imposed, they were challenged to act quickly in three areas:

1) their men were called to war during WWI creating the need for women to primarily lead their families;

2) as nurses, women became the primary caregivers of the war injured and the pandemic ill; and,

3) women's opportunities to work flourished as factories lost their men to war and disease. 175,000 more men died from the Spanish Flu, than women. By 1920 women comprised 21% of the workforce in America.

As women began to move into industries that they were previously excluded from they also began to demand equal pay. Women learned to advocate for themselves. Women's rights became a household conversation—including the right to vote. American women eventually gained more professional and personal independence. As women subsequently began to take on more leadership roles in the workplace they eventually became influential in the government.

As more and more government agencies were created post Suffrage, laws were created to ensure the rights of women. The Women's Rights Movement, begun during Suffrage, marched onward, bent on liberating former practices of discrimination that only anti-discrimination laws could ensure would end. These laws made provision for fully half of the American population ensuring all of the benefits of women's hard earned contributions to civilization.

A Projective Chronology-From COVID Forward:

Today, The World Health Organization recognizes gender: To ensure that different groups of women and men, boys and girls, have equal opportunities to achieve their full health potential. They additionally recognize equity: To enhance fairness in the distribution of health across populations.

The current COVID-19 pandemic surfaced and revealed many of the inequities inherent in the roles men and women play in society. As the primary care-givers of their children women returned home from work when online education became the norm for schools. Mothers (and grandmothers) served their children's needs around curriculum and technology particularly with decisions being made between two-income parents. Providing for their children's learning needs while continuing to work from home women are sacrificing their careers as businesses reopen. New York Times

Women's identified issues remain relatively unchanged in America, over the past 100-years. Education, childbearing and child rearing, human trafficking, violence against women, opportunities to work, lead, and equal pay for equal work remain at the core of the research and work contributing to improving human rights for women. Over the next 100-years women's issues will reflect advances according to the U.S. Department of State:

"Women and girls make up half the world’s population. Yet far too often, their voices, experiences, and contributions are overlooked or undervalued. They are underrepresented in the halls of political and economic power and overrepresented in poverty, while barriers—from gender-based violence and lack of political and economic opportunities, to laws that hold women to a different standard—block the path to progress.

Inequality and the low status of women and girls have vast political, economic, and social implications. This can limit the ability of communities to resolve conflict, countries to boost their economies, or regions to grow enough food. The untapped potential of women remains a lost opportunity for economic growth and development the world can ill afford. The inclusion of women in peace and security, and conflict prevention and resolution, is essential to ensure gains reach all members of society.

The United States is committed to advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls through U.S. foreign policy. The Department of State has identified four key priorities to advance gender equality and the status of women and girls around the world:

1. Women, peace, and security;

2. Women’s economic empowerment;

3. Gender-based violence;

4. Adolescent girls."

While my former Jr. highers taught me many key-learnings from their action research findings over my early teaching career, my Year 2 doctoral students are currently advancing their problems of practice (POP) into prospectus' from their original Year 1 Scope of Study (SOS). These are each applied culminating projects with foci on the workplace. I interviewed them as related to the challenges they are currently facing during COVID-19. Themes emerging from Year 2 doctoral student interviews, conducted with 21 doctoral students on 9.28.2020 as related to the challenges they are currently facing in light of COVID-19 restrictions across their organizations, are the following:

1. As a supervisor, instructor, student, or researcher what are the most relevant issues you have encountered in your teaching or practice during this time of worldwide Pandemic?

Having students (children) learning online while you’re working online. It is difficult to supervise their learning when you are working from home.

Managing time differently. Moved away from thinking time. Build it into your schedule.

Overcoming technology issues. Not having the resources of adequate internet speed.

A lot of legal issues in reopening school. Teachers are not comfortable. Employers are responsible when employees get COVID if they are coerced to work. Over 60 replaced with under 40 age discrimination may be a factor.

2. What practices are you engaging within your community, or organization, that you might recommend others to consider?

District put out a survey to all families and received a 70% response as to how families would like to come back to school. Interested in f2f.

Virtual exercise. No gym but online classes. Yoga. (Quit the gym)

Weekly check-ins with former staff because they were let go.

Modified community interactions, Coffee with a Cop, virtual coffee, Instagram, drive through Halloween.

Virtual town hall.

Partnered with other organizations for food distribution.

3. What is an overarching or Key-Learning you have taken away from enduring this season of global pandemic and how will you apply it in the future?

It’s okay to step away from the computer and take time to just decompress. It is hard, do not login or pick up the cell phone.

The emotional aspect of homeschooling, get out to the mall (outdoor) or the park or a family member to interact and de-isolate.

Healthy eating.

Pelaton App (Biking app).

Lack of childcare in America for working parents. Keep numbers small for facilities to open but there has never been a time in history where we need support for community, etc., as now.

Treat people like professionals, keep workforce safe.

In conclusion, from crises opportunities arise. A hopeful habit of mind assists us to look both backward and forward to effectively help us find our way. American women, for the past 100 years, have pursued victories and overcome challenges, large and small, particularly while enduring crises. The silver lining in what otherwise may have been considered insurmountable (abolition, suffrage, WWI and the Spanish Flu of 1918-19) provided a foundation of hope for what would come during COVID-19. Both pandemics serve as wonderful predictors of what is yet to come for women. If, while women labored where most needed in America's factories as their men were at war during the Spanish Flu, they became nurses and eventually doctors, and entered government steadfastly marching onward in their narrative to be counted, valued, and equal as one half of the population, they succeeded remarkably as they leaned fully in to advantage both an opportunity and to meet a need.

But, what did they do about their children?

They particularly provided for them. They cared for them. They set an example before them that anything is possible when everything seems impossible. They encouraged them through both silence, and action, supported by words when needed. Thus, the worthy narrative of women, pandemic to pandemic, 100 years apart in America, marches onward. At this writing the very real threat of COVID-19 still looms across our world. Men and women continue to lead where they are needed within their families, organizations, and communities.

This is a tribute to humans everywhere. We are each directly, and indirectly, affected by this scourge...all 7.8 billion of us.

And to the children who will always remember, be encouraged to look backward with strength, and forward with hope. There is a silver lining in all of this, an opportunity to march onward, while eventually caring for your own.

For additional scholarly articles, resources, and continued learning: ERIC.

Reflections on Covid-19 and Education in Mexico

By Laura Irene Dino Morales

We currently live in uncertainty since the world has been invaded by Covid-19. One might be tempted to think that not all of us are affected, however, it disturbs every human being that inhabits the planet. Although not all of us have been infected, each of us has been asked to take necessary measures to stop the spread of the infection. These include staying home and if you go out, wear a mask, wash your hands with soap and water for 20 seconds or use antibacterial gel, disinfect everything you buy and our clothing as well as shoes, avoid meetings where they are more than 10 people, whether friends or family. The measures are simple to carry out except for the restrictions on social behavior. People are social beings, we like to be close to other people, our family, friends, colleagues from our work, even enjoy interacting with people we meet in the supermarket.

I am a retired professor from the Normal School of the State of Chihuahua (IByCENECH), where we train future teachers in Mexico. As a student, I took virtual classes and I also earned my master's degree in an online program. Within my teaching, I use blogs, various platforms, Facebook, YouTube, Zoom, Skype for tele-workshops, meetings, conferences. I have developed learning objects and digital materials, that is, I have extensive experience working online. However, in the social part, I feel restless, because I cannot go to congresses, conferences, workshops, courses, nor travel to visit my brothers or for them to visit me. There are no meetings with my friends to go to breakfast, go out to the movies, enjoy traveling, among other things.

My students are active teachers of different levels, from preschool to university, and they are conducting action research, which has been complicated for them because the new way of working online is so different than what they normally do. It takes more time, effort, and requires a series of related skills and knowledge with technologies that are not always available, causing stress and sometimes despair.

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) is not something new, since in Mexico there has been a history of technology implementation in schools, however, most teachers and students lack mastery of these tools. In Mexico, during the 1950s and 1960s, there was a concerted effort to introduce Educational Technology with a focus on audio-visual technical advances of that time. Later, the Telesecundaria modality was designed in the National Educational System in 1998. The Red Escolar (School Network) project was implemented in 1996 as part of the Distance Education Program of the Secretariat of Public Education of Mexico (SEP), with the aim of contributing to the improvement of education by collecting information from students and teachers and the use of telecommunications in education. Between 2001-2010 Enciclomedia (Encyclomedia) was implemented, it was a strategy based on the digitization of textbooks and linked to various multimedia materials aimed at promoting higher quality training processes. These media resources included bibliographic references, video, audio, maps, etc. In 2013, the SEP delivered digitals tablets to teachers and students of 5th and 6th grade of six Federal Entities, as part of the Inclusion and Digital Literacy Program with the projection was that by 2018, teachers and students from all over the country will have these tools. This led to a number of educational programs related to ICT.

The move towards globalization has increased the use of technology in daily life as well as in personal, work, and recreation matters. The educational field was not left behind and it started to be managed (Navarro & Navarro, 2015). The school is immersed in a digital world that implies updating, renewing itself, seeking better teaching methods for new generations (UNESCO, 2013). There was a clear need to create Virtual Teaching-Learning Environments (AVEA) interactive spaces which included evaluations (Álvarez & Tamayo, 2018). Work had been done in Mexico, but there was still much to do when the pandemic restrictions forced the whole educational system online. This process has resulted in a number of challenges.

For teachers:

● Little or no experience in using technology to teach

● Lack of knowledge of online teaching strategies

● Limited time to plan and develop new online activities

● Difficulties with evaluation, since not all students attended virtual classes

● Limited strategies for supporting students who did not understand

● Uneven response and skill from parents; some accepted and others never lacked

● knowledge or time (due to work) to support their children

For students:

● Limited technology access; not everyone has a computer or cell phone

● Special educational needs are often difficult to meet online

● Limited or no access to an internet connection, essential for online learning

● Little or no experiences in using certain platforms or programs

● High need for teacher support

● High need for local support which is problematic if parents are working.

● Need to socialize with their peers

Faced with these situations, in this 2020-2021 school year, the Ministry of Public Education decided that it would use television to deliver lessons so that no one would miss classes. As I mentioned earlier, this form of work is a model of Mexican education created in 1968 and born with the telesecundaria project. The work began with feedback at all levels so that everyone could see the classes, they set different schedules. Below are free and pay television channels where the classes were presented, as well as the schedules by grade for both primary and secondary school students.

The Secretariat of Public Education announced the calendars, schedules, and television stations where the classes will be broadcast from August 24.

Elementary Schedules

Secondary Schedules

Every year the Secretariat of Public Education of Mexico (SEP) delivers free books to students at their schools. This year they have not been able to reach the entire country on time. In some cases the teachers have to reach out to parents to pick up the material or they need to delivered them to the parents by car. In addition, the teachers prepared guides for their children, trying to provide materials that could facilitate their work to align with the plans and programs to avoid falling behind during this school year.

However, like the decisions of the first cycle, the centralized government programs failed to take into account the following issues:

❖ Some students who live in the mountains without reliable electricity or financial resources to buy a television or technology

❖ In some locations with connectivity, there was a problem with saturation of digital channels causing some platforms to fail.

❖ Families often have more than one child so they need several televisions, computers or cell phones with a strong internet connection.

❖ The little ones from 1st grade of primary school are just beginning their reading-writing process, how will they be helped?

❖ Kindergarten children need more support, they do not know the technology to enter virtual classes and cannot read prompts.

❖ Students with special educational needs, street children and youth, indigenous groups, fall further behind as it is difficult to meet their specific needs.

❖ Not all parents are at home as they work or are working online so they cannot spare time to help students learn.

❖ The grandparents who support the grandchildren are unaware of the platforms, the use of “Whatsapp,” that is, the use of technology.

❖ Sometimes parents do not have the education needed to help their children.

Educational inequalities have been exposed and although we knew they existed the pandemic has increased the magnitude. When talking about education in Mexico, the diversity in its population must be considered. The situation we face forces us to rethink the paradigms about education, learning, teaching, school and even the roles that each one plays. As teachers we must analyze and assess the reality and decide what should be done at this time. Is the priority to continue with the study plans and programs? Is knowledge so important? Is selecting the most important the ideal? Our function as teachers is to support the training of students in a comprehensive way, to develop and apply their skills to the problems and situations that arise in life. We must analyze the situation and how to use it, guide students to think and rethink something as important as LIVING, learn to value what we have, what we are, family, health and to protect ourselves. Each scenario that is presented leaves us a lesson and we must take advantage of it. Finally, the focus on content knowledge can be returned to only after these other considerations are addressed.

References

Álvarez, L. & Tamayo, R. (2018). Caracterización de la evaluación de la interactividad en ambientes virtuales de enseñanza aprendizaje en la Universidad de Holguín. Tecnología Educativa, 2(2). Recuperado de https://tecedu.uho.edu.cu/index.php/tecedu/article/view/48/37.

Navarro, E. & Navarro, y. (2015). Entornos virtuales de aprendizaje 2002-2011. México, D.F. Anuies. Consejo Mexicano de Investigación Educativa.

UNESCO (2013). Enfoque estratégico sobre TIC en América Latina y el Caribe. Chile Oficina Regional de Educación para América Latina y el Caribe.