Learning together: Adapting methods for family and community research during a pandemic

In July 2020, Dr. Brigid Barron and her team at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center convened a virtual workshop to mobilize a community of investigators to explore innovative methods for studying family and community learning during the pandemic. Participants included NSF RAPID-COVID grantees from Stanford University, University of Washington, and the University of Michigan.

This report summarizes the strategies and insights generated at this workshop so that they may be shared among a wider network of researchers, practitioners, funders, and policymakers concerned with achieving more equitable educational outcomes during and beyond the pandemic lockdowns. Specifically, the report aims to:

• Provide examples of how researchers are repurposing and reinventing qualitative methods for remote contexts with the aim of expanding and improving these methods for future studies;
• Highlight how families and communities are innovating and adjusting to the pandemic and how these adjustments are shaping learning and wellbeing in unexpected ways;
• Convey on-the-ground perspectives from caregivers and learners about the challenges of remote learning and inspire solutions to solve them; and
• Mobilize collaborative efforts for future research and design.