A Social Media Analysis of the Experiences of Chinese Early Childhood Educators and Families with Young Children during COVID-19

Wenwei Luo (), Ilene R. Berson and Michael J. Berson
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Wenwei Luo: Shanghai Institute of Early Childhood Education, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China
Ilene R. Berson: Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Learning, College of Education, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, USA
Michael J. Berson: Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Learning, College of Education, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, USA

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-23

Abstract: This study used a small stories research narrative paradigm to examine social media posts that focused on efforts to sustain the delivery of early childhood education during COVID. Inductive and deductive content analysis focused on 1303 posts from 177 government officials and 1126 individual users (including preschools, kindergartens, teachers, and parents). The results include an analysis of conversational data that document implementation of the national policy to promote continuity of young children’s learning, including digital resources used, learning content, and teaching approaches. Actor-centric contextual factors determined the success of delivering instruction remotely; however, other contextual components created the conditions that necessitated adaptation of instruction. The COVID outbreak (chrono-level) led to shifts in education delivery and informed national policy (macro-level), influenced the teachers’ and parents’ work contexts (exo-level), enhanced home-school collaboration (meso-level), and required implementation of technological solutions to support children’s learning (micro-level). Contributions to theory, methodology, and practice are discussed.

Keywords: COVID-19; early childhood education (ECE); remote learning; technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK); China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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