"Views of Preschool Teachers and Families Regarding the Effect of Covid 19 Pandemic on School Readiness"


Er S. S. (Executive), Öneren Şendil Ç., Altaş E. N., Özgül T.

Project Supported by Higher Education Institutions, 2021 - 2022

  • Project Type: Project Supported by Higher Education Institutions
  • Begin Date: June 2021
  • End Date: September 2022

Project Abstract

"The world is in a process that all people have to cope with. Covid-19 pandemic affected people not only in health but also economically and socially. Education one of the issues which is quite important for the future of the young population is unfortunately affected by pandemic adversely. This research aims to investigate the views of teachers and parents about the effects of Covid-19 on the school readiness of children who are 60-72 months old and defining the school readiness levels of the children. In the current research, a mixed-method combining qualitative and quantitative data collection process will be used. The parents with 60-72 months of children and the preschool teachers will be given a semi-structured interview. During the interview, there are questions revealing the effects of the pandemic on children, what the teachers and parents do to prevent the negative effects of the pandemic, and their expectations from policymakers about the issue. For reliability, the prepared questions are sent to 3 experts in the field. They examined the clearness and accuracy of the questions. Then, a pilot study will be conducted with about 10 teachers and/or parents. After the reliability study, the data collected from the participants of the research (semistructured interviews) will be analyzed by using thematic content analysis methodology. The answers to the semi-structured interview questions will be coded. Coding will refer to the identification of topics, issues, similarities, and differences revealed through the participants’ narratives. To establish coding credibility, another researcher will be asked to code the same data. The researchers will discuss the similarities and differences between the two sets of codes, and they will reach a consensus on internal and external data consistency. For the thematic content analysis of the data, MAXQDA qualitative data analysis software will be used. Then, a descriptive method will be applied to children who are 60-72 months old. A national scale called the Marmara School Readiness Test developed by Polat (2002) and an international scale of school readiness called the Metropolitan Readiness Test developed by Nurss and McGauvran and adapted to Turkish by Oktay (1988) will be conducted in the quantitative part of the research. The data collected from the children will be analyzed and the readiness levels of the children for primary school will be compared with the data collected from teachers and families. As a result of the analysis, various suggestions will be made to teachers and families to increase the level of primary school readiness of children who could not attend kindergartens regularly during the pandemic period."