Teaching and learning under COVID-19 public health edicts: the role of household lockdowns and prior technology usage.

Public health edicts necessitated by COVID-19 prompted a rapid pivot to remote online teaching and learning. Two major consequences followed: households became students' main learning space, and technology became the sole medium of instructional delivery. We use the ideas of "digital disconnect" and "digital divide" to examine, for students and faculty, their prior experience with, and proficiency in using, learning technology. We also explore, for students, how household lockdowns and digital capacity impacted learning. Our findings are drawn from 3806 students and 283 faculty instructors from nine higher education institutions across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. For instructors, we find little evidence of a digital divide but some evidence of a digital disconnect. However, neither made a difference to self-reported success in transitioning courses. Faculty instructors were impacted in a myriad of diverse ways. For students, we show that closure and confinement measures which created difficult living situations were associated with lower levels of confidence in learning. The digital divide that did exist among students was less influential than were household lockdown measures in undermining student learning.

Intergenerational educational mobility over the past century in Canada.

Young adults born at the end of the 20th century attend colleges and universities at much higher rates than did previous generations, which might give the impression of greater upward educational mobility and in turn, greater class mobility. This impression occurs, however, only because of structural expansion of the Canadian education system. In contrast to structural change, exchange mobility highlights the linkage between one's social origins and destinations. This speaks more directly to questions of equality of educational opportunity and social fairness. Greater fairness or social progress occurs when, over time, destinations become less contingent on origins. We examine intergenerational exchange mobility in Canada by investigating how, if at all, the linkage between parents' and their children's education has changed over the past century. We construct a longitudinal dataset covering the 20th century by merging fifteen cross-sectional surveys from Statistics Canada's General Social Survey (GSS) between 1986 and 2014. Comparing across synthetic birth cohorts we focus on transition probabilities, odds ratios, and logistic regression estimates to measure change. We contribute to a growing gap in the Canadian literature since social mobility has been largely neglected by sociologists as of late. We compare our results to recent findings of economists who examine intergenerational income mobility, another indicator of class mobility. Consistent with earlier sociological and economic research, our results show that despite the tremendous expansion of Canada's education systems, intergenerational exchange mobility for both women and men has been stagnant in Canada over the past century.

Les jeunes adultes nés à la fin du XXe siècle fréquentent les collèges et les universités à un rythme beaucoup plus élevé que les générations précédentes, ce qui pourrait donner l'impression d'une plus grande mobilité ascendante en matière d'éducation et, par conséquent, d'une plus grande mobilité de classe. Cette impression ne se produit toutefois qu'en raison de l'expansion structurelle du système d'éducation canadien. Contrairement au changement structurel, la mobilité d'échange met en évidence le lien entre les origines et les destinations sociales d'une personne. Elle renvoie plus directement aux questions d'égalité des chances en matière d'éducation et d'équité sociale. Une plus grande équité ou un progrès social se produit lorsque, au fil du temps, les destinations deviennent moins dépendantes des origines. Nous examinons la mobilité intergénérationnelle des échanges au Canada en étudiant comment, le cas échéant, le lien entre l'éducation des parents et celle de leurs enfants a changé au cours du siècle dernier. Nous construisons un ensemble de données longitudinales couvrant le 20e siècle en fusionnant quinze enquêtes transversales de l'Enquête sociale générale (ESG) de Statistique Canada entre 1986 et 2014. En comparant des cohortes de naissance synthétiques, nous nous concentrons sur les probabilités de transition, les rapports de cotes et les estimations de régression logistique pour mesurer le changement. Nous contribuons à combler une lacune croissante dans la littérature canadienne puisque la mobilité sociale a été largement négligée par les sociologues ces derniers temps. Nous comparons nos résultats aux conclusions récentes des économistes qui examinent la mobilité intergénérationnelle des revenus, un autre indicateur de la mobilité des classes. Conformément aux recherches sociologiques et économiques antérieures, nos résultats montrent que, malgré la formidable expansion des systèmes d'éducation au Canada, la mobilité intergénérationnelle des échanges, tant pour les femmes que pour les hommes, a stagné au Canada au cours du siècle dernier.

Social Change and the Gendered Division of Household Labor in Canada.

Housework is asymmetrically distributed by gender. This uneven allocation is an important indicator of inequality between women and men. The imbalance is closing, although exactly why remains uncertain. It is also unclear if the convergence has more to do with women's lives becoming more like men's, or whether it is because men are changing their practices on the home front. Using 30 years of nationally representative time use diary data, we explore three broad theoretical frameworks addressing social change-cultural, structural, and demographic-to examine how and why the gender dynamics around housework are shifting. We find that structural factors, and in particular women's engagement with paid work, have changed most sharply as drivers of greater symmetry in domestic labor, although changing cultural beliefs have contributed as well. Furthermore, there have been significant changes in men's behavior. One focal point for this domestic change is in men's and women's shifting practices around childcare. Intensive parenting, not just intensive mothering, has become more prevalent.

Le travail ménager n'est pas distribué de manière uniforme entre les sexes. Cette inégalité des rôles est un important indicateur de celle qui existe entre les femmes et les hommes. Ce déséquilibre s'atténue, même si la raison exacte en demeure incertaine. On ignore également si cette convergence se rapporte davantage au fait que la vie des femmes ressemble de plus en plus à celle des hommes ou au fait que les hommes changent d'attitude face au travail ménager. À partir d'un échantillonnage représentatif au niveau national de trente années de données journalières sur l'utilisation du temps, nous explorons trois vastes cadres théoriques - culturel, structurel et démographique - abordant les changements sociaux pour savoir comment et pourquoi se modifie la dynamique sexuelle autour du travail ménager. Nous avons découvert que les facteurs structurels, particulièrement la participation des femmes au travail rémunéré, ont évolué le plus nettement comme source d'une plus grande symétrie dans le travail ménager, même si une modification des croyances culturelles y a également joué un rôle. De plus, le comportement des hommes s'est modifié de manière significative. Cette évolution du travail ménager dépend en grande partie de celle qui touche la garde des enfants. On assiste aujourd'hui à une parentalité intensive, plutôt qu'à une simple maternité intensive.

The Rise and Stall of Canada's Gender-Equity Revolution.

The growing symmetry in gender roles is a revolutionary change as consequential as technological advances and globalization. We illustrate how the social world in Canada has changed for women and men over the course of the last century, both in terms of greater gender equity and of policies supporting equity. However, some of the significant changes that occurred in the last 100 years have recently stalled, while the overall progress has been uneven for certain subgroups. We suggest reasons for both the stalling and the unevenness and make policy recommendations for reigniting the march to enhanced equality between the sexes.