COVID-19 and School Psychology: Research Reveals the Persistent Impacts on Parents and Students, and the Promise of School Telehealth Supports

Abstract

Two years later, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact children, families, and schools around the world. COVID-19 spread, cases, vaccinations, hospitalizations, and deaths persist. Educational professionals around the world continue to adapt and adjust to the ongoing configurations of in-person, distance/remote, and hybrid instructional context. This third series of articles in this special topic section of School Psychology Review further informs innovations and adaptations in research, training, and practice relevant to the field of school psychology during the COVID-19 pandemic. This introduction describes the ongoing impacts on children, schools, and communities around the world, offers reflections on recent scholarship focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and school psychology, and also shares a synthesis from the next seven articles featured in this second edition of the special topic section focused on adaptations and new directions for the field of school psychology.

Impact Statement

The continuing COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in numerous complications and onging challenges in he fields of education and school psychology around the world. . R Contemporary scholarship informs innovations and adaptations that will benefits school psychologists and other education professionals within and beyond the COVID-19 syndemic. The recent research identifies the persistent deleterious impacts on parents and children, and also provides valuable information regarding the use of telehealth to support students and families.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• pandemic
• syndemic
• school psychology
• practice
• education

COVID-19 AND SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY: CURRENT RESEARCH AND DIRECTIONS IN PRACTICE, SCIENCE, AND POLICY

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic including the recently identified Omicron variant (with the first cases being reported in November 2021 inSouth Africa and in the U.S, shortly thereafter, CDC COVID-19 Response Team, 2021) has continued to impact students, parents, educations, and our education systems at the time of this writing (January 2022). Given the recency of Omicron, much remains unknown (del Rio et al., 2022). However, based on available modeling information to date, Omicron appears to be highly transmissible with a propensity to evade immunity in persons who have previously had COVID-19 or are vaccinated (CDC, 2021a). However, preliminary data also suggests that Omicron cases may not be as serious compared with the other variants, with hospitalizations and deaths being most prevalent with persons who have not been vaccinated (CDC, 2021a; del Rio et al., 2022). As of this writing, a surge in US Omicron cases is expected, with estimated peaks in late January to April 2022 (CDC, 2021a).

The Omicron variant emerged in the US around the same time as the Delta variant was also rampant (del Rio et al., 2022). While the impact of the Omicron variant is yet to be realized, Delta has been highly infectious and has resulted in increased transmissibility when compared to earlier variants, and also resulted in a rapid and alarming rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalization rates in the U.S. and around the world, while both the Lambda and Omicron variants are being watched closely in the U.S. and globally. At the time of this writing, (January 2022), around the globe there are over 400 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and nearly 6 million deaths (compared to over 216 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 4.5 million deaths as of August, 2021) (World Health Organization (WHO), 2022). In the U.S. (as of January, 2022), there are 70,641,725 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 864,203 deaths associated with COVID-19 (compared to over 38 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 631,000 deaths associated with COVID-19 in August of 2021) (CDC, 2021b). Still, there has been much progress in the fight against COVID-19 including three effective vaccines, eligibility of children age 5 to receive vaccines, a preventative pill that reduces the intensity of the virus once contracted, and enhanced governmental and medical infrastructure (CDC, 2021c). Prevention efforts have increased since 2020, with over 76% of persons aged five and over in the U.S. having at least one vaccination with over 64.2 million persons fully vaccinated, and 26.9% have received boosters (CDC, 2021d). Globally, 9,620,105,525 vaccine doses have been given (WHO, 2022). However, the challenges and complexities of the virus remain for the country, schools, and school psychology in particular. Recent challenges related to the Omicron variant, given that it appears to be highly contagious (del Rio et al., 2022), is that school personnel shortages, already happening, could be impacted even further with even higher numbers of COVID-19 cases.

Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2021e, 2021f) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) (2021) have offered updated multilayer prevention strategies for schools, including; vaccination for all who are eligible, indoor masking, physical distancing, ventilation, screening for children two years and over and school staff to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. However, mitigation policies have varied widely across school districts and states across the country, resulting in a lack of uniformity as children and families return to school. The return to school is marked by a great deal of uncertainty about not only COVID-19 related policies but rising rates in COVID-19 variants, particularly Delta and Omicron, which appear to be highly contagious (CDC, 2021a).

Schools continue to struggle to meet the educational challenges resulting from COVID-19 including faculty and staff shortages, disruption of essential student support services (e.g., food nutrition, food/nutrition, healthcare, extracurricular activities, family/community collaboration, and mental health services), disruption in academic learning, social isolation, family financial concerns, greater childhood adverse experiences, trauma, grief, and increased screen time (Golberstein et al., 2020).

The impact is even greater for students who are not from the dominant majority including students with diverse abilities, who are Black, Indigeneous, culturally and linguistically diverse, students from families with low-income and economic marginalization (LIEM), gender and sexual minoritized youth (Brandenburg et al., 2020; Salerno et al., 2020), and students experiencing an intersection of oppressive systems (Van Lancker & Parolin, 2020; Yip, 2020). In addition to students, educators also experience high levels of stress and burnout (Baker et al., 2021), leading to staff shortage at some schools.

This special topic section of School Psychology Review aims to disseminate innovations and adaptations in research, training, and practice that contribute to advancing the field of school psychology. Due to the continuing course of the COVID-19 pandemic, articles addressing this special topic will continue to be published across several volumes featuring important new research as it is available. The pervasiveness of COVID-19’s impact on society requires a selective review, with an intentional focus on current research developments in key issues pertaining to COVID-19 and school psychology which will be discussed next. Finally, the seven articles pertaining to COVID-19 and school psychology that are featured in this issue are briefly described.

PSYCHOSOCIAL AND MENTAL HEALTH CONCERNS AND SPECIAL TOPIC CONTRIBUTIONS

The current issue features seven articles that address stress, psychosocial, and mental health concerns among parents, school personnel, and children. Several studies in this issue examined changes in parenting during COVID-19 and also how telehealth intervention may support parents and schools. Menter et al. (2022) found changes in parenting behavior were influenced by children’s externalizing and internalizing symptoms and mindful parenting. McIntyre et al. (2021) delivered a behavioral parent training program to Spanish-speaking Latinx parents with young children with developmental delays and behavior problems through telehealth and evaluated the acceptability, adoption, appropriateness of the intervention. Most participants viewed the telehealth method as appropriate during COVID-19, were satisfied with the telehealth intervention, and completed homework. Behavioral parent training through telehealth intervention may be an feasible and acceptable way to involve parents. Next, Demaray et al. (2022) add to the current knowledge of increased rates of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic symptoms among children and adolescents during COVID-19 (e.g., de Miranda et al., 2020). That is, they found that among midwestern fourth through twelfth grade students, females and secondary students reported more symptoms of anxiety and depression yet more use of coping strategies.

Next, Gregus et al. (2022) found that while diverse parents (i.e., racial/ethnic and economically minoritized) and parents of elementary children were more negatively affected by the pandemic, children were more well adjusted when their parents encouraged hygienic behaviors, promoted social connection, did not limit access to COVID-19 information, and practiced positive parenting strategies. Similarly, Ye et al. (2022) found that while many students experienced difficulties with virtual learning during COVID-19, positive parenting (more authoritative parenting and less authoritarian parenting) and positive student–teacher relationship predicted better student adjustment (e.g., more academic engagement and less mental health difficulties). In addition, positive student–teacher relationships buffered the relation between cyberbullying and mental health difficulties (Ye et al., 2022). Similarly, These studies add to the knowledge base on protective factors for mental health and wellness during COVID-19 that has included physical activities, positive parent-child relationships, and positive student–teacher relationships (Magson et al., 2021; Wright et al., 2021).

Fallon et al. (2022) contribute a systematic review of single-case studies examining the effect of electronically delivered implementation (EDIS) support on intervention implementation integrity. The findings from this study offer practitioners guidance in using electronically EDIS to school personnel (e.g., teachers, paraeducators) to promote implementation fidelity. In addition, King et al. (2022) contribute a systematic review of school teleconsultation focusing on teleconsultation, consultation models, characteristics of the consultation triad, design quality characteristics, the technologies used, and study outcomes. Collectively, the studies featured in this review provide preliminary evidence for the use of teleconsultation as an effective service delivery model for schools to use to support student learning and development.

In addition to the articles featured in this current issue of School Psychology Review, there were four articles featured in 2020 (Aspiranti et al., 2020; Song et al., 2020; Stifel et al., 2020; Wendel et al., 2020) and five articles featured in 2021 (Anderson et al., 2021; Baker et al., 2021; Briesch et al., 2021; Styck et al., 2021; Yang, 2021) (see Table 1). School Psychology Review will continue to feature contemporary scholarship focused on COVID-19 that further advances and informs the field of school psychology.

FUTURE RESEARCH

As COVID-19 and its variants continue to be a part of life, school psychology needs to continue to examine questions and hypotheses related to training and practice. Telehealth and telepsychology in particular has received increased attention in the field of mental health and school psychology showing general efficacy (Backhaus et al., 2012; Hilty et al., 2013; McCord et al., 2020), including the studies featured in this issue. It is imperative that school psychologists continue to consider the unique practice context of schools and the communities we serve (e.g., Jimerson et al., 2021; Salerno et al., 2020; Webb Hooper et al., 2020). Future scholarship needs to address ethical and valid practice that is culturally responsible (Lazarus et al., 2021).

In closing, this issue of School Psychology Review features seven articles that provide valuable insights into how the pandemic is impacting mental health in schools by focusing on parents, school personnel, and students. Parents and school personnel continue to be very concerned about student functioning during the pandemic and data continue to support mental health concerns among children and youth. Fortunately, however, more data are accumulating to support the usefulness of parenting behaviors and interventions to promote student mental health. Combining these studies with previous installments along with the decrease of COVID-19 rates at the time of this writing, there is more to be hopeful about compared to only two years ago.

Table 1. School Psychology Review Features Contemporary COVID-19 Research Advancing Practice, Science, and Policy in the Field of School Psychology 2020-2021-2022

COVID-19 and School Psychology: Adaptations and New Directions for the Field. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1852852 Assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic: Ethical, legal, and safety considerations for moving forward. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1844549 Comparing paper and tablet modalities of math assessment for multiplication and addition. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1844548 The association between child ADHD symptoms and changes in parental involvement in kindergarten children’s learning during COVID-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1838233 The experience of COVID-19 and its impact on teachers’ mental health, coping, and teaching. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1855473 Online teaching self-efficacy, social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies, and compassion fatigue among educators during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2021.1903815 School personnel and parents’ concerns related to COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on schools. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1862626 Measuring COVID-19-related stress in 4th through 12th grade students. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1857658 Caregiver perspectives on schooling from home during the spring 2020 COVID-19 closures. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2021.1908091 Parenting & children’s psychological adjustment during the COVID-19 pandemic https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2021.1880873 Changes in parenting practices during the COVID-19 pandemic: Child behavior and mindful parenting as moderators. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1869497 Parenting and teacher-student relationship as protective factors for Chinese adolescent adjustment during COVID-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2021.1897478 Electronically delivered support to promote intervention implementation fidelity: A research synthesis. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1853485 Telehealth delivery of a behavioral parent training program to Spanish-speaking Latinx parents of young children with developmental delay: Applying an implementation framework approach. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2021.1902749 A systematic review of school teleconsultation: Implications for research and practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2021.1894478

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Samuel Y. Song

Samuel Y. Song, PhD, is a faculty member at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Cixin Wang

Cixin Wang, PhD, is a faculty member at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Dorothy L. Espelage

Dorothy L. Espelage, PhD is William C. Friday Professor of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Pamela A. Fenning

Pamela A. Fenning, PhD, is a faculty member at Loyola University Chicago.

Shane R. Jimerson

Shane R. Jimerson, PhD, is a faculty member at the University of California, Santa Barbara.