Abstract:

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many public schools in Puerto Rico did not have reliable Internet and few teachers regularly incorporated educational technology into their teaching practice. A needs assessment of technological competency conducted in 2020 revealed that the vast majority of Department of Education employees were not comfortable using even basic technology in the classroom. It was in this context that COVID-19 led to prolonged school closures across a school district that serves more than 250,000 students, 58% of whom lived below the poverty line pre-pandemic.

As in most other districts, the Department of Education was tasked with rapidly equipping educators with devices and professional development so that they could provide educational instruction during this public health crisis. However, the Puerto Rico Department of Education, in partnership with a team of international researchers, went one step further, identifying the post-COVID-19-crisis period as an opportunity to accelerate the integration and institutionalization of educational technology in the territory’s schools.

As the educational system prepared for the first return to in-person learning in almost two years, the Department worked closely with its research-practice partnership on strategic change management planning, professional development design, and the establishment of research partnerships with world-class educational organizations like Khan Academy in this post-crisis context. This "now or never" approach to post-crisis systemic change led to the quickest and most comprehensive technological revolution in the history of the Puerto Rican education system.

Mixed methods research conducted as part of this study with key stakeholders in the post-crisis technological transformation process sheds light on the educational opportunities that can emerge from crisis, particularly in low-income and low technological competency settings, and best practices to harness the challenges of a post-crisis back-to-learning processes so that they feed into organizational transformation.

Keywords:

Post-crisis, back to school, educational technology, research-practice partnership.