Directions for ECE during pandemic: a perspective from global research

By Elaine Lau, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

The coronavirus outbreak hit the world in early 2020 and caught all industries off-guard. Schools and pre-schools were forced into long terms of suspension, bringing a completely new challenge to students, parents and teachers and pushing early childhood education to go fully digital.  

ECE research blossomed due to this sudden change and provided solutions for effective teaching practices to sustain education as usual during the pandemic. Jiahong Su and colleagues in China performed a systematic bibliometric synthesis of the knowledge generated from this research to guide effective change at the policy and practice levels. Their overview of 507 empirical articles on ECE during COVID-19 between 2020 and March 2022 revealed the following critical observations in early childhood research:   

1. Online Learning and Teaching in ECE during the pandemic  

• Educators faced various challenges regarding IT competence, lack of training in distance learning, and ability to maintain the quality of early childhood programmes;  
• Prolonged online learning can bring risks to children’s development of self-regulation and motivation stability;  
  
  

2. Physical Activity in ECE during the pandemic 

• Lockdown and social isolation measures reduced the duration of physical activity for children, increased time spent on entertainment screens and decreased their sleeping quality;  
• To maintain children’s health and well-being, promoting active play with children is essential;  
  
  

3. Stress and Mental Health in Early Childhood during the pandemic 

• Family background and access to kindergarten or daycare have great impact on the reduction of children’s psychological stress;  
  
  

4. Families in Early Childhood Research during the pandemic 

• Active parental involvement in home schooling can reduce children’s negative learning behaviours;  
• Parents made active attempts to provide home education for children, but home environment-related limitations can hinder the possibilities of quality home-schooling;  
• Families met various emotional and economic challenges during the pandemic. More service of psychological, financial and digital support should be given to parents from schools and communities in order to reduce possible suffering of vulnerable children regarding their online learning. 

A promising future for Future Forward

By Claire Chuter, Johns Hopkins University

Jones & Li (2022) recently conducted an evaluation of Future Forward, and it’s a perfect illustration of the value in subgroup analysis. Future Forward is a tutoring and family engagement program that aims to improve literacy and social development for students in grades K-2.

In the fall of 2020, 153 students were randomly assigned to the Future Forward participant group and 144 to the business-as-usual group. Nine schools participated in the study: four in Wisconsin, three in Alabama, and two in South Carolina. The authors used generalized linear models to estimate the impact of Future Forward on reading achievement. The overall impact of Future Forward was estimated at between 0.09 and 0.10 standard deviations, but was not statistically significant. This is not a small impact in education, especially during the COVID-19 era, and hints that Future Forward will continue to help students if scaled up.

But the story does not stop there. Compared to the overall impact, Future Forward had roughly three times the impact on Black students (ES = +0.34, p =.095) and five times the impact on Black male students (ES = +0.54, p =.052).  Evaluation of Future Forward will continue during the 2021-22 school year, and will allow further insight into the program’s impact overall and on subgroups as we exit the pandemic.

Were online supports equally effective during Covid-19 lockdown in China?

By Winnie Tam, Centre for University and School Partnership, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Universally, students suffered loss of learning during the pandemic lockdown when schools were closed all over the world. Clark and colleagues published a paper that  evaluated the impact of lockdown during the Covid-19 outbreak on students’ academic outcomes in China using administrative data on 9th grade students from 3 Chinese Middle schools in the same county in Baise City. During the Covid-19 lockdown period (mid-February to early April 2020), three schools made different arrangements for students:

•            School A did not provide any online education support.

•            School B used an online learning platform provided by the local government to support students. School B provided online lessons which were recorded by their own teachers.

•            School C used the same online platform as School B over the same period which was managed in the same fashion as in School B. The only difference between School B and C was that School C obtained on-line lessons recorded by the highest-quality teachers in the city, instead of their own teachers.

The final sample consisted of 20,185 examination results from 1,835 students who took all 11 exams in the five compulsory subjects (Chinese, Math, English, Politics, and History). Exams 1-10 were conducted before lockdown (Nov 2017 to Jan 2020), and students took Exam 11 immediately after the county reopened (Apr 2020). The last semester of 9th grade was used for revision and to prepare for the high-school entrance exam for which all materials had already been taught during middle school. Using a difference-in-difference framework, the impact of online education support is shown below.

•            Overall, using an online learning platform improved students’ total exam scores significantly relative to the scores of students without learning support (ES = +0.22, around 26 exam points).

•            The quality of recorded lessons mattered. Exam results of School C, whose lessons were recorded by external better-quality teachers, achieved better results than School B, whose lessons were recorded by their own teachers (ES = +0.06).

•            Not all online education was equal. The performance of students who used a computer for online education was better than that of those who used a smartphone (School B: ES=-0.14; School C: ES=-0.15).

•            Results of quantile DID analysis showed that low-achieving students benefited the most from online learning support, while there was no impact on top academic performers.

Since the data used in the study were obtained from only three middle schools in one Chinese county, further investigation is needed for generalizability. Along the same lines, using students exposed to the same environment would improve internal validity of the study. Researchers also stated that they investigated the effect of an online learning platform used to review materials already taught rather than reviewing platforms concerned with learning new knowledge.

Online Tutoring for struggling students during COVID-19 in Italy

By Marta Pellegrini, University of Florence, Italy

During the first Covid-19 lockdown in Italy in Spring 2020, researchers from Harvard Kennedy School and Bocconi University (Milan) piloted a project to give middle school struggling students the support needed due to the school closure. The program, TOP (Tutoring Online Program), was designed and offered to all schools in Italy in grades 6 to 8. TOP consists of online tutoring activities in mathematics, Italian, and English without a specific curriculum but mainly focused on helping students with homework. Tutors were volunteer university students trained to support students individually three to six hours a week.

Seventy-six middle schools participated in the study, with 1,059 students randomly assigned to either receive TOP for 6 weeks (n=530) or to be in an untreated control group (n=529). Of those students, 88% of the TOP group completed the final test, compared with only 46% of the control group.  Measures of academic achievement in math, Italian, and English were developed for this project based on the Italian National Test. Students’ aspirations, socio-emotional skills and psychological well-being were also assessed using a survey.

Statistically significant positive results on the academic achievement test were found for students in the treatment group, with a mean effect size of +0.26. Results were not significant on students’ aspirations nor for socio-emotional skills. A significant decrease of depression symptoms reported by the students was found for the treatment group (ES = -0.16) as well as an increase in happiness (ES = +0.16) as reported by parents.  However, these results must be interpreted cautiously, due to the differences in outcome test completion between the TOP and control group.

This project proposed a concrete cost-effective answer to the school closure in Italy by designing and evaluating a tool to help vulnerable students and prevent inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic.