Abstract
One of the things that has become clear to many scholars, including the authors of this editorial, is that there are many issues raised during the pandemic that did not have their origins in the pandemic itself, but which have persisted for many decades, have complex origins, and which exist within systems governed by diverse values and populated by diverse stakeholders (see, for example, Richmond, Cho, et al., 2020). This is especially true for issues that directly affect the ability of young people to receive the kind of high-quality education they deserve. Because the pandemic has touched the lives of so many individuals and groups, including those who have more economic, social, and political privilege, some issues are positioned by those with privilege as needing to be addressed, and quickly. No better example of such an issue is that of “learning loss,” which has inundated public media and has captured the attention of education professionals and nonprofessionals alike. One of the problems with the conception of learning reflected in this language is that it ignores what students learned from their personal and academic experiences during the pandemic. While some students made less academic progress than they might have otherwise, all students experienced a sudden break from normative schooling and forced social isolation. Given the interconnectedness between socioemotional and academic learning, merely providing instruction on academic content that students missed is unlikely to meet their needs (Aspen Institute National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development, 2019). The best path forward will need to take into account the interconnectedness of social, emotional, and academic development (Darling-Hammond et al., 2020).
To better understand numerous intertwining factors at play, we can draw from complexity theory with its focus on relationships and the intricacies of interconnectedness (Mevawalla, 2013). As Martin and Dismuke (2018) have reminded us, classroom teaching is a layered, intertwining system of interactions and reactions that involve students and teachers in what Weade (1994) termed “co-participatory activity.” The teaching-learning systems are always co-adapting, but never more so than during the pandemic. During this time, it has been crucial that educators, students, and families worked together to determine what was working and what was not working in dynamic ways but under constrained circumstances.
At the same time that the pandemic has highlighted long-standing inequities, it has also highlighted our increasing ability to pivot to address but also prioritize challenges. Many teachers drew on their knowledge of pedagogy and their relationships with students, families, and communities to rise to the challenge, even as they battled with the pandemic and its effects themselves. Many adjusted instruction to online platforms and worked tirelessly to ensure students were engaged in high-quality, cognitively demanding activities on those platforms and took time to check in with students about how they were doing, to talk about students’ questions, concerns, and feelings. Numerous teachers and caregivers recognized that there was also an immense need for relationship building and personal connection with students, and they found ways to do this in the online setting. Many educators were able to heed Freire’s (1970) call for a more humanizing education, as we needed to build upon the lived reality of students’ lives with a greater focus on the co-construction of knowledge such that standardized tests were halted, the role and purpose of homework were questioned, and teachers learned about and implemented trauma- and healing-informed pedagogies. Despite remarkable thought and action by many, however, such powerful and responsive practices have not been universally engaged in by educators and caregivers, and part of the challenge for the field is for us to understand the underlying motivations, reasonings, and capacities.
There are two related ideas that “speak” to our ability to be thoughtful and discriminating in our analyses, as well as nuanced in our interpretations of and responses to educational challenges while at the same time positioning ourselves to be able to pivot to make timely decisions with respect to both research and practice. The first of these ideas is the distinction between “fast and slow thinking,” and the second is the idea of going slow to learn fast. The Nobel Laureate, economist Daniel Kahneman, working with his colleague, Amos Tversky in the area of economic decision-making, developed a theory of human cognition, grounded in the idea of fast and slow thinking. In this view, fast and slow thinking each represent a metaphorical system which together govern the way we interpret and respond to our world (Kahneman, 2011). While fast thinking is automatic, instinctive, unconscious, and emotional (e.g., interpreting a simple statement made to you by a friend), slow thinking is effortful, deliberate, conscious, and logical (e.g., making a decision about an appropriate behavior while at a formal reception). This particular dual-processing theory is relevant because it reminds us that in our haste to address complicated problems, particularly those that feel overwhelming and urgently needing attention, we may be led to engage in fast thinking that can lead us to make errors in judgment and action. What we need to respond to the kinds of complex challenges we have identified here is to engage in slow rather than fast thinking. “Thinking slow” includes thoughtful analysis of multiple forms of evidence, careful consideration of the systems in which problems exist, and an acknowledgment of their often-intractable nature. It also sets the stage for the claims we may be able to make about the nature and origin of complex challenges in education, as well as our potential responses to these challenges.
As the pandemic pushed us to respond quickly, we are also reminded of a similar proposal first described by Tony Bryk and his colleagues in a paper that appeared in the Harvard Education Letter (Bryk et al., 2015). This idea is more directly tied to how to think about and make changes in systems and communities invested in education and emphasizes the need to “go slow to learn fast” as an antidote to what is typical of traditional approaches to solve complex educational challenges, that is, going fast to learn slow. They rightly claim that plans to encourage quick fixes (read new reform efforts) are implemented and typically not much more than modest (if any) outcomes are observed, followed by disappointment that is in turn followed by a shift to another reform effort. The result is that meaningful reform rarely happens—and not only that, but often as a result, the good will which many recruited to such efforts bring with them disappears. It is only through thoroughly understanding how our systems always have functioned and continued to function through the pandemic, considering the outcomes attained, and engaging as learners with all who are invested in addressing the challenges that we can successfully see how to make changes that lead to long-term improvement.
With an understanding of the systemic nature of the challenges at hand, we turn next to the question of how research can contribute to the common good while building knowledge and who needs to be at the table for meaningful work to occur and to be sustained. This was a theme in two recent editorials (Richmond, Bartell, et al., 2020; Richmond, Cho, et al., 2020) and bears raising again. It is our opinion that researchers have an obligation in these challenging times to recognize the biggest privilege of membership in the Academy, namely that our jobs forefront the time for deep analysis in that we can delve beyond the surface features of our current state to understand the complexity that lies beneath. But we also need to recognize a key weakness of our positionality, namely that we are typically a step removed from the contexts we study. Research conducted alongside practitioners either through research–practice partnerships (e.g., Henrick et al., 2016) or using approaches like design-based implementation research (Fishman et al., 2013) and networked improvement communities (Bryk et al., 2010) that require researchers to engage with the communities and educators who make up the context of our studies offers a path through these times. Researchers can provide the time that educators are unlikely to have to engage in deep and systematic study that would build understandings that cut past the surface features of our present condition. In this way, we can build generalizable knowledge that takes into account the interplay of systemic and novel features of our current situation. By working in partnership, the way research is conducted with practitioners instead of on practitioners can slowly change the inequitable power structures inherent in traditional research paradigms where researchers seek to produce “objective” knowledge about their research “subjects.” If educators’ and community members’ voices are given greater weight, the research itself will be richer with insights into the context and nuances, thus improving the relevance of the resulting work.
In addition to research–practice partnerships, other types of partnerships in teacher education also take much time to establish, sustain, and expand. It is these slow-growing partnerships established to address some of the major challenges in teacher education that may have contributed to some of the fast pivoting needed during the pandemic. One of the key partnerships in teacher education is the collaboration between university-based educator preparation programs and local schools for teacher candidates’ clinical placements and field experiences. The concerns with the gap between how teachers are prepared through university-based coursework and what local schools need have been well documented in teacher education literature (e.g., Zeichner, 2010). Researchers have proposed various collaborative partnership models that enhance the connections between university faculty, K–12 teachers, and students to move from learning in silos toward learning through connections, shared understanding, trust, and the third space to establish co-constructed partnerships and learning communities (Burroughs et al., 2020). During the pandemic, the abrupt shift to remote instruction and the increased pressure for educators to be adaptive, innovative, and skilled with the integration of digital materials and technologies in their pedagogical practices augmented existing tensions and at the same time surfaced renewed possibilities toward co-constructed partnership. Farrell (2021), for example, studied the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on clinical experiences and illustrated how student teachers’ technology skills and their capacity for adaptive expertise may be leveraged through “democratic pedagogical partnerships” and serve as a catalyst for changes in schools. In addition to classroom-based practices, teacher educators have long been advocating for teacher education field experiences beyond schools to include meaningful community partnerships (e.g., Richmond, 2017; Zeichner, 2010). Prior to the pandemic, researchers have argued for the shift from peripheral engagement of community members to an ecological approach that centers on the complex and hybrid identities represented by different community partners (Hong, 2012). Through the establishment of mutually beneficial and trusting partnerships, authentic engagement, and the genuine sharing of leadership and power in teacher education, community mentors could not only contribute to the preparation of teacher candidates but also challenge the norms in teacher education that may lead to transformed practices (Guillen & Zeichner, 2018; Hong, 2012). During the pandemic, some teacher educators were able to offer teacher candidates alternative opportunities to engage with families and attend to the social emotional well-being of both students and families (Darling-Hammond & Hyler, 2020). Instead of isolated development and implementation of teacher education programs, forefronting community partnerships and learning with the communities to better understand the intricacies and complexity are critical. Further educational research exploring university–school–community partnerships not only from the perspectives of teacher educators and teacher candidates but also from the perspectives of schools, students, families, and community partners is much needed to further inform teacher education practices.
Another key aspect of fast and slow thinking can be evidenced in how some researchers began to prioritize commitments and be more overt and direct in terms of taking action to address inequities. The pandemic has pushed some people to take a stronger stand, with concrete actions, more so than ever before. For example, in 2021, as a response to anti-Black racism within the academy, the Black Canadian Studies Association (BCSA) decided to withdraw from the 2021 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. The BCSA was thoughtful and measured in making transparent the changes that need to occur; taking a stand to only participate in events where their voices were heard, not silenced; and choosing not to participate in research avenues that have failed to address anti-Black racism and thwarted the advancement of Black scholars. They also made a call for disaggregated race-based data to be collected, making it clear that it matters who collects the data, how it is collected and used, and who has access to it. These decisions were also thoughtful, analytic, principled, and an acknowledgment of both current and past practices in the academy and in society more broadly. We feel this is a crucial takeaway that should be on the forefront of all research.
The fast thinking that was demanded of us at the start of the pandemic has also produced cognitive “overload” as people quickly had to navigate new ways of learning, teaching, and doing business. Inasmuch as some are prioritizing taking action as a result of fatigue with inaction, many researchers are suffering from chronic exhaustion. A survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education found 69% of U.S. faculty surveyed indicated greater stress levels in 2020 than in 2019 (32%). Faculty reported being emotionally drained and discouraged. One of the coping mechanisms may include a larger propensity for researchers to “opt-out” of projects as a form of self-care, perhaps as a new-found form of prioritization that has surfaced as a result of the pandemic. As Squazzoni et al. (2020) found, there was a notable decrease in journal submissions by academics who were presumed to identify as female. The researchers suggest women, particularly early-career academics, may have had fewer opportunities for research as they prioritized family responsibilities more so than their male counterparts. The researchers also found an overall decline in the number of academics committing to serve as referees in the review process, in particular a decline in female reviewers.
Both in the United States and globally, we—scholars, policymakers, administrators, and practitioners alike—are positioned to make immensely consequential decisions with regard to providing the kinds of resources needed for learning and for teaching. This requires that the metaphorical, if not the physical, table at which we sit to make these decisions be enlarged and that we ensure that the voices of those who bring powerful experiences and scholarship are able to contribute in meaningful ways. It also requires that we broaden our perspectives about what evidence is necessary to make informed, sustainable decisions. We must also learn lessons from those teachers, schools, and school districts that seem to have successfully pivoted to serve students and their families effectively. Why? Because we need to understand better what contextual knowledge and practices were and are in place that facilitate the kind of pivoting that supports the learning of all students and enhances the well-being of families and communities.