Rethinking schools, rethinking learning

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest offer an opportunity to clarify what learning is and rethink how to design and assess a “good” school. Schools — online, hybrid, or in-person — should foster learning for all students. Yet, too often, schools paradoxically act as both drivers of equity and reproducers of inequities, both inviting and foreclosing certain types of learning. Maxine McKinney de Royston, Carol Lee, Na’ilah Suad Nasir, and Roy Pea argue that a good school takes an expansive understanding of learning and recognizes learning as fundamentally cultural and rooted in human systems of power and ideology.