The COVID-19 learning loss: Fact or stigma?

ABSTRACT

Herein, we provide strategies to help build support, enhance well-being, and promote innate student resilience. The learning loss discourse contributes negatively to the stigma children already experience and may further shape educator biases. Fortunately, the ecological lens of the school social worker (SSW) offers a framework to counteract the deficit-based constructions of youth through schoolwide support with a structural emphasis. Further, we align with those emphasizing the need for a paradigm shift in our understanding of student development. For instance, all students have innate capacities to be resilient, yet we continue interacting with them through deficit-based frameworks. This paradigm shift in how we observe, interact, and engage with students is of paramount importance. Framing youth positively rather than as "at risk" can help to nurture innate student capacities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)