The Support Students Really Need During Coronavirus School Shutdowns: Social Connections
Edited by Stephen Braren & Annie Brandes-Aitken
The Support Students Really Need During Coronavirus School Shutdowns: Social Connections | Over 90 percent of the world’s student population—more than 1.5 billion children and youth—have been affected by school closures due to the coronavirus pandemic. In the United States alone, at least 50 million students have been shut out of school, with more than 40 states suspending face-to-face schooling through the duration of the academic year. In most states, school districts and governments have introduced or scaled up distance education capabilities, utilizing online modalities such as live classes on Zoom or massive open online courses (MOOC) to support continued learning. But the near-nationwide closure of K-12 schools and universities has presented unprecedented challenges to maintain academic efforts for teachers, caregivers, parents, and students—particularly for students with learning differences and families already grappling with hunger, unemployment, lack of tech or internet access, or homelessness.
Children are experiencing losses directly related to the shift to distance learning, and chief among them is a reduced ability to connect socially with peers, teachers, and mentors. Social connections are not only important for general health and well-being, but also play a crucial role in fostering children’s core cognitive abilities (such as focusing attention and finishing tasks) and prosocial behaviors (such as helping and sharing). In fact, decades of research suggest that these skills are often more accurate predictors of academic outcomes and life success than IQ or other academic performance markers. For students at home during the pandemic, maintaining social connectedness is equally, if not more, important than completing online lessons or home learning packets.
Students navigating the shift from in-person learning to distance learning are being confronted with the pressure to maintain academic progress not only through unfamiliar means, but also during a time in which collective anxieties are skyrocketing. Research indicates that stress has a critical impact on learning and memory, particularly in educational contexts. A 2016 review published by npj Science of Learning asserts that while stress can enhance memory formation, it also “impairs memory retrieval,” which can place students at “risk of underachieving at exams” [1]. Additionally, education relies on frequently updating knowledge to include new facts or concepts, but research shows that stress can reduce integration of new information into existing memories. Because stress has a detrimental impact on health and learning, supporting students’ emotional well-being is critical to their academic development, especially during these stressful times [2].
But it’s not just student stress that should be addressed in this moment: Parental anxieties about their child’s completion of curricula can be counterproductive to the student’s at-home learning as well. Recent polls conducted in New York and California show that nearly 90 percent of parents are worried that their children will fall behind because of the current school closures. While studies suggest that students learn less in virtual schooling environments, parents’ stress about that lack of learning could further—inadvertently—stifle learning efforts. In fact, research indicates that stress can be transmitted to children from their parents. In a recent paper published in Journal of Family Psychology, researchers found that parents can influence children’s emotional responses even through subtle behaviors [3]. They found that when mothers tried to hide their emotions, this emotional suppression inadvertently elicited an emotional response in their children. As the authors explain, when parents actively suppress feelings of stress around their kids, their stress may actually be transmitted to their children.
Additionally, research shows that children learn to regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors by observing and responding to adults’ own self-regulation [4]. In times of crisis, parents and teachers can best support their students’ educational development by meaningfully "showing up" for the child’s social and emotional needs, as well as being honest about their own pandemic-related stressors—both with their children and with themselves.
Although parents can transmit stress to their child, they can also buffer their child’s stress, which is especially important during childhood. And while parental support remains a powerful stress buffer into late childhood, children become less reliant on parents in adolescence. Beginning in middle childhood, friends may serve as better stress buffers [5]—which means that for parents of adolescents, supporting teens’ socialization through safe online audio and video platforms can actually contribute to their enthusiasm in other areas, including school.
Indeed, healthy peer relationships tend to predict better academic outcomes [6]. Peers are of central importance throughout childhood and adolescence, providing companionship, emotional support, and a foundation for identity development, as well as promoting school engagement and academic performance. Encouraging prosocial behaviors and social connectedness with peers can activate reward circuits in the brain, converting negative emotions, such as fear or frustration, to positive emotions, such as hope or confidence.
Of course, distance learning and at-home participation in online courses is beneficial for students throughout the pandemic. History shows that lengthy interruptions to schooling—such as during teacher strikes or natural disasters—can undermine student achievement and success in higher education. Additionally, a recent report projects that students who don’t receive sustained instruction during school shutdowns will display only 70 percent of typical annual reading gains, and less than half of typical mathematics gains relative to a normal academic year. However, to ensure students’ future academic success (whether they experience setbacks as a result of school closures or not) the maintenance of social connectedness with others, and management of students’ (and their parents’) stress levels throughout COVID-19 is of primary importance. In fact, attentiveness to supporting young learners both socially and emotionally amid school closures will be imperative to the success of homeschooling and remote academic efforts. When COVID-19 has run its course, helping students catch up in their academic endeavors will be easier than helping them overcome any effects of chronic stress or trauma, especially if they return to school socially and emotionally supported and ready to learn.
“When COVID-19 has run its course, helping students catch up in their academic endeavors will be easier than helping them overcome any effects of chronic stress or trauma, especially if they return to school socially and emotionally supported and ready to learn.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated the loss of familiar environments, disruption of routines, and deprivation of social interactions and traditional learning methods, all of which are essential to learning and educational development. However, supportive parents and adults can help buffer child anxieties by modeling resilience through their own response to stressors. What’s imperative right now is that we allow at-home students of all ages to talk candidly about their frustrations, and feel emotionally supported by, as well as socially connected to, their families, teachers, and peers. And to best support students’ social and emotional well-being, we must reduce parental pressure to always stay atop of their child’s coursework, as they juggle homeschooling with childcare and working from home. If the social-emotional well-being of our students (and their parents) is overshadowed by the focus on academic growth during school shutdowns, young people will undoubtedly experience even greater setbacks in development—regardless of the distance learning technologies and techniques they use.
In-text References:
[1] Vogel, S., Schwabe, L. (2016). Learning and memory under stress: implications for the classroom. npj Science Learn 1, 16011. https://doi.org/10.1038/npjscilearn.2016.11
[2] Immordino‐Yang, M. H., & Damasio, A. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain, and Education, 1(1), 3-10. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-228X.2007.00004.x
[3] Waters, S. F., Karnilowicz, H. R., West, T. V., & Mendes, W. B. (2020). Keep it to yourself? Parent emotion suppression influences physiological linkage and interaction behavior. Journal of Family Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.med.nyu.edu/10.1037/fam0000664
[4] Florez, I. R. (2011). Developing young children’s self-regulation through everyday experiences. Young Children, 66(4), 46-51.
[5] Gunnar, M. R., & Hostinar, C. E. (2015). The social buffering of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical axis in humans: Developmental and experiential determinants. Social neuroscience, 10(5), 479-488. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2015.1070747
[6] Wentzel, K. R. (2009). Peers and academic functioning at school. In K. H. Rubin, W. M. Bukowski, & B. Laursen (Eds.), Social, emotional, and personality development in context. Handbook of peer interactions, relationships, and groups (p. 531–547). The Guilford Press.
