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

Abstract

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.

keywords: COVID-19 Networked constituents Disciplines assembled Household curricula Foregrounds learners