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.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted almost all aspects of life, including education. This unprecedented shift to online learning has forced schools to implement distance learning through online-based learning. To keep the students engaged and motivated through online learning, many teachers changed their learning method from traditional learning to game-based learning (GBL) by incorporating games into learning. This study investigated primary school teachers' perceptions of game-based learning advantages and challenges in Science Learning on online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data were collected through observation and semi-structured interviews of five primary school teachers and analyzed using thematic analysis of qualitative data. The results revealed that the teachers found a positive association between GBL and students' performance. GBL is a learning media that could engage students' participation and learning motivation in class. However, some teachers were also concerned about the declines in students' grades and several obstacles teachers encountered while implementing GBL. Some recommendations for future research and practice are proposed in the current study.

COVID-19 has an impact on all aspects of life, including education and learning. To ensure that teaching and learning activities continue to run well, teachers are required to master learning media that support online learning. One of the learning media used online is YouTube. Besides being easy to reach, there are currently many learning materials available on YouTube. But the problem is how effective YouTube is as a learning medium, especially for elementary school children. This type of research is qualitative research using a case study approach. The data collection methods used in this study were interviews, questionnaires and documentation. The goal in this study is to explore and find out the effectiveness of YouTube as a learning medium for PAI during the Covid-19 pandemic for elementary school level children.

This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on primary and secondary school-age children with disabilities to assess Kenya’s disaster readiness and the current mitigating measures using the UNDRO/UNDP Disaster Management and Recovery Program framework. The vulnerability analysis of the education system in Kenya reveals gaps in implementing disaster risk reduction (DRR) programs for children and youth with disabilities. Mismanagement of insufficient resources and services (i.e., digital infrastructure and shortage of computer literate educators and government inaction and corruption) showed the extent to which COVID-19 pandemic has undermined the capacity of Kenya’s education system to prepare school-age children with special needs for citizenry responsibilities. Since DRR efforts can overlook or neglect the particular constraints of communities with disabilities within and beyond the education sector, the DRR programs should include education (i.e., physical and virtual learning) to contain the unpredictable and novel pandemics (e.g., COVID-19) and importantly, and include disabled persons and their families in the DRR committees at all administrative levels. This is vital in mitigating factors that predispose disadvantaged children to academic failure and push them to failed adult life on the periphery of society.

This  study  aims  to  determine  the  existence  of  a  positive  and  significant  relationship between  school  well-being  and  achievement  motivation  of  fifth  grade. Primary school students. This  type  of  research  is  correlational  quantitative  with  Likert  scale  data collection   techniques,   thats   the school well-being scale of 19   items and the achievement  motivation  scale  of  22  items.  The  population  in  this  study were  2427 students  of  fifth  grade  public  elementary  school.  The  research  sample  used  simple random  sampling  with  a  total of  336  students.

In the post-pandemic context, the growing level of complexity of Cuban social and educational environments, as well as the low perception of risk with minors from home, generated the need for educational practices, although they are based on the principle of the unity of the cognitive with the affective, to ponder the socio-affective content in the formative process of the new generations. Faced with this challenge, the objective of this research was declared: to favor the socio-affective stimulation of primary school students from a sociopedagogical conception. The diagnosis carried out with a mixed approach revealed cognitive and procedural deficiencies in the socio-affective stimulation of primary schoolchildren, which led to the structuring of a sociopedagogical proposal. It was based on the theoretical methods inductive-deductive, analytical-synthetic, historical-logical and systemic-structural-functional. It had a flexible, participatory and contextualized vision, whose feasibility to enter the educational praxis was corroborated by the criterion method of specialists and the user method.

Despite the increasing number of studies on educational leadership during COVID-19, little attention has been paid to the intersections of different educational experiences and perspectives of school leaders, students, and their families that occur both inside and outside of schools. Drawing on eight case studies of public primary schools in Hong Kong, this article explores the challenges and strategies of online learning with a focus on effective leadership practices for supporting economically disadvantaged students during COVID-19. To incorporate the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, a series of questionnaires were distributed to principals (n = 8), teachers (n = 150), parents (n = 775), lower primary students (n = 855), and upper primary students (n = 850) and interviews were conducted with principals (n = 8), teachers (n = 37), parents (n = 32), and students (n = 62).

Across the world COVID-19 has impacted teachers’ lives both professionally and personally. In many parts of the world kindergarten teachers have been able to adapt practices to ensure that children’s education and care is provided. However some countries have not responded adequately to support kindergarten teachers’ ongoing employment. Bangladesh is one such country. The aim of this study was to understand the experiences of 16 Bangaldeshi kindergarten teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study used an interpretive social constructionist approach, with semi-structured interviews of the 16 kindergarten teachers.

COVID-19 virus continues to be an international concern, challenging psychological resilience in all areas, especially virtual education, making the psychopathology and problems more evident. The present study is a qualitative study of conventional content analysis, in which 24 participants (14 parents, 5 teachers, and 5 principals) were selected by purposive sampling from primary schools in Zahedan. Data collection tools included semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions. Interviews continued until reaching data saturation. The transcripts of the interviews were coded according to Graneheim and Lundman's 5-step approach, and then, the codes were classified according to the specified axes. For accuracy and exactness of information, the researchers used the criteria of validity, verifiability, reliability, and transferability.

This study highlights the experiences of parents of children with disabilities and primary school teachers who taught these children via Distance Education during the COVID-19 Lockdown. The teachers who participated in the study teach children ages 10-14 with varying disabilities. The teachers are from three districts located in Belize (Belize, Orange Walk, and Cayo). The 30 parents were chosen based on recommendations made by the teachers. A phenomenological approach was used as the research method because this approach allowed the researchers to make in -depth analyses and provide thematic descriptions. Research data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using the inductive method.

Due to COVID-19, 2020 was a strange and different school year for many students around the world. Based on a survey of primary school students (N = 2665) conducted in December 2020, this article examines students’ well-being and stress levels one year after the first COVID-19 outbreak. It also examines how students emotionally relate to the pandemic after a year with a large number of persistent stressors caused by school closures and re-openings. The article indicates that at a general level, COVID-19 seems to be a moderate stressor for students, but a number of specific stressors are identified. The article shows that well-being and stress levels vary among different groups of students, and it finds that there is a group of almost a third of the students that we should pay special attention to. Finally, the article identifies eight themes in how the students relate, negatively and positively, to the pandemic.

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to investigate lived distance education (DE) experiences of primary school teachers and their perceptions about DE during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey. Twenty primary school teachers who actively taught online participated in online interviews. Phenomenological analysis of the interviews sought to reveal (1) the primary school teachers’ lived DE experience, and (2) their perceptions about DE during the pandemic. The current status of DE, effects of DE, and teachers’ perceptions of DE were the themes revealed.

In this study, it was investigated how the reading skills of students who were in the 3rd grade of primary school when the Covid-19 pandemic started (March 2020) were affected at the end of the fourth grade (June 2021) due to the school closure during the pandemic. The study employed the longitudinal survey model. Ten teachers and 18 primary school students participated in the study. In the study, the Informal Reading Inventory and interview questions were used as data collection tools. The data of the study were analyzed with descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test and content analysis.

To contain the COVID-19 pandemic schools have been closed in many countries. Children stayed at home and were assisted by their parents with their schoolwork. Evidently, homeschooling puts extra demands on parents. This research presumed that parents’ sense of efficacy in teaching would play a key role in how they cope with this extra task of homeschooling. In particular, it hypothesized that parental characteristics (level of parental education and stress) and social contextual factors (household chaos and school support) would contribute to parents’ teaching self-efficacy and that, in turn, a lower efficacy would result in more parent–child conflict during home schooling. Participants were 173 mothers of children in kindergarten or early elementary schools, who provided information for one of their children about interpersonal conflicts around schoolwork before and during school closure.

The study investigates the rate of reading poverty after the COVID-19 pandemic school shutdown and specific intervention strategies for lower primary school pupils in the southern province and western area of Sierra Leone. Randomised experiments of mixed-methods reading interventions for 100 struggling readers in class 5 and 20 English teachers selected from 10 primary schools (5 in the south and 5 in the Western Area) were carried out. The rate of reading poverty and proficiency was first determined in the selected classes using the Access Center method of reading assessment. Two intervention strategies were administered, and the scores for each intervention strategy were measured and compared.