Household curricula during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A collective biography

Households with school‐aged children worldwide were affected by school closures caused by COVID‐19. Using a sociomaterial orientation and collective biography methodology, this study examined the household curricula of diverse families in Ontario, Canada with children in pre‐school through Grade 12. It found two distinct curricular phases to the pandemic, each with its own networked constituents, movements, and effects. Phase I involved learning at home during the lockdown in Spring and Summer 2020;Phase II involved online and face‐to‐face learning in the Fall of 2020. The constituents involved in curriculum making in Phase I were expansive and unexpected. Multiple timescales, modes, languages, and knowledge disciplines assembled to (re)configure households as learning spaces that produced novel opportunities for children's knowing, doing, and being. The makeup and movements of the Phase II assemblages were more of a return to the normalized boundaries of implemented school curricula that demarcated subject areas, languages, learning/play, learning/assessment, and body/mind. Concerned with questions of equity in/through curriculum, this study suggests a curriculum paradigm that foregrounds learners' and teachers' engagement with sociomaterial lifeworlds and their ethical relationship building with the more‐than‐human and the world. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Curriculum Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Family Literacies During the COVID-19 Lockdown: Semiotic Assemblages and Meaning Making at Home

When home became the primary place for children's learning during the COVID-19 lockdown, a dominant rhetoric emerged about a literacy-skills crisis, especially involving learners from low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse families. By documenting the literacies practiced and the literacy-learning opportunities created in and among households during the lockdown in the spring and summer of 2020, this study turns this deficit-oriented rhetoric on its head. Conducted by parents with their children (aged 2-15), this collective biography found that during the lockdown households were forced into spaces that were physically constrained yet replete with a wide range of semiotic resources. Parents and children used these resources, which included multiple modes, media, and languages, to produce expansive literacies and literacy-learning opportunities. The present study offers suggestions about how to recognize and build on learners' linguistic, cultural, and semiotic repertoires in the creation of literacy curricula.