Research
National Diary Studies
Family Learning During Covid-19
Our research team conducted a diary study that captured a diverse set of 109 families’ experiences during the first wave of U.S. school closures in the spring of 2020. Leveraging the design of a pre-pandemic pilot study of the diary-study method for examining home learning, we developed a remote-research approach, allowing parents, over the course of one week, to voice the impact of the COVID-19 crisis while also documenting learning opportunities in their homes over the course of one week.
Read our report with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center Learning Together: Researchers and Families as Partners During COVID-19.
Watch our video in the NSF STEM for All Video Showcase Parents Listen In: STEM at Home with Children during Covid-19.
And check out our publications on family learning and technology.
Scouting for Learning
Recent large-scale national and international surveys have been asking how families use technology. Interpretations have been framed both in terms of technology as a necessary tool for success and as a potential barrier or challenge to learning and development. However, we know less about the details of family usage and parent perceptions, especially for populations that are less represented in research data, including rural families. This project explores the use of dscout, a mobile diary study tool, to do qualitative ethnography with remote participants. Read more.
Local Partnership Research
SFUSD Personalized Learning Environments Pilot
This research practice partnership between Stanford Graduate School of Education and San Francisco Unified School District began in 2018 to study the outcomes of the Personalized Learning Environments Pilot program which is being implemented in classrooms across 14 K-5 schools. In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, and our project was well positioned to capture the experiences of teachers, students and families as the district adopted distance instruction. We refocused this research to understand both the challenges of this moment as well as uncover innovation and promising practices that can inform future practice. Since then we have conducted in-depth mixed methods research to examine how teachers, students and families experience distance and hybrid learning as well as aspects of professional development that is supportive to teachers during this time. This has included following a set of teachers, their students and the students’ families in lower-income communities, observing classes via Zoom, interviewing teachers and families, and surveying teachers.
Technology, Equity, and Learning Opportunities (TELOS)
TELOS (Technology for Equity in Learning Opportunities) is an initiative of the Stanford Graduate School of Education, funded from 2015 - 2020 as the result of a generous gift from the Nomellini-Olivier family. The guiding assumption underlying our efforts is that technology has the potential to increase access to high quality learning opportunities but that this will not happen without the intentional design and study of technologies, learning environments, and policies. The complexity of these issues requires collective efforts from multiple stakeholders and the TELOS initiative is designed to advance this work. Learn more.