Conference Agenda

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic caused global disruption to everyday life, including the closing of businesses and schools. For children, the pandemic has had impacts beyond health (United Nations, 2022) and posed challenges to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals with relation to education (Ellanki et al., 2022). Due to school closures, an estimated 1.5 billion children worldwide were out of school (Goulds, 2020). Since the early days of the pandemic there has been awareness of the impacts of school closures on the learning experiences of students around the world, including concerns relating to learning loss (Donnelly and Patrinos, 2022). In addition, the pandemic has brought formal education into homes and shifted family involvement in children’s education (Hoskins et al., 2022), although the international literature highlights the uneven distribution and access to ‘remote’ formal learning (Simba et al., 2020). Within Europe for example, Blasko et al. (2022) found differences between children’s access to quality distance learning materials such as a lack of access to the internet, books and parental support. They argue that home-learning resources – particularly for younger children – were already important before the pandemic, with this importance increasing during the school closures.

In comparison with the Global North, children in the Global South faced particular challenges during this time. School closures were also associated with learning loss (Kusumaningrum et al., 2021) and although in some instances this was mediated by the turn to online learning, disparate access to technology meant this solution was unequal (Outhred et al., 2020; Simba et al., 2020). There was a significant urban/rural divide in access to technology compounded by remote locations (Srinivasan et al., 2021; Asadullah and Bhattacharjee, 2022). Of particular importance to rural communities, where parental education and literacy is often low, is the continuation of contact and interaction with teachers (Wangdi and Rai, 2022; Wang et al. 2021). The growing literature on children’s learning during the school closures in the rural Global South is mostly focused on experiences of teachers and secondary school students, with limited focus on the experiences of primary school children in these remote locations. This paper contributes to this gap by focusing on primary school children, as well as the experiences of their teachers and families, in rural communities in Sierra Leone. It draws on a longitudinal mixed-methods study, with a particular focus on data collected both during and after the country’s school closures and highlights the strategies undertaken to support children’s learning in the absence of technological solutions.

Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world, and has low levels of adult literacy and intergenerational education (UNESCO, 2018). Since the end of a brutal civil war in 2002, there has been efforts made to improve access to primary education for all school-age children. The COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant disruption to learning due to schools being closed from March-October 2020. Sierra Leone has also had previous experience in dealing with disease outbreaks, having seen a devastating Ebola epidemic from 2014-2016, six years prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the outcomes for the Sierra Leone government from this experience was ensuring children could continue to learn in future emergencies (MEST, 2018). This paper highlights the strategies taken by schools, communities and families to support children’s continued learning during the COVID-19 school closures, as well as discussing the challenges faced as a result of extreme poverty and rurality.

In the 21st century, new trends in socio-economic development pose new challenges to the education system. The issue of developing the so-called "transformative agency", understood as the ability to proactively influence a person on the surrounding social environment, including the creation of new communities and forms of interaction in various spheres of public life, is highly relevant (Udehn, 2002; Sorokin, Froumin, 2022). Agency can be understood as an umbrella concept combining such constructs as subjectivity, autonomy, independence, initiative, self-determination, self-regulation, and proactivity. Proactive behavior underlying agency is a useful characteristic in the context of social transformations (Sorokin, Froumin, 2022). Agency allows the subject to regard stress or a difficult situation as an incentive to self-development and helps the individual "accept the challenge of fate" by making relatively free choices and taking responsibility for the events (Schwarzer, 2001).

Academic literature suggests that extracurricular activities (ECA) have a high potential in terms of the formation and development of relevant personal qualities and behavioral patterns. Participation of schoolchildren in ECA contributes to the formation of perseverance, independence, cognitive motivation, self-confidence, creativity, and social activity of children and youth (Farkas, 2003; Fletcher, Nickerson, Wright 2003; Baker, 2008). There are two main reasons underlying the importance of ECA for the agency issues. Firstly, it is an initiative choice of programs and a relatively high degree of freedom choice and action, in comparison with a basic school curriculum (Lareau, Weininger, 2008). Secondly, it is the content features of ECA, which are characterized by an emphasis on the creation of educational products, including projects, which allows the student to develop and show the "agent potential" to a greater extent.

Against the well-researched studies on the effects of ECA for various aspects of individual development, the study of the contribution of ECA to the formation and development of the ability to engage in proactive action is limited (Carbonaro, Maloney, 2019). The factors and conditions for the formation of this ability, including the influence of the family and the peculiarities of parental participation in the education of schoolchildren have not been sufficiently explored. Questions about the agency of children in the field of education and the role of parents in its formation are still on the periphery of both the discourse about agency and mainstream education research.

As a result of the covid-19 pandemic, the role and responsibility of students and their families in the educational process have increased (Kalil, Mayer, Shah, 2020; Weaver, Swank, 2021). New and unique conditions have emerged for the manifestation of independence (agency) and, therefore, for their study and analysis. In these conditions, the study of the issues of agency in children engaged in extracurricular activities, in conjunction with strategies reflecting the participation of parents in education, are of particular relevance.

Research questions:

- How did the interaction of schoolchildren with their parents change during the pandemic?

- What was the proportion of families in which rules were developed to adapt to new conditions? How did this proportion differ from families that applied different strategies of interaction between children and parents? If new rules were worked out, what were their sources?

- What is the proportion of students in families with different strategies of interaction with parents, who created collectives, groups on the Internet on issues related to education, or other topics in quarantine?

- What difficulties did students from families with different parental strategies face and what prospects did they see for themselves in the new situation? Which strategies proved to be the most successful in terms of effective adaptation to changed conditions, assessed through the child's perception of new opportunities and challenges?

When Covid-19 put people into widespread physical and interpersonal isolation, we already know from experience the change would create additional, only partially predictable needs. Lagging behind of heretofore real local school community—parent–teacher–school, or even intra-parent—came to the surface (Epstein et al, 2019). In the absence of both psychologic as well as physical Community, people began to appreciate what the lack of such Community would entail—above all a deficit of relational trust—one essential to supporting close collaboration, secure bonding, honest positive relationships, and relatively harmonious interaction amidst increasing surfacing of strong, polarizing, personal, developmental, cultural, and/implicit or obvious diversities.

R.Q.: What are the main /principal elements/features that constitute a successful parent-school relationship & partnership.

I hoped to gain insight, 1) into how much enthusiasm and participation parents in my sample had had for intense involvement with their children’s school pre-Covid-19, 2) whether such interest and intention had been retained, augmented, or diminished by the difficulties, or the opportunities for connection revealed by the necessity for parents to somewhat become co-teacher-collaborators in their children’s education, and 3) whether any perhaps previously unrecognized or previously unappreciated factors had been introduced into the parent-teacher-school relational mix.

International research (Epstein, 2005, Henderson & Mapp, 2002) has shown how reinforced parent’s collaboration with the school community, seems to have positive effects in children’s academic success (Aronson, 1996) as it improves attitude and school performance (Bradley, Caldwell, & Rock, 1988). Numerous ideas, proposals, and models that seek to enhance parent-school partnership, have been proposed from time to time, which attempt to organize the different ways in which the interaction of school and family can best be maintained. In the context of my intent to strengthen the effectiveness of an innovative parent’ engagement model, the theoretical territory most productive to explore lay at the intersection of transformative learning (Mezirow, 2012), from Adults’ Learning Theories, and the principles of philosophy for children- P4C (Lipman &Sharp, 1994) that fosters a community-based reflection and dialogue and could be an applicable educational proposal for adult learners. Both stances are grounded on the proposition that personal and social growth are fostered by dialogue in intrapersonal thought as well as by interpersonal verbal communication that is increasingly liberated from the constraints of personal (sometimes society-wide) assumptions that confine thought and action to patterns that have become or were always dysfunctional.

When Covid-19 changed the conditions for and demands on the entire educational system, the gap in the relationship & partnership between teachers, parents, (and implicitly children) has become increasingly apparent (Mapp & Bergman, 2019). For the construction and maintenance of such a foundation there were things that research hadn’t earlier recognized as particularly important that turned out to be quite essential. New knowledge of their existence was of concern because, the widespread burgeoning of online learning is to be expected because of an increasing dearth of funds worldwide and exponentially expanding technology, even if an environmental mortal threat was absent.

Therefore, extending the Parents’ Community of Inquiry model (Papathanasiou, 2022) to bridging the gap, it would necessitate building a coherent Community of Inquiry with an overarching influence strong enough that it could leverage disparate people out of concrete thinking, and/or affiliation-based mindsets. As developmental psychologist Robert Kegan often says about why developmental change occurs: it’s the environment that mandates and then either supports or bars new ways of thinking and change. In this case, community must encompass a group of people—maybe initially disparate—to the point where there can be a sense of belonging (Galbraith, 2004). A sense of belonging that does not just include, but fully respects, values, and eventually welcomes diversity.