Analysis of family and school actions during during pandemic: a view from Early Childhood Education

Abstract

The situation generated by COVID-19 has shown that, in early childhood education, the care model has lagged behind the educational one. This investigation has analyzed, in the exceptional situation of confinement, the way of dealing with this situation of closing the classrooms from the educational centers and the responses provided by the families, considering the ownership of the centers, the cycle (first cycle, second cycle or both), the year of birth of the minors, or the number of children in the households. Two questionnaires have been developed ad hoc for it and have been answered during the months of April and May by 1235 teachers of this stage, from all the Autonomous Cities and Communities of Spain, and by 1266 parents whose children at infant or preschool level.
The collected data has been analyzed by an exploratory examination of the answers and the calculation of the main percentages associated with the variables considered, to subsequently carry out an inferential analysis of the available information, using the Kruskal-Wallis H test to analyze the data from the Likert scales and the Chi-square test for the study of categorical variables. The results show that there are statistically significant differences in the sending of tasks depending on the cycle and the ownership of the center, with the private centers being the ones that have sent the fewest activities. Likewise, almost half of the families surveyed indicate that they need to receive more indications, being those whose children go to public schools the ones that demand it the most. For this reason, it can be concluded that the maxims established in the current legislation have not been met in all cases.