Misaligned Expectations and Serious Concerns: Educating Young Children During COVID-19

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Solicited Content: COVID-19 Related

Abstract

This spring, COVID-19 required students, educators, and parents across the United States to take part in an online education experiment of unprecedented size and scope. COVID-19-related school closures affected 55 million students across the country (Education Week, 2020), as their education transitioned online. An initial analysis of state-level remote education policies in March 2020 found no states advised schools to implement a full day of online instruction. Yet what actually occurred varied widely (Reich et al., 2020). In this context, surveys conducted this spring indicated parents’ concerns about their children’s academic preparedness for this school year (Horowitz, 2020; Saavedra et al., 2020).

Given the prevalence of digital instruction, we conducted a Qualtrics survey in July 2020 for parents of children in preschool through 3rd-grade who experienced COVID-19-related school closures to investigate the use of educational video instruction. Survey questions focused on the frequency and duration of student-teacher video conferences. Critically, we also asked parents to report how long their child could pay attention to a video conference from 3- to 7-years-old. Replicating prior survey research (Horowitz, 2020; Saavedra et al., 2020), we asked parents if they were concerned about their children falling behind academically, but expanded on these surveys by asking about children falling behind socially. Parents of 181 children (mean age = 5.7 years) responded. The sample was highly educated with 94% of parents holding at least a Bachelor’s degree.

Survey results for 3- to 4-years-old (n = 31) found 39% of children had video conferences daily during the school week, but 32% of children had video conferences less than once per week. Five- to 7-year-olds (n = 150) showed no clear pattern of video conference frequency during the school week. Preschool-aged children’s mean video conference attention span of 14 minutes was significantly different than their mean video conference duration of 29 minutes (t(29) = 4.89, p < .001, 95% CI: [8.75-21.3]). The difference between these outcomes was only marginally significant for elementary-aged children (t(144) = 1.85, p = .07, 95% CI: [-.19-5.94]), (mean conference duration = 31 minutes; mean conference attention span = 29 minutes). Among parents of 3- to 4-year-olds, 39% of participants were at least “somewhat concerned” about their children’s academic preparedness, but 45% were “not concerned at all.” Concerns about social skills were greater with 65% of participants at least “somewhat concerned.” Academic concerns grew among parents of 5- to 7-year-olds with 57% of participants at least “somewhat concerned,” but 70% of participants were at least “somewhat concerned” about their children’s social skills.

A survey of over 1,700 educators conducted by Education Week in April 2020 provided a preliminary look at remote instruction implementation and found that 58% of responding teachers used online communications or video conferencing (Kurtz, 2020). Our results suggest that researchers must collaborate with educators to establish developmentally appropriate instructional requirements for this unprecedented school year that help ease parents’ concerns.

Authors

• Elias Blinkoff, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Brenna Hassinger-Das, Pace University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Roberta M Golinkoff, University of Delaware
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathy A Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author