The Necessity of Community Collaborations in Supporting Newcomer Student Learning: Lessons Learned from the covid -19 Pandemic

Abstract

This article captures the results of a study illustrating the challenges experienced by newcomer youth to Canada in adapting to online learning between March and June 2020. A collaborative research team consisting of a local immigrant-serving agency, local school board and educators, and a group of interdisciplinary university researchers conducted a qualitative study to explore educational challenges from the perspectives of high school-aged youth and parents of elementary school students. We found that the covid-19 crisis exposed the fissures in the education system whereby those most in need of the supposed support offered by the education system were not intentionally included in organizational policies and procedures, thus further exacerbating educational inequities and compounding the pre-Covid challenges students experienced. This study also models collaborative and community-centred research on how educators and school boards could work with community supporting agencies to provide support for newcomer youth during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic.

Keywords

English language learners community-based collaborative research education policy newcomer students: equity

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