Unprecedented times: what we have learned about remote instruction in early childhood during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

This article compares findings from two national surveys of remote learning for children 2-5 years old during school year one (2019–2020) of the COVID-19 pandemic to school year two (2020–2021) of the COVID-19 pandemic. The refined survey contains 45 closed-ended and five open-ended items covering seven domains: (a) demographic information; (b) preparation, guidelines, and materials for remote learning; (c) caregiver communication and engagement; (d) assessment; (e) instruction; (f) educators' levels of confidence before and after remote learning; and (g) access to services (i.e. wraparound and/or special education). Both quantitative (descriptive, regression, ANOVA, Wilcoxon signed rank test) and consensual qualitative research analyses were applied to summarize the results from 506 early childhood educators. Study results indicate that improvements in remote learning were made during the second pandemic school year. Remote learning has potential for young children if an infrastructure that allows for successful implementation is established.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood education
• COVID-19
• remote learning

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the early childhood educators who assisted with revising the survey and participated in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Grant R324B180004 from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, awarded to the University of Kansas supported the time spent making survey revisions and disseminating the survey. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

Notes on contributors

Meaghan McKenna

Meaghan McKenna is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Her research focuses on engaging in collaborative partnerships to solve educational problems of practice and enhancing early literacy assessment and implementation of tiered instruction within a multi-tiered system of supports framework.

Elizabeth Burke Hadley

Elizabeth Burke Hadley is an associate professor at the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on oral language and literacy development in pre-K, with a special focus on helping teachers create equitable and enriching classroom language environments for children.

Nicolette Grasley-Boy

Nicolette Grasley-Boy is an assistant research professor at the Juniper Gardens Children's Project. Her research interests focus on multi-tiered supports to meet the needs of children with and without disabilities, and research methodologies for evaluating intervention effectiveness and measurement development.

Xigrid Soto-Boykin

Xigrid Soto-Boykin is an assistant research professor and senior scientist for bilingual learning at the Children's Equity Project. Her program of research addresses policy and practices to provide asset-driven, linguistically and culturally responsive language and literacy interventions to young emergent bilinguals and nonstandardized speakers of English.

Julia Mikhail

Julia Mikhail is graduate student in the speech-language pathology program at the University of South Florida (USF). She completed her undergraduate degree in Language, Speech, and Hearing Sciences at USF.

Story Phillips

Story Phillips is a graduate student at Jacksonville University where she is studying speech-language pathology. She completed her undergraduate degree in Language, Speech, and Hearing Sciences at the University of South Florida.