Children and COVID-19 Research Library

Few studies have examined aspects of the school environment, beyond modality, as contributors to child and youth mental health during the coronavirus pandemic. We investigated associations between nonacademic school experiences and children's mental health. Parents of children ages 6 to 18 years completed online surveys about school experiences (November 2020) and mental health (February/March 2021). Parent-reported and child-reported school experiences (i.e., nonacademic factors) included school importance, adapting to public health measures, and school connectedness. Children's mental health symptoms of depression, anxiety, inattention, and hyperactivity were collected using standardized parent-reported measures.

School closures due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak affected students physically, socially, and psychologically with an increase in the number of children and adolescent presenting with anxiety, depression, and drug abuse. This study aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19 and lockdown on the mental health of minors during the pandemic period and to characterize the type and number of referrals to a regional psychiatric outpatient clinic. This study included 380 children evaluated in an outpatient child psychiatric clinic. They were divided into two groups: before the lockdowns (BLD) (n=248), from January 2019 to February 2020, and during the lockdowns (LD) (n=132), from March 2020 to April 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacts the educational process in schools in Indonesia. Online learning schemes are applied as an alternative to learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research aims to map effective patterns of parental guidance during the online learning process amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a mixed scheme between case study and literature study methods, this literature study was carried out by analyzing previous studies on the topic “parental guidance pattern” and “online learning during a pandemic”. Data were sourced from several relevant articles published from 2020 to 2021. The data were then analyzed using interactively, quantitatively, and biometric methods with the VOSviewer application.

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.

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.

One of the COVID-19 pandemic consequences that has affected families the most is school lockdowns. Some studies have shown that distance learning has been especially challenging for families with a child with neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD or ASD. However, previous studies have not taken the heterogeneity of these disorders into account. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate differences between families with a child with ADHD, ASD, or both conditions, and to examine the role of underlying deficits in executive functioning (EF) in both children and parents in relation to negative and positive effects of distance learning. Survey data assessing both negative and positive experiences of distance learning were collected from parents with a child aged 5–19 years in seven Western European countries: the UK, Germany, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, and Belgium. Altogether, the study included 1010 families with a child with ADHD and/or ASD and an equally large comparison group of families with a child without mental health problems. We included measures of three different types of negative effects (i.e., effects on the child, effects on the parent, and lack of support from school) and positive effects on the family.

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.

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 COVID-19 pandemic prompted an abrupt adoption of online learning worldwide challenging students’ scholastic engagement and their ability to self-regulate their learning. Under these unexpected conditions, adaptability (one’s capacity to adjust thoughts, behaviors, and emotions in new and uncertain situations) might have sustained students to maintain high engagement and find new learning solutions. Students with high adaptability might also interpret COVID-19-related novelty as an opportunity and show higher posttraumatic growth levels. A longitudinal path analysis showed that in a sample of 435 Italian students (11–18 years old), adaptability at Time 1 positively related to engagement, self-regulated learning, and posttraumatic growth at the end of the school year, indirectly favoring academic achievement, through the mediation of engagement and self-regulated learning.

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.

The COVID-19 disease, which spread all over the world and caused a pandemic, disrupted education the most. Countries had to quickly switch to the distance education model in schools and universities in order to prevent the spread of the epidemic. In this study, in which the perceptions and views of high school students about distance education was evaluated, almost two-thirds of the students stated that distance education is not an adequate and effective learning model. Despite the fact that today is the age of technology, students' reporting that a more effective learning will be achieved with face-to-face education shows that the distance education model should be developed and improved.

Distance education has influenced the organization of education at the level of systems and schools, the change in the specificity of teachers’ activities, the change in pupils’ learning, and, undoubtedly, the attainment of learning outcomes. The aim of this study is to determine what factors have affected pupils’ learning outcomes in the course of distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the perspective of pupils, pupils’ parents, and teachers. A quantitative study was conducted in order to reveal the impact of distance learning. The positive and negative aspects of distance education became clear. As regards the negative consequences of distance teaching/learning, the results of the study showed that in the teachers’ opinion, the pupils’ learning outcomes generally deteriorated. The positive factors of distance learning influencing the learning process and thus learning outcomes were a comfortable environment, the possibility to use a variety of learning aids available at home, and the possibility to view the lesson records at a time convenient for pupils.