Children and COVID-19 Research Library

This article first explores three literary representations of young people who are immersed in books by focusing on Alice’s sister in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Belle from Beauty and the Beast and Matilda. It argues that these characters create solitary reading experiences by being absorbed in books which provides escapism and company. It considers how representations of literary children immersed in books can provide a model of this type of reading behaviour for child readers, provided that these representations are sufficiently diverse. The article then focuses on primary literacy education in the United Kingdom and discusses how policy requirements can mean that children’s school reading experiences are often shared rather than solitary ones. It draws on a recent study of children’s reading habits (Topping, 2021) to highlight how children’s increased enjoyment in reading during the first lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic can be partly attributed to them having more time to read alone, which enabled them to become immersed in a story and made them feel better about being isolated. The article concludes by arguing that children need to have more opportunities in school to be alone with books to allow for immersive reading experiences.

In the process of large-scale online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, students’ online learning has caused widespread public concerns. This study investigated the relationships between Chinese rural and urban primary school students’ information communications technology (ICT) literacy, student resilience, and online learning self-efficacy in a large-scale online education environment during the pandemic in China. We compared 5,037 primary school students in rural areas to 5,045 primary school students in urban areas with matching gender and grade in nine regions in China’s Guangdong province, using a survey comprising an ICT literacy scale, a student resilience scale, an online learning self-efficacy scale, and an ICT devices scale. The ICT literacy, resilience and online learning self-efficacy of primary school students in rural areas were significantly lower than those in urban areas (p < 0.01).

This  paper  reports  a  case  study  carried  out  in  a  lower  secondary  school  in  the eastern district of Bhutan on implementing the “Education in Emergency” programduring  the  closure  of  schools  in  2020  due  to  the  novel  COVID-19  pandemic.  It investigated  teachers’  experiences  of  how  effectively  they  implemented  the “Education in Emergency” (EiE) Programme initiated by the Ministry of Education, Bhutan  through  various  online  tools.  This  study  employed  a  sequential  multi-method paradigm starting with the survey of all teachers (n=35), preceded by in-depth semi-structured interviews, observations,and detailed field notes of teachers (n=6)  who  were  purposefully  selected  based  on  the  survey findings. The  study focused on understanding the teachers’ awareness of the change  of  curriculum, students’  level  of  preparedness  for  online  learning,  support  from  various stakeholders; school, parents,and Dzongkhag Education Sector, and perceptions of  teachers  on  the  special program“Reaching the Unreached” initiatedby  the school solely aimed at benefiting the students who were unable to access from thee-learning platforms.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruptive changes across different life experiences essential to children's growth and development, including early childcare services and schools, thus threatening precious opportunities for children in early childhood to learn. The pandemic has also undermined the collaborative and alliance relationship between childcare services and families which has been widely considered an important aspect of modern services. This paper presents and discusses results from a mixed-method exploratory study with early childcare services for children between 0 and 6 years in Italy in 2021, involving both teachers and parents, to understand experiences, educational practices put in place in childcare services, feelings, resources and risks perceived by families and teachers.

Immigrant incorporation scholars have established that racialized immigrant parents encounter several barriers in their children's schooling: namely, language and cultural differences, discrimination, unfamiliarity with the U.S. schooling system, and unhelpful school agents. However, less is known about the mechanisms that lessen these challenges. Drawing on insights from immigrant incorporation and civic engagement literature, this study examines how advocacy organizations can mediate the barriers racialized immigrant parents face in their children's schooling. A case study of 20 Latina immigrant mothers is used to demonstrate how civically engaged parents drew on their participation with a local advocacy organization—Parent's Choice—to overcome the barriers that emerged during the transition to remote learning due to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.

About 2 billion children were affected by school closures globally at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to documented learning losses while children were out of school, and an especially precarious future academic path for pupils in developing countries where learning and continued enrolment remain important issues. There is an urgent need to understand the extent of these learning and enrolment losses, and possible policy options to get children back on track. This paper studies the extent of learning losses and recovery in Africa's most populous country, Nigeria, and provides some evidence that a full recovery is possible. Using data from a random sample of schools, we find significant learning losses of about .6 standard deviations in English and Math. However, a program designed to slow down the curriculum and cover what was missed during school closures led to a rebound within 2 months, and a recovery of all learning losses. Students who were a part of the program do not lag behind one year later and remain in school.

School closure is one of the most debated measures undertaken to contain the spread of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The pandemic has devastating health and socio-economic effects and must be contained, but schools play a vital role in present and future well-being, capabilities and health of children. This study examines the detrimental consequences of both the closure and reopening of schools, by focusing on inequalities in the challenges affecting children and their families. This paper is grounded on Irish and Italian data from a multi-national longitudinal qualitative interview study. Research participants articulated a variety of issues and challenges that highlight inequalities in access to education during school closures, in the supportiveness of home setting, and in school preparedness to reopen, often mirroring or exacerbating pre-existing inequalities.

The study sought to identify family conditions and school actions associated with academic self-efficacy and emotional well-being of adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile. School closures are likely to have affected students’ sense of academic efficacy and emotional well-being by removing support factors such as teacher and peer support for both academic and social tasks. At the same time, family stressors caused by the pandemic are also likely to have affected children. Data were collected by a Chilean school district about the family conditions and well-being of 5th–12th-grade students (N = 1,941) during lockdown. Exploratory factor analysis and latent profile analysis were applied to parents’ and students’ reports about family processes and material conditions. Family profiles and school responses to lockdown were used to predict students’ academic self-efficacy and emotions. Family profiles were mainly differentiated by parenting processes, material conditions, and parenting stress. Regression analyses showed that the family profile predicted students’ negative emotions and low self-efficacy. Specifically, children of families with higher scores in all dimensions were less at risk of reporting low academic self-efficacy and negative emotions, but the two average profiles—with high and low stress—were not different in this regard. Student gender and age were predictors of negative emotions but not self-efficacy. In contrast to family factors, school actions during the pandemic did not predict academic self-efficacy and well-being.

The students in primary and high schools were the most at risk of being impacted by the Covid-19 outbreak in terms of their educational status. The whole education system slowly transited from in-class to online as per the time’s demand. By examining students’ online learning experiences during the COVID-19 epidemic in various situations, this study aims to present student voices of online education and explain why the implications are significant for student learning. Two nations are studied on a comparative window-Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates-having different levels of socioeconomic development, the severity of the COVID-19 outbreak, pandemic preparedness measures, and the growth of online learning. A total of 125 students from Bangladesh and the UAE were surveyed quantitatively on the efficiency of online learning. To determine the efficacy of online education, constructs were created, and a questionnaire based on the structures was established. This study is cross-sectional and uses an inferred deductive methodology. Although many studies assert that online learning is just as successful as traditional learning, relatively few studies have examined the effectiveness of online instruction, particularly when switching from traditional learning methods to online learning. Additionally, no paper has investigated how elementary school pupils perceive the system, despite the fact that they were the most susceptible during the changeover. This essay seeks to close that gap.

This  study  examined  the  symptoms  ofexhaustion, school stress and anxious school refusal from acomparative developmental perspective in French adoles-cents enrolled in public and private general, technologicaland vocational schools. It is particularly important to con-sider academic stress levels, anxiety and school burnoutin middle and high school students as they are linked tomany mental health problems, such as depression or suici-dal thoughts. In this study, four hundred and ninety-threeadolescents completed an online questionnaire consistingof the School Burnout Inventory, the Echelle Toulousainede Stress Scolaire perçu and the School refusal evaluationwas developed. The results show a very high percentage ofsuffering among teenagers. The young people most affectedare high school students and more particularly students in10th and 12th grade, with nearly three-quarters of themsuffering from school burnout and/or high school stress,without any distinction between the sexes or the type ofschooling.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic had a global impact on family social and economic well-being. Individuals and families sought alternative living arrangements as a result of the financial crisis, health implications, and housing insecurity, with many joining multigenerational households. However, it is unknown how multigenerational family life affects children's well-being. Therefore, this qualitative study explored risks and resilience-building opportunities for children's psychological and social well-being in resource-constrained multigenerational households during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. Five multigenerational families were selected through snowball sampling and case design. The three generations of participants were grandparents (n = 5), parents (n = 7), and children (n = 4). Data were gathered through a questionnaire and interviews. The study received institutional ethics approval. After thematic analysis, two themes and six sub-themes were identified. Risks were related to interpersonal conflict, family collective fear of COVID-19, and children's multiple other fears. Opportunities were identified as academic support, shared responsibilities, life skills and values acquisition, and family cohesion.

This article examines spatiality in selected children’s books about COVID-19. Spatiality is an important lens because the coronavirus pandemic is a crisis related to distancing and mobility restrictions—spatial matters. Benedict Anderson’s notion of imagined communities was adopted as a framework to how children’s books present community belongingness within the spatial restrictions imposed during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a content analysis of pandemic-related children’s books published in early 2020 (n = 51), this paper explores the sense of community in three everyday spaces: ‘inside’ (home), ‘outside’ (outdoors), and ‘in-betweens’ (windows and digital space).

The unprecedented online learning that took place at several schools during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is predicted to continue on the same trajectory when learners return to classroom learning. Continuing with online learning implies that learners will spend most of their time learning and socialising online, which exposes them to cybersecurity risks. Hence, this study investigated strategies for securing the cybersafety of online learners at South African high schools. The study adopted an interpretivist approach, and qualitative data were collected from school teachers. Fifteen school teachers from five private high schools in Centurion, Pretoria, were interviewed, and the data were thematically analysed. All the schools were multiracial and English-medium schools. The teachers from the schools were selected to participate in the study because they had experienced online learning during the times of COVID-19. The study proposed cybersafety strategies that are centred around providing cybersafety policies, conscientising learners about cybersecurity risks (awareness), preventing cyberbullying, discouraging the consumption or production of inappropriate content and protecting learners from Internet addiction.