Unprepared management decreases education performance in kindergartens during Covid-19 pandemic

Learning loss and psychosocial issues among Thai students amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: the perspectives of teachers in the online classroom

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a broad influence on health and society across the globe, especially on the education sector as its educators have had to continue the provision of teaching and learning opportunities to their students online in the midst of pandemic. This has led to learning loss and psychological health issues among students, which is now being recognized worldwide. This study aims to explore the perceptions, perspectives, and experiences of teachers with regards to learning loss and psychological health issues among students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand.

METHODS

Descriptive qualitative research was employed to gain a richer understanding of this interesting phenomenon. The experiences of twelve primary and secondary teachers were looked into by dividing them into several focus groups and interviewing them through video conferencing. All interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed through the use of content analysis.

RESULTS

The findings that include the perceptions, perspectives, and experiences among teachers focused on three main themes, which are teaching and Learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, learning loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and support to deal with the psychosocial issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. These are then divided into fifteen sub themes.

CONCLUSIONS

Through these findings, this study is able to provide an understanding of the perceptions, perspectives, and experiences of teachers regarding learning loss and psychosocial issues among students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand. It also highlights the psychological issues that were met, the social and family support offered, ways how learning loss among students could have been prevented in the midst of the pandemic, and finally suggests what the education administrators and healthcare or public health sector administrators can do to enhance the quality of education and resilience skills of the students during and after the pandemic.

Kindergarten children's reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic: Creating a sense of coherence

This article examines kindergarten children's experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to understand the children's thoughts, emotions, and coping strategies regarding the presence of the COVID-19 virus in their daily lives, using the salutogenic approach to study their sense of coherence and promote relevant professional instruction. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were held with 130 five- to six-year-old children with an equal number of boys and girls. All of the children were recruited from kindergartens affiliated with the state's secular education system. Data were structured into three themes: (1) the child's perception of the pandemic as manageable through significant accompanying and absent figures; (2) the child's comprehension of the virus as dangerous, age-differentiating, and contagious; and (3) the child's emotional processing of the pandemic as arousing fear of death and through images, such as "thorny" and "monster." The results demonstrate the young children's sense of coherence, characterized as extrapersonal perception, interpersonal coping, and intrapersonal emotional processing, and the need for greater acknowledgment of child-parent educators' informed interventions that could give children a partial feeling of the adult's awareness of their needs.

Self-regulated learning, online mathematics learning engagement, and perceived academic control among Chinese junior high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic: A latent profile analysis and mediation analysis

Objectives

Under the COVID-19 prevention and control policy, online learning has been widely used. The current study aimed to identify latent profiles of self-regulated learning in the context of online mathematics learning during the recurrent outbreak of COVID-19, and examine the mechanisms underlying the relationship between self-regulated learning and online mathematics learning engagement among Chinese junior high school students using variable-and person-centered approaches.

Methods

A sample of 428 Chinese junior high school students (47.66% female) completed questionnaires on self-regulated learning, perceived academic control, and learning engagement. Mplus7.0 was used to analyze the latent classes of self-regulated learning. A mediation model was conducted using the software SPSS PROCESS macro.

Results

Three profiles of self-regulated learning were identified and named as low self-regulated learning (16.12%), medium self-regulated learning (43.23%), and high self-regulated learning (40.65%). In the mediating analysis, results of the variable-centered approach showed that perceived academic control mediated the effects of self-regulated learning on learning engagement. For the person-centered approach, we selected the low self-regulated learning type as the reference profile, and the analysis revealed that compared with the reference profile, perceived academic control partially mediated the link between the medium self-regulated learning profile and learning engagement; perceived academic control partially mediated the relationship between the high self-regulated learning profile and learning engagement.

Conclusion

This study showed the heterogeneity in the online mathematics self-regulated learning patterns of Chinese junior high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing the internal mechanisms of Chinese junior high school students’ online mathematics learning engagement using variable-and person-centered approaches. Furthermore, the findings of the study have important implications for promoting online mathematics learning engagement among junior high students during the pandemic.

Dynamic assessment of self-regulated learning in preschool

The assessment of self-regulated learning is a relevant research topic in early childhood development. However, there are few ecologic measures to assess self-regulated learning in preschool as a dynamic and multidimensional process. This study aims to fill this gap by presenting the development and validation of the Dynamic Assessment of Self-regulated learning in Preschool (DASP) method. A dynamic assessment of the construct may constitute an important contribution as it enables the acquisition of cross observational, verbal, and performance data. The DASP method was developed within a theoretical framework of self-regulation, including all cyclical phases, namely, forethought, performance, and self-reflection. Specifically, this method requires children to be questioned in the forethought and self-reflection phases, and observed in the performance phase, as the researcher notes their strategies. This method is used while children engage in authentic preschool tasks. To achieve the study's aim, 214 preschool children were asked to participate. In this research, children performed the Clown task (cognitive task) and the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task (motor task). Item Response Theory analyses provided good item fit for the DASP method (forethought: .99, performance: 1.00, self-reflection: .99), good values of the tasks' reliability (Clown: .92; HTKS: .85), and evidence of the participants' difficulty level in completing the tasks. Results indicated that the children experienced more difficulty in the performance phase, as opposed to the other phases. The potentialities, constraints, and practical implications of the DASP method will be discussed in terms of contributions for theory and practice.

Online learning and child abuse: the COVID-19 pandemic impact on work and school from home in Indonesia

The Indonesian government has made a policy requiring parents and children to work and study from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this policy was meant to limit the spread of the virus and its effects, it has caused psychological trauma, increased stress on parents, and raised child abuse. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the issue of child abuse during online learning, its underlying factors, and its implications on children's mental health. A descriptive qualitative method was used along with a survey technique utilizing Google Forms, involving 317 parents as respondents. The results showed that there was physical, emotional, and verbal child abuse and negligence during online learning. This happened because children were often assumed of neglecting studies and misusing gadgets. Furthermore, the stress levels in parents increased due to the dual role, i.e, working and being teachers at home.

Occupational Commitment of Chinese Kindergarten Teachers During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Predictions of Anti-Epidemic Action, Income Reduction, and Career Confidence

This study highlights a survey on 5783 kindergarten teachers' occupational commitment and its influencing factors in the socioeconomic context of China during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected through the WenJuanXing public online platform. Quantitative analysis results showed that kindergarten teachers' occupational commitment was optimistic on the whole during this period, among which the affective commitment and the normative commitment were satisfactory, but the continuing commitment needed to be strengthened. The type of kindergartens, the personnel affiliation, the educational background, and the professional post of kindergarten teachers had significant impacts on their occupational commitment. The income reduction was negatively correlated with and predictive of kindergarten teachers' occupational commitment. Anti-epidemic action and career confidence were positively correlated with and predictive of kindergarten teachers' occupational commitment. Furthermore, anti-epidemic action, income reduction, and career confidence had joint predictive effects on kindergarten teachers' occupational commitment. More related backgrounds and suggestions have been discussed.