As the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close their buildings, public PK12 educators in the US had to pivot to something they had never done before or been trained to do: teach online. While significant research exists on how educators learn to teach online in higher education and specialty PK12 settings, the pandemic provided a novel…

Algebra 1 is a gatekeeper course with profound implications for students' academic and professional success. This study examines the implications of teaching Algebra 1 through a standardized, fully online, asynchronous course developed by one of the largest online course vendors in the United States in alignment with Common Core State Standards…

COVID-19 school closures made household access to educational devices and the internet crucial to maintaining educational milestones. While researchers have studied technology needs of students with disabilities, less attention has been given to how households with adults with disabilities living with school-age children access educational devices…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused abrupt school closures and transitions to emergency remote teaching, which impacted millions of educators worldwide. Given an overall lack of international perspectives in related research, there is a need to work toward gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of the pandemic on teaching. This study…

Many K-12 brick-and-mortar public schools now grant students the option of taking some of their courses online. Yet, a scant academic literature probes where online course choice exists and why it is utilized. We partnered with a market research firm to solicit 450 responses from a nationally representative group of American parents of public…

Schools are typically highly structured institutions, so any shifts in processes can potentially generate anxiety, confusion, and even anger among staff. As such, when there is frequent change, initiatives often fail to achieve their intended goals. Well-intentioned initiatives can go awry when not consistently implemented correctly by all staff;…

Despite increased interest in synchronous remote K-12 education, there is limited research on how students perceive such education. This article explores student perceptions of remote education, tutor support, social presence, learning and satisfaction. We developed a survey, and after distributing it and analyzing the results, the survey was…

The purpose of this article is to examine ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the adoption and perception of virtual programs in Indiana public school districts. This mixed-methods sequential explanatory study focuses on beliefs held by Indiana public school superintendents and virtual program administrators regarding the growth of…

Black girls' intersectionality of race and gender puts them in double jeopardy of experiencing both racial and gender discrimination in brick-and-mortar school settings. Virtual classrooms do not completely extinguish the fires that threaten to incinerate Black girls' academic and personal growth, but for many Black girls, the advent of mass…

This study examined the perceived benefits and challenges of using synchronous videoconferencing as a tool to teach academic content and engage United States (U.S.) elementary students in intercultural exchanges with peers in other countries. The study employed a sequential mixed-methods design that consisted of first surveying, then interviewing…

The Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison et al., 2000, 2010) is well researched within the higher education field but is only beginning to be studied within a K-12 context. In this study, all high school online learners and teachers were sent a survey to ask about their online learning and teaching experiences, framed around Garrison et al.'s…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to gain an understanding of the lived experiences of special educators in the pivot from in-person to virtual learning during COVID-19. A national sample of 46 participants participated in the study. Individual recorded interviews were conducted with each participant by the primary researcher. Two…

K-12 teachers faced a multitude of challenges during the transition to emergency remote teaching at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that over two years have passed since the onset of the pandemic and the accompanying shift to emergency remote teaching, it is important to assess how K-12 teachers feel regarding online teaching and whether…

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed students to increased social-emotional stressors and instigated an emergency pivot to online teaching and learning. In doing so, it highlighted the need for effective social-emotional learning (SEL) programming in online learning environments. In response, this study explored how to adapt a widely used, traditional,…

In this study, we sought to develop a model to provide educators with training and resources to effectively support and guide social-emotional learning (SEL) in PK-12 online environments, which we refer to as o-SEL. We utilized five national sets of standards and competencies to guide the development of six online modules for educators to gain…