Session Information
08 SES 12 A, Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
COVID-19 pandemic has led to school closures worldwide as a way to fight the expand of the virus. it is estimated that over 1,5 billion of students have been affected by school closure and mainly it was students that are considered to be the most vulnurable that were affected.
In Greece schools closed at first from March 2020 to the end of May 2020 and then again from November 2020 to May 2021.Both closures caused great disturbance to children, their families and teachers, as they all had to get used to the new circumstances of the lockdown and to adapt to online teaching.
No doubt that the biggest change to children's lives was school closure. The school environment helps with learning and with socialising, developing, connecting with peers. Allso scholls help children with having everyday routines, exercising and reducing the time that theya re infront of a screen. But, the school closure periods have been associated with social isolation that may lead to psychiological issues.
There are several studies on the impact of school closures on children and parents, but there are no studies on how 4-6-year-olds construct school closures and COVID-19 and especially on Greek children construct the pandemic and its results. So the aim of this study is to investigate the constructions of Greek kindergarten children regarding COVID-19 and its lockdown restrictions.
Method
In order to do so, twenty children age 4 and 5 years old, who attended 5 different public kindergartens in a semi-urban area Greece. The sample was equally divided between boys and girls. The children were interviewed using skype, as a precaution measure for the expand of COVID-19. The only criteria that guided the selection of children (4 from each school) were: to be willing to participate in the interview process and to have their parents' written consent for their participation in this research.
Expected Outcomes
The analysis tells the story of how these children made meaning of and coped with the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences, illustrating the variety and commonalities of their experiences. What the data indicates is that almost all children were negatively affected by the quarantine period and the school closures on psychological and educational level. What was interesting was that the quarantine affected them, despite the fact that they were able to go for long walks in the countryside with their families but without their friends, as most f them stressed out. Also, despite the fact that most children reported that they did not like school in general, during the lockdown periods they said that they missed school, their teachers and, most importantly their friends. Finally, almost all children constructed COVID-19 giving it anthropomorphic characteristics and indicating it as something scary, vicious and threatening.
References
UNESCO (2020) COVID-19 Educational Disruption and Response. Accessed from https://en.unesc.org/covid19/educationresponse/ Siachpazidou, D., Kotsiou, O. S., Chatziparadisis, G., Papagiannis, D., Vavougios, G., Gogou, E., Stavrou, V. and Gourgoulianis, K. I. (2021) Action and Reaction of Pre-Primary and Primary School-Age Children to Restrictions during COVID-19 Pandemic in Greece. Journal of Personalized Medicine, 11(6), pp. 451 Zhou, L., Li, F., Wu, S. amd Zhou, M. (2020) "School's Out, But Class's On", The Largest Online Education in the World Today: Taking China's Practical Exploration During the COVID-10 Epidemic Prevention and Control as an Example.Best Evidence in Chinese Education, 4(2), pp. 509-519
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