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WIU Education Professors Awarded Spencer Foundation Grant For Pandemic Research

October 22, 2020

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MACOMB, IL – Western Illinois University School of Education professors Gloria Delany-Barmann and Carla Paciotto have been awarded a COVID-19 Rapid Response Spencer Foundation Grant.

Their successful application for, "Teaching for Equity in a Pandemic Hotspots: Reaching Multilingual and Low-income Students in Two Rural Schools," was one of only 20 funded proposals, chosen from nearly 1,400 submissions nationwide. Their proposal examines the educational policies and practices implemented by schools and educators serving large, multilingual/multiethnic populations of low-income English Learners (ELs) in hotspot Covid-19 meat packing towns in the rural Midwest during the pandemic crisis of 2020.

"Specifically, the study investigates how, during the Spring 2020 and the following school year, old and new areas of EL educational inequity have revealed themselves during the pandemic, and how rural educators have addressed ELs' academic, linguistic and social-emotional needs through remote teaching, while also examining experiences and perspectives of multilingual parents about their children's access to education," said Paciotto. "The study will provide extensive data, which will inform WIU teacher education courses and programs with new knowledge and examples on how to improve current English learners' education policies and practices."

The Spencer Foundation, named for Lyle M. Spencer, founder of Science Research Associates (SRA), invests in educational research. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the foundation sought to recognize the impact of the virus on educational institutions and processes.

"The level of inequality revealed in the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism was critical for us to address in relation to education," the foundation said in a statement. "However, we were also mindful that proposing a new study might be overly burdensome for the many scholars juggling familial responsibilities while trying to support students and teach fully online. After much deliberation, we decided there were critical and urgent research questions arising in this moment—questions that warranted our collective attention and study."

The foundation also saw the pandemics as a way to remake and imagine new forms of equitable educational opportunities. This round of grants included three additional, pandemic-related criteria, including the urgency of the project, the impacts of the research and how the project conceptualized inequality.

For more information about the WIU School of Education, visit wiu.edu/education.

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