Children and COVID-19 Research Library

Down syndrome is the most common form of intellectual disability. However, there is a paucity of educational research focused on this vulnerable segment of learners especially in the present novel situation. This paper aimed to explore how teachers tailor remote special education for children with down syndrome amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines. It draws from a phenomenological qualitative study that collected information from online interviews with nine special education teachers handling children with down syndrome.

Emergency legislation introduced internationally since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic saw the closure of all levels of educational settings and a shift to remote teaching. Drawing lessons from an independent child rights impact assessment (CRIA) in Scotland, United Kingdom, this paper reviews the impact of COVID-19 measures on children and young people’s rights to, and experiences of, education during the current crisis. Findings highlight that while measures sought to preserve the best interests of children and their basic rights to safety, a distinct lack of consultation on the impacts of the measures undermined the interdependency and indivisibility of children’s human rights. Three human rights principles – participation and inclusion, non-discrimination, and mutual accountability of family and the State – were identified as being particularly significant in this assessment. Looking forward, findings point to the need for extending the range of perspectives involved in child rights impact assessments in times of crisis – where human rights are at even greater risk of being breached – and the significance of a children's rights-based perspective for re-imagining education altogether.

The closure of schools in response to COVID-19 compromised access to essential meals for many students. The Emergency Meals-to-You program, a public/private partnership, was set up to address this challenge. More than 38.7 million meals were delivered between April and August 2020. This study explores lessons learned and identifies strategies for strengthening food access and security at schools and beyond. Qualitative research methods were used. This included interviews and focus groups with participants involved in setting up and delivering the Emergency Meals-to-You program. Data were thematically analyzed using key phrases, ideas, and concepts, and interpreted.

Understanding of the role of children in COVID-19 transmission has significant implications for school and childcare policies, as well as appropriate targeting of vaccine campaigns. The objective of this systematic review was to identify the role of children in SARS-CoV-2 transmission to other children and adults. MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Web of Science were electronically searched for articles published before March 31, 2021. Studies of child-to-child and child-to-adult transmission and quantified the incidence of index and resulting secondary attack rates of children and adults in schools, households, and other congregate pediatric settings were identified. All articles describing confirmed transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from a child were included. PRISMA guidelines for data abstraction were followed, with each step conducted by two reviewers.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the provision and downloading of educational apps for children have both increased. This paper reports the results of an extensive literature review of the age-rating systems of digital content (audiovisual and games) used around the world and demonstrates the weakness of those instruments that prove ineffective in choosing digital content for children. Age-rating systems are arbitrary and only focus on explicit content that is considered harmful to preschool children. The paper proposes an alternative model of app analysis based on child development. The main objective of the research is to determine the developmental appropriateness of apps for young children and its effects on children’s responses through a content analysis of 318 apps and a test of a subset of them (N=25) with a sample of 53 children aged 3–5. To this end, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis is used to extract a composite index of the apps’ developmental appropriateness, which was used to specify a path analysis. The results show that developmental appropriateness is associated with the highest positive ratings by children and, indirectly, with play time.

Schools were closed extensively in 2020-21 to counter SARS-CoV-2 spread, impacting students' education and wellbeing. With highly contagious variants expanding in Europe, safe options to maintain schools open are urgently needed. By estimating school-specific transmissibility, this study evaluates costs and benefits of different protocols for SARS-CoV-2 control at school. The study developed an agent-based model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in schools. It used empirical contact data in a primary and a secondary school and data from pilot screenings in 683 schools during the alpha variant (B.1.1.7) wave in March-June, 2021, in France. It fitted the model to observed school prevalence to estimate the school-specific effective reproductive number for the alpha (Ralpha) and delta (B.1.617.2; Rdelta) variants and performed a cost-benefit analysis examining different intervention protocols.

Self-regulated learning (SRL) may determine adapting to online environments. This study is an evaluation of students' (N = 33 912) SRL and integration in remote learning in Finnish lower secondary schools when educational institutions all over the world were urgently closed and teaching was arranged in remote settings due to COVID-19. Neither the teachers nor the students had time to prepare themselves for the transition, resulting in variations in coping. To learn from experiences during the pandemic, we evaluated students' remote learning experiences by using a nationally representative survey.

State-level policies in Ohio during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States involved physical school closures and work-from-home requirements when possible. Presumably, these policies and resulting impacts on homes with children would alter parent time investments in their children with respect to home-learning activities. This study assessed parent time investments specific to home-learning activities with their children, and key predictors of these investments. Using data from a comprehensive survey completed by 559 caregivers of children (aged birth to 9 years) during a state-mandated stay-at-home order and widespread school closure, it assessed whether parent time investments in children's learning were associated with: (1) parents’ mental health and social connectedness, (2) children's level of emotional distress, and (3) household characteristics including chaos, social needs, and structure.

The pandemic has affected every walk of life, and mental health is no exception. Bangladesh has been operating under a resource crisis, and this crisis has incurred and is incurring a governance priority dilemma. Unending vacations of the educational institutions are taxing our students' mental serenity, and among those, adolescents are more vulnerable. Unending leaves of the educational institutions are taxing our students' mental peace, and among those, adolescents are more susceptible. Across the globe, a good number of studies have been performed, and Bangladesh is no exception. However, adolescents have received less attention in those studies, and this paper fills the gap. This explorative study opted for a qualitative method that covered data collection like in-depth interviews among 60 respondents. This study aims to simultaneously unveil the causes of mental dissonance among adolescents and the impact of infection prevention measures (e.g., lockdown) on adolescents' mental health in the capital city of Bangladesh.

Online learning was the preferred avenue to sustain learning during the COVID - 19 pandemic when all learning institutions closed globally. Lessons learnt could be used to build education resilience in times of education disruptions in Kenya. A case study of two public secondary schools was conducted anchored on connectivism theory and Technological Pedagogic Content Knowledge. The participants were 15 teachers and 154 form four candidates from two secondary schools, purposively selected as the candidate classes. The objectives were to find out: the technology devices used by teachers and students to learn; whether the teachers and the students had knowledge, skills and attitudes to engage in online learning; how teachers and students acquired knowledge and skills to use the technology devices and whether there were any interventions provided to support them. A questionnaire for teachers and another for students collected quantitative and qualitative data which was analysed and established that few students managed to engage in online learning without adequate support and other technology devices were used for learning.

The widespread school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated the learning crisis for children living in Eastern and Southern Africa. The crisis has also shown the great need to develop resilient education systems that can provide learning when schools are forced to close. Understanding how to provide remote learning equitably utilizing multiple modalities and emphasizing low-tech solutions in Eastern and Southern Africa is critical given the great challenges facing the region in terms of electricity and connectivity access. This report provides a summary of lessons learned in the East and Southern Africa region from remote learning during COVID-19 and provides concrete recommendations on how to increase the resilience of education systems

The article explores child well-being in Danish early childhood education and care (ECEC) during the time of COVID-19. A phased reopening of Denmark occurred in spring 2020 under strict health guidelines. Two ECEC institutions were followed first-hand to observe the impact of the pandemic on pedagogy and child well-being. Observations and interviews were conducted with follow-up interviews and an online survey a year later. The findings suggest that the pandemic caused pedagogues to work in a more child-sensitive way with elevated staff/child ratios and children in small, fixed groups; however, child well-being was not negatively affected, despite the acute situation.

The study examined Israeli mothers’ engagement in their children’s distance learning during COVID-19 crisis. A thematic analysis of interviews with 20 mothers from high and low socioeconomic background yielded three core categories: (a) mothers’ responses to the situation of school closures that addressed to organizing, supervising and less learning pressure by keeping boundaries between school and home activities; (b) challanged and concerens that refed to workload, instructional difficulty and the quality of teachers’ work; (c) mothers’ resources for engaging in their children's learning that comprised social capital and human capital including digital skills. Socioeconomic differences were found in regard to these three core categories that sustain inequality. However, mothers from low socioeconomic background reported being actively engaged and critical toward teachers.

This qualitative study explores the English learning experiences of 30 Grade 5 students from three mainstream schools in Kazakhstan during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was informed by Benson et al.'s (2011) four-dimensional model of language learning beyond the classroom: (a) location (physical vs. virtual), (b) formality (formal vs. informal agents), (c) locus of control (other-directed vs. self-directed goals) and (d) pedagogy. Data were collected through online individual interviews and students' drawings. The data suggest that the participants' English teachers used mainly Zoom and WhatsApp platforms for delivering the online classes. The participants were critical of their English teachers' practices, particularly, the overuse of WhatsApp, the scarcity of co-operative activities and delays in responding to inquiries. Consequently, 16 participants (53%) were receiving face-to-face and virtual private tutoring in English (PT-E). Although face-to-face PT-E may be unsafe during the pandemic, PT-E was a parental strategy to free themselves from the burden of tracking their children's progress. The participants acted agentively, not only reflecting on the disadvantages of online education but also on its benefits, including its being more convenient and able to help them improve their self-reliance and technology skills.

The current study explored the associations between parenting stress and p\arental self-efficacy on children’s social-emotional functioning and home learning practices among Latino families. Families were recruited as part of a pilot study of a parent-focused school readiness intervention that was conducted via telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample was comprised of children (Mage = 3.02 years; 64% male) enrolled in Early Head Start, and their parents (97% biological mothers). At baseline, parents reported on family demography, parenting stress, involvement in home learning activities (i.e., literacy and math), their self-efficacy in managing a range of situations related to raising young children, and children’s social-emotional functioning.