Conducting research in the time of pandemic: A pause or an opportunity?
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Conducting research in the time of pandemic: A pause or an opportunity? Alison Castro Superfine1 Published online: 28 August 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
The global pandemic has presented a variety of challenges, including physically, emotionally, financially, and much more, the effects of which are only beginning to be felt. Researchers and educators at universities, colleges, and primary and secondary schools face specific and ongoing challenges related to the pandemic. In our roles as researchers and educators, these challenges are manifested in our abilities to conduct education research in school and university classrooms, supervise students in clinical settings, and for some, in the need to teach courses online (for those not already accustomed to or experienced in doing so). For many, these circumstances have required us to be agile and flexible in our approaches to teaching, the ways in which we interact with colleagues and students in our classes, and to innovate in the ways we carry out our research activities. The need for high-quality research that can serve as a source of reliable information, innovation, and “know-how” that is shared through means such as this journal is stronger than ever. So, what is the role of education research in helping the research community navigate such challenges? In my own work, for example, I found myself reaching out to colleagues for ideas as to how to transition my courses to online environments. I have begun to actively seek out research articles in journals to learn about design principles for online teaching and learning and for research on the effectiveness of various strategies for promoting collaboration and productive disciplinary discourse in synchronous online environments. However, I found very few ideas or examples for how to carry out research activities when the settings and contexts in which these activities are carried out are no longer available in the form in which the research activities were originally conceived. Indeed, I directly needed to address how one continues to carry out research activities, particularly those activities that are funded by external agencies or organizations that may have certain requirements and restrictions as to how and when the research funds are to be utilized. Initially, I anticipated that many research articles that reported on any research collected during 2020–2021 would have an asterisk next to it (e.g., Year 1, Year 2*, Year 3), with the shared understanding that the global pandemic caused a disruption in the data collection in that year, in many cases a complete stoppage. However, after several conversations with colleagues, I came to realize that the current global pandemic has presented an opportunity for researchers to reconceptualize how to continue data collection in line with the goals of their research, but under the constraints that the pandemic has presented—an opportunity * Alison Castro Superfine [email protected] 1
University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, US
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