Perception and Practices of Parents and Teachers on Educating African American Students During a Global Pandemic or Times of School Closures

The purpose of this qualitative study is to analyze the perspectives of parents and teachers regarding the barriers and successors of educating African American students through a global pandemic, or unexpected school closure. The study researched successful practices and impediments African American students experience and suggested future practices school districts may implement to bridge the achievement gap of African American students during a global pandemic, natural disaster, or other times of school closures. The theoretical framework in this study is centered on the educational philosophy of the Social Learning Theory developed in 1963 and later detailed in 1977 by Albert Bandura (Nabavi, 2012). The research questions that guided the study were, a) What are parents' perceptions about how their child performed academically during virtual instruction compared to face-to-face instruction? b) What are parents' perceptions about how their child has been impacted socially- emotionally during virtual instruction compared to face-to-face instruction? c) What are teachers' perceptions about how African American students performed academically pre-pandemic compared to post-pandemic? d) What are teachers’ perceptions of the successful practices school districts may implement to bridge the achievement gap of African American students? A purposeful sample of the groups of participants parents and teachers were interviewed to build an empirical understanding of the significant impact of school closures and virtual learning on African American students' achievement. The study found when analyzing the experiences of the parents and teachers who worked with AA students pre, during, and post pandemic students were impacted more socially- emotionally during virtual learning than they were academically. Parents reported noticing of more temperamentally changes impacting AA students because of the isolation from peers’ which research from the Social Learning Theory suggest is critical to development of children. According to the teacher’s perspectives pre-pandemic AA student’s academic performance in general was aligned to current literature that suggest on average academic students perform subordinate to other races. However, what the study found was that post-pandemic AA students were behind academically but not substantially more than any other race. All races showed deficits in learning loss when returning to school post-pandemic.