The School of Education’s OCEAN team is stopping at nothing to address threats to educational opportunities in low-income communities of color during the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic required schools, educators, and families to pivot to new modes of learning and revealed pressing issues of access for families across Orange County.
In July 2020, the UCI Office of Inclusive Excellence awarded a group of School of Education professors a grant in its “Are We in This Together? Advancing Equity in the Age of COVID-19” program.
The project – Reimagining Educational Equity and Opportunity during the COVID-19 Pandemic (REEO) – is a collaboration between the School of Education’s Orange County Educational Advancement Network (OCEAN) and the Center for Research on Teacher Development and Professional Practice, and addresses existing disparities in educational opportunities in low-income communities of color that have been exacerbated by COVID-19 and the transition to remote learning.
“We are deepening the relationships we have built between researchers and school partners through the OCEAN network to document the unique challenges and ways that our partners have dealt with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” said June Ahn, associate professor and director of OCEAN. “Beyond simply conducting research, the grant funds will allow us to convene focused working groups of educators and researchers to figure out how to best serve students, with a key focus on equity and serving those most in need.”
REEO is led by School of Education Professors June Ahn, Brandy Gatlin-Nash, Rossella Santagata, and Adriana Villavicienco. The project aims to achieve two key goals.
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