A Study of the Impact of COVID-19 on Developmental Decline and Learning Loss in Young Children and Recovery Guidelines

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected the educational system, particularly in young children education. There are guidelines for providing young children education during the COVID-19 pandemic, however, they are still broad and unclear in practice. This research aims to 1) study
the impacts of the COVID-19 situation on early childhood children's developmental and learning regression, 2) analyze causal factors that influence teachers’ readiness to organize learning experiences, and 3) examine guidelines to recover the development of early childhood children. Qualitative data were collected via interviews with 50 participants, consisting of administrators and preschool teachers, while quantitative data were gathered using a questionnaire completed by 1,805 preschool teachers in four regions of Thailand selected using multi-stage sampling. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis, whereas the quantitative data were analyzed via descriptive statistics and path analysis. The findings found that, 1) the teachers’ perception of the impact of COVID-19 on the developmental decline and learning loss of young children is at a slightly increased level development (M = 0.30, SD = 1.51).
2) the factor model which influenced teachers’ readiness to provide learning experiences during the COVID-19 situation (χ^2 = 10.65, df = 5, p = .06, GFI = 1.00, AGFI = 0.99, CFI = 1.00, RMSEA = 0.01, SRMR=0.00) was directly influenced by the highest working power, which had a positive of influence of 0.66. and 3) practical guidelines for promoting learning management to recover the development and learning of young children after COVID-19 included guidelines for governments, schools, teachers, caregivers, and parents.