Abstract:

The COVID-19 crisis has affected all segments of the Canadian society (Statistics Canada, 2020), with the impacts being particularly severe for underrepresented groups, such as immigrants, racialized people, people with disabilities, and youth (Statistics Canada, 2020; Mo et al. 2020; Burt, 2020). Families were challenged by the convergence of multiple stresses, particularly with schools and childcare facilities being closed (Bogart & Lee, 2020). When K-12 education was disrupted, the uneven approaches to supporting remote students caused opportunity gaps among students and increased the burden on families. Low-income families and parents from marginalized communities were concerned about their children falling behind during the disruption due to their socioeconomic status, language barriers, and jobs often in sectors that did not allow flexibility and constrained their ability to manage homeschooling (Horowitz, 2020). More than half of 11-17 year olds reported having a very negative impact on their school year and academic success during COVID (Ng & Badets, 2020), with 60 percent being unmotivated and 57 percent disliking online learning and virtual classrooms (Ng & Badets, 2020).

COVID has also disrupted part time employment, co-op and internship opportunities for university students. In particular, teacher candidates were unable to complete the volunteer hours required for their degree. A meta-analysis reviewing over 100 tutoring programs found that tutoring has significant positive impacts on learning outcomes for students, with the results holding true across different programs. Tutoring is identified as one of the most “impactful tools available to educators for improving student learning” (Nickow, Oreopoulos & Quan, 2020). However, access to tutoring is also unequally distributed, often benefiting the wealthy and leaving behind the marginalized communities who cannot afford to pay for private tutoring (Mahnken, 2020).

Using a combination of social innovation theory and ecological model, the Diversity Institute developed a project to address these challenges by bringing different stakeholders (families, communities, individual students, community services and education institutions) together with one solution, the Study Buddy program. This paper conducts a case study of this innovative program, which supported marginalized, Indigenous and immigrant families and students during and after the pandemic, using a mixed methods approach. This program provides a platform to support parents by connecting them to University teaching candidates who provide free online individualized tutoring services to their children, which in turn offers the tutors job opportunities. The tutors receive specialized training in online tutoring and complete mandatory courses in diversity, inclusion and anti-Black racism. The program ensured that students can learn at their own pace through mentoring sessions, gain access to video lessons tailored to the Ontario curriculum, and receive instant homework help. Since the launch in May 2020, the program has enrolled 687 students impacting 452 families with the help of 324 tutors, and has delivered over 5,000 unique tutoring sessions of K-12 subjects. The findings present evidence of tangible benefits to students, their families and tutors, as well as their level of satisfaction with the program. The Study Buddy program has proven effective to level out the inequities that were compounded by COVID-19.

Keywords:

Educational disruption, diversity and inclusion, underrepresented groups, online tutoring.