Reconceptualizing Family Engagement as an Improvisational Practice: Lessons from Pre-K Teachers' Practices During COVID-19.

Scholars have argued against a post-COVID return to normality on the grounds that the pandemic offers an opportunity to break with the past and imagine a different, more just future. In this analysis of pre-kindergarten teachers' reflections on teaching during COVID-19 in the state of Michigan, we take up the notion of the pandemic as a portal to consider how practices that emerged during the pandemic might be carried forward post-pandemic. Through a qualitative interview study with 25 public pre-K teachers in Michigan, we sought to understand how the pandemic altered the nature of family-teacher engagement. Our analysis led us to conceptualize teaching as an improvisational practice that was highly responsive to the circumstances and needs of families. We identified three central themes that animated pre-K teachers' work during the pandemic: supporting families through new types of "offers" (a term from improv theory), making learning accessible, and fostering collectivity by partnering with families. Teachers' practices during the pandemic reveal new avenues for conceptualizing family engagement as an improvisational practice. We draw on the principles of improv theory to outline a framework for this approach.

Uncovering new opportunities for family engagement during COVID-19

In March 2020, COVID-19 dramatically and indelibly altered the U.S. educational landscape. Drawing on data from interviews with 30 Michigan preK teachers, Bethany Wilinski, Alyssa Morley, and Jamie Heng-Chieh Wu describe the centrality of family engagement in their pandemic preK education and the practices that contributed to stronger home-school relationships. They consider how the family engagement practices that emerged during the pandemic might be carried forward by thinking of family engagement as an improvisational practice that is co-constructed by teachers and families.

Playing to Learn: Playscapes as Sites of Pedagogical Transformation in Tanzania

Efforts to improve education should not neglect to provide the rich play opportunities that benefit children in so many ways. In Tanzania, the pre-primary curriculum, for example, guides teachers to use play as the primary method of teaching and learning. Despite this policy mandate for play, however, abundant evidence indicates that Tanzanian children have only limited access to rich play opportunities in their pre-primary and early primary classrooms. The Playing to Learn project seeks to address this gap between policy and practice in Tanzania through an innovative multi-level approach that fosters teachers' ability to enact play-based learning in pre-primary and the early grades. The goal of Playing to Learn is to develop a practical and sustainable model for preparing pre-primary and primary school teachers to use playscapes and play-based learning methods to promote student learning. Central to this project is a low-cost, locally sourced natural playscape. The natural playscape is innovative because, in the context of Tanzania, it represents a new approach to thinking about how and where learning can occur. Moreover, the playscape is a starting point that will seed a broader agenda around play-based learning that is sustainable and aligned with national learning goals in Tanzania.