Generation Interrupted: Rethinking “Students with Interrupted Formal Education” (SIFE) in the Wake of a Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schooling worldwide, compelling educators, researchers, and policymakers to grapple with the implications of these interruptions. However, while the scale of these disruptions may be unprecedented, for many students, interrupted schooling is not a new phenomenon. In this article, I draw insights from the field of Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) for supporting students who experience schooling interruption. In addition, I argue that the extensive accommodations offered to students in the midst of the pandemic must be preserved for future generations of SIFE students—a population for whom similar accommodations have been historically denied. Through this analysis, I demonstrate the need to interrogate traditional notions of interrupted schooling and the students who experience it. This article offers implications for rethinking interrupted schooling, as well as formal education writ large, toward more equitable and socially just ends.

Keywords

bilingual/bicultural disparities educational policy equity immigration/immigrants policy analysis social justice

The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted schooling across the globe. In the spring of 2020, schools around the world were ordered closed due to their nature as spaces for gathering and social proximity. Well into the next school year, and possibly beyond, students continue to learn in a variety of nontraditional formats. Whether fully online, hybrid, or in-person with social distancing measures, these formats represent a substantial departure from prepandemic schooling. Although the long-term impacts of these disruptions remain to be seen, education researchers and practitioners must be prepared to address an entire generation’s interrupted formal schooling.

Yet it is imperative to acknowledge that, for many students, interrupted schooling and its associated inequities are far from unprecedented. There currently exists a focused body of research on Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE¹). This label is generally applied to immigrant youth whose formal education was interrupted during migration or as a result of instability in previous countries of residence (Freeman & Freeman, 2002). Other bodies of research explore additional causes of interrupted schooling such as housing insecurity, natural disasters, punitive suspension, incarceration, or chronic health issues (e.g., Brock, 2013; Kubek et al., 2020; Morris, 2016; Rafferty et al., 2004; Rosenbaum, 2020; Sato et al., 2007). This scholarship reveals the wide variety of causes and structural conditions that precipitate schooling interruption. The adverse student experiences documented across these various forms of interruption reveal the degree to which many educational systems are foundationally predicated on normativity—so much so that they are often unable to accommodate even small-scale schooling interruptions. Thus, while the disruptions wrought by COVID-19 are often described as unprecedented, they may be more accurately characterized as an amplification of conditions all too precedented, reflecting educational and social inequities that existed long before this pandemic.

Today, schools face a reality in which the near entirety of the school-aged population has faced some degree of interrupted formal education. Such conditions require a rethinking of interrupted schooling, its impacts, and support for students who experience it. Furthermore, this rethinking offers opportunities to reimagine curriculum, schooling, and educational policies toward more inclusive and socially just ends. In this article, I align with previous research on education in times of crisis to argue that disruptions are pivotal moments with the potential for both positive and negative transformation (Burde et al., 2017; Penuel, 2020; Smith & Riley, 2012; Zambeta, 2014). I suggest that this moment can serve not only to galvanize support for current and future generations of SIFE students but also to disrupt the educational status quo that has historically constrained possibilities for educational equity.

Therefore, the dual aims of this article are (1) to highlight applicable insights from existing SIFE scholarship with regard to interrupted schooling and (2) to interrogate and reimagine the notion of SIFE in the wake of large-scale schooling interruption. To fulfill these aims, I begin with a brief overview of SIFE education and its applications in Part 1. Then, in Part 2, I identify insights from existing SIFE research on supporting students who experience interrupted schooling. In Part 3, I explore further possibilities for rethinking SIFE and education more broadly in the wake of COVID-19, arguing that the extensive accommodations offered to students in the midst of a pandemic must be preserved for future generations of SIFE students—a population for whom similar accommodations have been historically denied (Custodio & O’Loughlin, 2017; McBrien, 2005). I conclude by demonstrating the need to deconstruct previous assumptions about SIFE, and formal education writ large. This conclusion underscores the connections between rethinking SIFE and reinforcing broader movements toward social and educational justice.

Part 1: Who Are SIFE Students?²

The SIFE label developed within the field of bilingual and English language education to specify a subgroup of students whose schooling had been interrupted, particularly focusing on immigrant and refugee youth (Freeman & Freeman, 2002). Some of the main causes of schooling interruption for these students include migration from countries grappling with political instability, natural disaster, economic insecurity, regional isolation or displacement, and—as is particularly relevant to the context of COVID 19—the outbreak of disease (Burde et al., 2017; Coltart et al., 2017; McBrien, 2005). Estimates of immigrant youth who experience interrupted schooling range from 10% (Potochnick, 2018) to 20% (Faltis & Coulter, 2008). These SIFE students encounter similar linguistic and structural barriers in schools to those faced by the broader population of students designated as “English learners” (henceforth referred to as emergent bilinguals). However, interrupted schooling portends additional impediments to educational equity. National research suggests the high school dropout rate for SIFE students is up to 7 times higher than that of emergent bilinguals whose schooling was not interrupted (75%; Fry, 2005; Gunderson, 2007; Montero et al., 2014). More localized studies report lower GPAs (Callahan, 2005; Thomas & Collier, 2002) and standardized test scores (New York State Education Department, 2009) for SIFE students when compared to other emergent bilingual and immigrant peers. But beyond academic concerns, schooling interruption can also significantly affect student well-being and sense of belonging in schools (Newcomer et al., 2020). In tandem, this body of research emphasizes the long-term impacts of interrupted schooling, which may continue for years beyond the initial interruption (Custodio & O’Loughlin, 2017; Thomas & Collier, 2002). Though the drivers of these educational discrepancies are varied and complex, the existing research on SIFE strongly suggests that there are challenges specific to the interruption of schooling that exacerbate other academic, economic, and linguistic barriers SIFE students may face.

Broader Interruptions

Thus, SIFE literature points to the importance of analyzing the particular impacts of interruption itself. This becomes increasingly clear in the literature that examines interrupted schooling beyond the fields of English learning and immigrant education. Although the specific label “SIFE” is rarely applied outside of these fields, researchers have explored a range of causes for schooling interruption, including housing insecurity (Crumé et al., 2019; Rafferty et al., 2004), natural disasters (Brock, 2013; Picou & Marshall, 2007), punitive suspension (Morris, 2016; Rosenbaum, 2020), the school-to-prison pipeline, (Feierman et al., 2009; Kubek et al., 2020), and chronic health issues (Crump et al., 2013; Sato et al., 2007; Tsimicalis et al., 2018). Across this literature, scholars draw connections between schooling interruption and academic performance, graduation rates, and socioemotional well-being. Rosenbaum (2020), for example, matched youth whose schooling had been interrupted by punitive suspension with nonsuspended youth with similar demographic, academic, and self-reported behavior profiles. The study found suspended youth less likely to have earned high school diplomas or bachelor’s degrees up to 12 years after schooling interruption. Likewise, Tsimicalis et al. (2018) documented the compounding academic and social adversities faced by students returning to school after long-term cancer treatment. Although careful planning for school reentry is key to mitigating the effects of extended medical absences (DuPaul et al., 2018), scholars such as Schilling and Getch (2018) found that schools are often underprepared to create or implement plans to accommodate such periods of schooling interruption.

Though these studies explored vastly different causes of interrupted schooling, what connects this literature is attention to the short- and long-term impacts of these interruptions. These findings further suggest systemic underpreparedness to accommodate students upon schooling reentry. Such conclusions not only resonate with the findings on emergent bilinguals traditionally labeled as SIFE but also hold major implications with regard to an entire generation’s interrupted schooling as a result of COVID-19.

A SIFE Generation?

As the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted schooling for the vast majority of the school-aged population, the question arises—are all students “SIFE” now? This is a complex question. On one hand, it would be inaccurate to create a false equivalence between students facing temporary school closures and those who experience systemic marginalization or are forced to flee from physical and economic violence. It is crucial to remember that there exists a vast diversity of student backgrounds, experiences, and reactions when it comes to interrupted schooling—even among students traditionally labeled as SIFE (Bartlett, 2007; Bigelow, 2007). As Olsen and Jaramillo (1999) argued of the SIFE label, “Like any attempt to ‘categorize’ real human beings, the lines and distinctions often begin to blur or merge” (p. 213). Particularly when considering the varying causes of interruption referenced in the previous section, no two students will encounter schooling interruption in exactly the same way.

On the other hand, it would also be counterproductive to dismiss the experience of SIFE students, the professional knowledge of their teachers, and the existing research base on interrupted schooling as irrelevant to this moment of global crisis. The SIFE label is, after all, an acronym for “Students with Interrupted Formal Education.” Beyond the rather literal applicability of this designation in the context of COVID-19, educators who have worked to support students with interrupted schooling since long before the pandemic will possess substantial insight into navigating schooling interruption and its eventual resumption.

Nevertheless, it may still engender a certain level of cognitive dissonance to consider the SIFE label beyond its traditional usage. Rather than dismissing this dissonance outright, or providing an easy “answer” to whom the SIFE label can or cannot apply, such dissonance can instead be productive in highlighting, and therefore disrupting, prior assumptions about interrupted schooling and the students who encounter it. This perspective affords the opportunity to broaden the notion of SIFE—not to detract from the needs of the students who conventionally receive the label but to highlight inequitable educational responses to interrupted schooling for different populations at different times. In this way, it becomes possible to interrogate assumptions about the SIFE designation, while simultaneously maintaining, and even expanding, the support received by students who traditionally receive the SIFE label.

As such, it becomes necessary to prioritize an additional theme present across the existing literature on interrupted schooling. This research demonstrates that students who have experienced interrupted schooling need not be defined by this adversity (Feierman et al., 2009; Morris, 2016; Roy & Roxas, 2011). Instead, as the next section will demonstrate, student trajectories can be profoundly affected by the supports made available (or denied) in the wake of schooling interruptions.

Part 2: Existing Recommendations

This section offers insights from the existing research on supporting SIFE students. This literature reminds us that SIFE populations are extremely diverse and that individual students will encounter interrupted schooling in a variety of ways. Accordingly, this section focuses on recommendations at the programmatic and policy levels, rather than on specific classroom-level pedagogical approaches.³ Below, I highlight five key priority areas documented in previous SIFE literature. Rather than a simple checklist of “best practices,” recommendations within these areas offer an initial road map for discussing holistic and robust support for students experiencing interrupted schooling and its aftermath. These possibilities offer concrete actions for the immediate aftermath of interrupted schooling but also point to the necessity of systemic transformations toward more inclusive, just, and even disruptive forms of education (a perspective expanded upon in Part 3).

Responsive Curriculum

One of the first issues that arises in SIFE education involves curriculum. Formal education systems are generally predicated upon the notion that students at particular ages or grade levels will have mastered certain standards or skills, leading to a predictable range of curricular needs at any given level. While the very premise of such curricular standardization is often questioned (e.g., Apple, 2006; Au, 2011; Noddings, 2013), cases of interrupted schooling render the assumption that all students will arrive to the classroom with a common knowledge base as particularly counterproductive. Instead, the realities of SIFE demonstrate the affordances of responsive curricula that are based more on where a learner is than where they presumably should be (Acosta et al., 2008). Mendenhall et al. (2017), for example, documented curriculum and assessment innovations at a New York high school serving a high population of emergent bilingual SIFE students. As they observed in their study,

Teachers in the Internationals Network are given significant autonomy to develop, with their colleagues, a curriculum that is responsive to students’ need and interests . . . The Network offers extensive PD [professional development] around curriculum development. They provide templates based on Understanding by Design and backwards planning (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005) . . . [and educators] work in teams with teachers from different disciplines to plan the curriculum . . . The schools prize experiential, project-based learning. The Network maintains an online platform to share curricula and model units. Further, teachers who meet at PD, conferences, or during school inter-visitations often work on curricula together. Thus, teachers have significant autonomy to plan curriculum, following general standards. (p. 18)

While the model observed by Mendenhall et al. (2017) emphasized differentiated instruction for heterogeneous groupings of students, other schools may also consider emerging models of individualized, self-paced learning where curriculum is catered to students’ individual needs and interests (Acosta et al., 2008).

Such curricular responsiveness can, of course, require substantial restructuring of traditional curricular practices—which is indeed appropriate if the traditional model cannot meet the needs of the students at hand. Educators and school leaders less familiar with curricular differentiation can benefit from their colleagues in SIFE education, emergent bilingual education, and special education who often have extensive expertise working through the complexities of differentiated curricular approaches (Auslander, 2019; Pugach et al., 2011). Still, the SIFE literature shows that students can generally remain in developmentally appropriate age-level cohorts (Drake, 2017), where strategic grouping and peer tutoring strategies can also be utilized for additional academic support (Mendenhall et al., 2017; WIDA, 2015). Implemented thoughtfully, such peer-led learning can also create a pathway toward disrupting traditional top-down power relations of schooling (Freire, 1970; Rincón-Gallardo & Elmore, 2012), allowing what may begin as a SIFE accommodation to push schools toward more equitable and democratic forms of learning overall.

Policy and Programmatic Accommodations

Beyond curricular modification, responsive SIFE education also offers the opportunity for broader policy and programmatic changes. Flexible scheduling (Spaulding et al., 2004) or extended schooling (e.g., weekend or summer enrichment programs) can be implemented in formats tailored to the particular needs of SIFE student populations (Dávila, 2012; WIDA, 2015). Schools may also consider awarding credit for individualized virtual coursework, or out-of-school learning experiences (Custodio & O’Loughlin, 2017). In cases where a number of students have missed the same coursework, courses themselves can be modified to embed competencies from two or more subjects into the same course (e.g., interdisciplinary humanities or STEM seminars) with dual credit awarded accordingly (New York State Education Department, 2019). Such modifications need not abridge nor “water down” student learning, as demonstrated by similar programming in the field of Gifted Education, where independent study and interdisciplinary coursework are consistently framed as academic enrichment (Gibson & Efinger, 2001).

Still, in some cases, extended graduation timelines are realities that might be considered (Cohan & Honigsfeld, 2017), as well as pass/fail grading for an initial time period following interrupted schooling (WIDA, 2015). Notably, both of these options—with origins in SIFE advocacy—were applied en masse across both K–12 and higher education settings during the initial wave of COVID-19 school closures (Reich et al., 2020). Such cases demonstrate the large-scale viability of SIFE accommodations and broader policy transformations when there exists collective will.

Socioemotional Supports

Although there are a wide range of perspectives on curricular and programmatic modifications for SIFE students, some of the most agreed-upon recommendations involve prioritizing socioemotional support (Hos, 2020; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2018). This research often emphasizes tensions that often exist between the pressures schools face to get SIFE students “on track” academically, while simultaneously prioritizing students’ personal and collective well-being. However, the literature on SIFE underscores the flaw of dichotomizing academic and socioemotional aspirations, as academic engagement is largely precluded in the absence of student well-being (Montero et al., 2014). In schools or districts with large numbers of SIFE students, recruiting trained socioemotional support staff is recommended, as is whole-school emphasis and professional development on socioemotional responsiveness to interrupted schooling (Newcomer et al., 2020; Roy & Roxas, 2011).

As always, for specific students experiencing severe socioemotional challenges, the availability of mental health services in schools increases access, decreases stigma, and mitigates the economic and logistical hurdles of seeking such services outside of school (Sullivan & Simonson, 2016). Although the cost of additional school staff is an oft-cited concern, multiple studies have documented substantial returns on investment for an increase in school counselors, particularly with regard to college readiness (Castleman & Goodman, 2018; Hurwitz & Howell, 2014). In addition, growing movements to finance additional counselors and school psychologists by reallocating funds away from maintaining school police presence have gained substantial momentum (Dignity in Schools, 2018; Whitaker et al., 2019).

Collaboration and Community Engagement

As reflected by the prioritization of socioemotional well-being, SIFE education expands the lens of student support beyond academic concerns, offering opportunities for broader collaboration and community engagement. Particularly in times of local, global, or individual crises, a range of wraparound services can be coordinated to strengthen relationships between schools, families, and community partners. Within schools, such coordination necessitates collaboration among teachers. SIFE scholarship has documented the benefit of giving teachers extra time and support for within- and cross-departmental collaboration for meeting the needs of SIFE students (Spaulding et al., 2004). Furthermore, these collaborations have been shown to be most effective when supported by school and district administration (Cohan & Honigsfeld, 2017).

Outside of schools, research underscores the importance of building broad coalitions to incorporate the full range of resources available across the community. Services that connect schools with local health and social service organizations have shown particular promise (Custodio & O’Loughlin, 2017). As conditions necessitating school closures often coincide with economic and employment uncertainty, the role of schools as community centers can also be capitalized upon by using these spaces to offer employment training, continuing education, and for facilitating social functions. Individual family engagement is also a priority, with the goal of strengthening connections between home and school through family collaboration and communication (Auslander, 2019; WIDA, 2015). This connection necessitates recognition that students experiencing interrupted schooling still learn and engage in significant developmental activities with their families and within their communities outside of formal education (Ishimaru, 2020). In this regard, schools should collaborate with families and communities to ensure that curricula both incorporates and expands upon the importance of home and broader local knowledge practices (Herrera et al., 2020).

Confronting Impossibility

Finally, just as the SIFE literature documents the importance of the practices described above, studies of interrupted schooling also reveal barriers to implementing these approaches. Some of these difficulties arise with regard to logistical complexities. Indeed, the realization of responsive SIFE education may involve substantial rethinking of traditional educational policies and program models, particularly if the existing models have not been designed with needs of SIFE students in mind. Still, the complexity of this work suggests that additional time, funding, and support may be required from local governments and community stakeholders to implement systemic changes, particularly in the wake of large-scale interruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Al-Samarrai et al., 2020; Masonbrink & Hurley, 2020).

Oftentimes, however, the most significant implementational barriers involve fixed beliefs about what is or is not traditionally considered “possible” in educational spaces. Thus, much of the work on SIFE education involves confronting impossibility. This work involves troubling the notion that practices best suited to support SIFE students are impractical or unfeasible. SIFE educators often know the accommodations that are most likely to help their students but regularly report feeling obstructed by seemingly intransigent policy, administrative hurdles, or inflexible views among colleagues or the broader school community (Dávila, 2012; DeCapua & Marshall, 2015; Porter, 2013; Roy & Roxas, 2011). In these cases, confronting perceptions of impossibility becomes a major determinant of whether or not SIFE students receive the support that will allow them to learn and thrive upon schooling reentry.

Yet, for all the disruptions wrought by COVID-19 school closures, these interruptions have simultaneously demonstrated new possibilities. While this section of the article has reported insights from previous research on SIFE students—who have historically represented a relatively small percentage of the school population—the following section explores the notion of SIFE with regard to a newfound reality in which the overwhelming majority of students have experienced some degree of interrupted schooling. Such a context affords possibilities for rethinking SIFE, not only in regard to the COVID-19 schooling disruptions but also for building a more just and equitable educational landscape for all learners.

Part 3: Rethinking SIFE

From the perspective of SIFE education, the range of accommodations provided to students in the wake of COVID-19 are profound—and often reflect practices SIFE advocates have recommended for decades. The spring of 2020 alone saw nationwide suspension of standardized testing mandates (Tatum, 2020), free access to distance learning (RAND, 2020), distribution of technology and wireless internet access for students (Johnston & Tonnes, 2020), and exceptions to graduation and collegiate entrance requirements (Vigdor & Diaz, 2020). Notably, these accommodations were (1) implemented at unprecedentedly large scales and (2) in ways that have often been deemed unfeasible for SIFE populations in the past. For example, exceptions to and deemphasis of standardized testing have long been accommodations sought by SIFE educators, who were often told such changes were not possible due to state and federal mandates (DeCapua & Marshall, 2015; Menken, 2008). Yet these mandates were waived at both federal and state levels in the spring of 2020, largely based on the notion that testing would place an undue burden on teachers and students in the context of schooling interruption (Strauss, 2020). This same burden has, and will continue to, affect students traditionally labeled as SIFE. Likewise, modified graduation and college entrance requirements have been called for by SIFE advocates (Drake, 2017; Spaulding et al., 2004), and lack of access to technology has repeatedly been identified as an educational barrier for economically marginalized students (Katz et al., 2017; Tripp, 2011). Although it took near-universal interruption of schooling to instigate such sweeping policy changes around these issues, it is yet to be seen whether these changes will be framed as mere temporary stopgaps or as a demonstration of what is in fact possible for future students who experience interrupted schooling on a smaller but no less disruptive scale.

Despite the recommendations highlighted throughout this article, it is important to note that SIFE students in many contexts do not receive such support to facilitate their educational success (Montero et al., 2014; Potochnick, 2018). Much of the inconsistency around implementing responsive SIFE education stems from the fact that there is no common legal foundation specific to SIFE. Although explicit legal protections exist for students in special education (e.g., the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) or emergent bilingual students (e.g., Lau v. Nichols), there exists a murkier legal territory when it comes to SIFE. The range of accommodations implemented to address the interruptions of 2020 give cause to establish a new precedent for what is possible in supporting SIFE students. If the field of educational research works to (1) document these accommodations and (2) articulate that these are, in fact, SIFE accommodations, it will become more difficult to deny these same services to future generations of SIFE students. Such documentation will fill a substantial gap in the current legal basis for ensuring equitable education for SIFE students. However, realizing this goal necessitates rethinking the notion of SIFE and the students who receive the label. Thus, in this final section, I explore the affordances of rethinking SIFE through each component of the acronym: (1) Students, (2) Interruption, and (3) Formal Education.

Rethinking “Students”

Earlier in this article, I introduced the cognitive dissonance that may arise when expanding the SIFE label beyond its traditional application. Again, this may represent reasonable caution against detracting from the specific needs of students who conventionally receive the label. But it is also important to consider the historical entanglements between “at-risk” labels and their documented usage to reinforce deficit perspectives or racialized assumptions (Bartlett, 2007; Chang-Bacon, 2020; Roy & Roxas, 2011). It is worth questioning how much of the hesitance to employ the SIFE label more broadly stems from its primary application to immigrant or refugee populations, most often students of color. The SIFE label is readily assigned to students immigrating as a result of epidemics in countries outside of the United States (e.g., Góñez-Santos et al., 2014; Lhamon & Gupta, 2015; Susso, 2016). Thus, it takes a notable degree of exceptionalism to dismiss the same designation to students affected by pandemic-driven schooling interruptions simply because they occur within the United States or in other wealthy nations. Restricting the notion of SIFE in this way exoticizes interrupted schooling—framing it as an issue that solely occurs in “other” places. While it may remain practical to specify unique issues that arise for particular populations (e.g., refugee youth from a particular region or background), one must ask at what point the selective application of the SIFE label may actually contribute to otherizing the notion of interrupted schooling and the students who experience it.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the systemic changes that are achievable when schooling interruption is normalized beyond a presumed “type” of student. When schooling was interrupted for a majority of students, the resultant policy accommodations demonstrate what has always been possible but more easily denied when schooling interruption is positioned as a niche issue of a particular student population. This provides further cause to question whether the current usage of the SIFE label actually functions as intended—to ensure support for students encountering schooling interruption—or whether such labels obscure the fact that interrupted schooling can impact a wide range of students and school communities.

Rethinking “Interruption”

Simultaneously, it remains necessary to acknowledge vast diversity that characterizes SIFE education. The existing research on SIFE and broader forms of schooling interruption referenced throughout this piece offers a rich tapestry of situated, contextualized studies that explore the individual nuance of varying causes of interrupted schooling and their impact on young people. The next challenge for the field is to continue articulating the important variability of SIFE experiences, while simultaneously generating robust theories of schooling interruption itself across contexts and causes. Such theoretical advances will strengthen connections between existing bodies of research that examine migration, housing insecurity, health issues, the school-to-prison pipeline, and beyond. Building connections across this scholarship allows for more thorough interrogation of the structural conditions that precipitate schooling interruption. Furthermore, rethinking interruption itself helps to reveal education’s overreliance on normative views on student learning trajectories. Instead, schools can refocus on promoting curriculum and polices that are responsive to the lived realities and educational backgrounds of the students at hand. This rethinking represents a powerful means by which to further advance social and educational justice, not only for students with interrupted schooling but also for all students whose learning experiences and life histories do not conform to the presumptions so often upheld as the “norm” in schools.

Within this work, rethinking the notion of interruption will involve destigmatizing the experience of interrupted schooling itself. As the near entirety of the school-aged population grapples with the fallout of COVID-19, interruption has, in many ways, become more a norm than an exception. As always, students will have had vastly different experiences during this period of schooling interruption, and some will have more conventionally successful reentry than others. Yet this very difference underscores the point of possibility; students can in fact thrive after interrupted schooling—if given the proper support.

Rethinking “Formal Education”

The possibilities of thriving after schooling interruption further illustrate the need to reconsider the conditions that can make such success achievable—rethinking traditional notions of formal education. In recent decades, educational research has taken productive steps in critiquing the field’s tendency to dichotomize between in-school learning and the learning that occurs outside of formal education settings (e.g., González et al., 2005; Moje et al., 2004). Even the SIFE literature warrants this critique, as it generally frames traditional schooling as the main space in which legitimate learning occurs and positions the interruption of formal education as precluding such learning.

Yet schooling and learning are not always synonymous (Patel, 2016). The interruptions of 2020 have done much to demonstrate that learning does indeed occur across many spaces and in many ways. Although numerous schools, teachers, and parents made laudable attempts to keep students “on track” through distance learning or homeschooling, others pushed back against the belief that a replication of traditional schooling was what students needed in a time of global crisis (e.g., Weiner, 2020). Scholars have long argued that schools should draw on students’ existing funds of knowledge (see González et al., 2005), developed at home and in their communities, as part of the curriculum. This notion is heightened in cases of interrupted schooling, wherein these knowledge funds and lived experiences are the curriculum. The assumption that school-based instruction is the only place where important learning happens stands counter to research about life-long learning (Ishimaru, 2020; Stevens et al., 2005). The widely circulated anxieties about “learning loss” in the wake of COVID-19 often foreclose the opportunity to examine gains students have made through increased time with family and prioritizing community care in a time of need (Williams, 2020). What might it look like to broaden research on what students may have missed to prioritize serious inquiry on what they have learned in their time away from traditional schooling?

Scholars and educators alike have challenged the field to look beyond simple replications of pre-pandemic schooling. As Penuel (2020) recently argued,

We might need instead to look to moments in history when people invented new models of education in the face of a world crisis, like in Italy after World War II when parents . . . founded Reggio Emilia, a model of caring, collaborative learning for young children that still exists today. We need such models now, something that helps us break away from the idea that the way schools look today are what they have to look like in the future. (p. 4)

In realizing this vision, some have advocated a return to nature, exploration, and play-based learning (Doyle & Sahlberg, 2020) or simply prioritizing collective survival and community care in a time of profound need (Nyberg, 2020). Others are beginning to suggest that many of the changes implemented in the midst of COVID-19, such as de-emphasizing standardized testing, prioritizing socioemotional learning, and heightening support for families, should be maintained beyond the current period of crisis (e.g., Darling-Hammond, 2020; Strauss, 2020). Such perspectives offer possibilities beyond a return to the usual, toward a fundamental rethinking of what formal education can and ought to be.

Moving Forward: Rethinking Possibility

Interruptions of the status quo generate more than just negative consequences; they also offer the opportunity to question how desirable the norm was in the first place, and for whom. During the onset of the pandemic, the spring and summer of 2020 also saw mass mobilizations around the Black Lives Matter movement and broader actions toward antiracism and climate justice (Jean, 2020; Manzanedo & Manning, 2020). In this way, times of crisis can also be moments that define generations and bring about long-awaited changes (Solnit, 2010). Still, while the scale of the COVID-19 interruptions may be unprecedented, individual students’ struggles and resilience through interrupted schooling are not new. The experiences of SIFE students and educators offer important insights for addressing the dynamics of schooling interruption—a phenomenon that existed long before, and will remain long after, the COVID-19 pandemic. It bears repeating that rethinking interrupted schooling does not mean establishing a false equivalence across vastly different experiences of schooling interruption faced by individual students both before and after the COVID-19 school closures. Instead, for the generations of students who will continue to face interrupted schooling long after the COVID-19 crisis—for refugee populations, victims of mass incarceration, and students experiencing the possibility of future pandemics—this moment offers the chance to rethink schooling interruption and opportunities for students who persist through it.

For many, this crisis has undermined the fallacy that interrupted schooling only happens “elsewhere” or only applies to certain populations of students. The pandemic also revealed the expediency with which major policy innovations and large-scale educational accommodations can become possible. From the perspective of SIFE education, it is worth asking whether past claims of “impossibility” can now be rearticulated as issues of collective will, or lack thereof. In this regard, neither the existing research on SIFE nor a new wave of innovations will, in and of themselves, disrupt the educational inequities that existed long before COVID-19. The struggle will remain to confront the notion of impossibility—the idea that accommodations and innovations allowing for more equitable and responsive forms of education are impractical or unfeasible when compared to maintaining an unjust status quo.

In the midst of any crisis, there is often a push to go “back to normal” as quickly as is feasible. There will come a time when victory is declared over COVID-19, and any related accommodations or educational changes deemed no longer necessary. However, we must recognize that compelled regression to the status quo represents a time-tested strategy for maintaining existing power structures (Freire, 1970; Solnit, 2010). As the pandemic has thrown preexisting social and educational inequities into even sharper relief, this time of upheaval has opened up pathways to fundamentally rethink existing education systems and their long-standing complicity in upholding these power structures. By linking educational alternatives that acknowledge, accommodate, and value a broader range of learning trajectories to existing frameworks and movements for social justice, scholars and educators alike have the opportunity, even the responsibility, to counter a predictable return to the status quo. In the wake of this crisis, the chance exists to seize to the proof points of what is achievable beyond traditional notions of formal education and the detriments of its interruption—toward rethinking interruption as possibility.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Chris K. Chang-Bacon

Notes

Author

CHRIS K. CHANG-BACON, PhD, is assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development, 417 Emmet Street South Charlottesville, VA 22904; cb6wv@virginia.edu . His research focuses on language policy and educational equity in multilingual and multicultural contexts.

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Generation Interrupted: Rethinking “Students with Interrupted Formal Education” (SIFE) in the Wake of a Pandemic

Abstract

Keywords

Part 1: Who Are SIFE Students? 2

Broader Interruptions

A SIFE Generation?

Part 2: Existing Recommendations

Responsive Curriculum

Policy and Programmatic Accommodations

Socioemotional Supports

Collaboration and Community Engagement

Confronting Impossibility

Part 3: Rethinking SIFE

Rethinking “Students”

Rethinking “Interruption”

Rethinking “Formal Education”

Moving Forward: Rethinking Possibility

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Notes

Author

References

Part 1: Who Are SIFE Students?²