Amplifying young children’s voices: Educational experiences of 3- to 7-year-olds in Wales during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Chicken, Sarah; Tyrie, Jacky; Parnell, Jade; Waters-Davis, Jane; Tur Porre, Gisselle

Abstract

Originality and significance
Longitudinal evidence indicates that early life experiences, including those relating to early education and care (ECEC), impact a range of broad developmental areas including educational outcomes, cognitive development and social development (Goodman & Sianesi, 2005; Sylva, 2010). Given the significance for longer-term development, it is important to understand the educational experiences of young children during COVID-19 lockdowns in order to inform provision for these children moving forward.

The project built on the emerging evidence of the unequal impact of COVID-19 in society, particularly on children and families (Academy 2021) and findings which indicate exacerbation of many existing disadvantages (Waters-Davies et al. 2021). However, most previous studies explored the experiences of older learners and often from the perspectives of adults.

This project subsequently sought to capture the previously unheard voices of young children who would have been aged 3-5 during lockdowns about their educational experiences during the Coivd-19 pandemic, positioning children’s voices as valuable and important (Lancaster & Kirby, 2010)

This research is subsequently highly original since few research studies exploring the experiences of learners during the pandemic have included the voices of very young children (Children’s Commissioner for Wales, 2020; Mantovani et al., 2021), and none have been undertaken in Wales. This Welsh Government-funded study sought to capture and amplify these voices to inform future policy and professional learning.

The study centred on two principal research questions:
1) From the perspective of young children, what was the experience of learning during the lockdown(s) imposed as a result of the C-19 pandemic?
2) From the perspectives of young children and the adults around them, what are the longer-term implications of C-19 for learning?

Research Design
Central to the project was a construction of children as experts in their own lives and, drawing on the Mosaic Approach (Clark, 2017), creative and child-friendly methods of data collection were utilised. A range of drawings, pictures and conversations were used to illicit detailed data from the young children allowing active participation in knowledge exchange during the research process (Greene and Hogan, 2005).

In line with the construction of children underpinning this project, the voices of children were foregrounded but the importance of their ecological context was also recognised (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). In addition to the responses of young participants, a series of interviews were also conducted with the children’s teachers (past and current) and caregivers.  This research sits within a socio-cultural paradigm in which we recognise that the findings are context-specific but should be relatable across multiple contexts.

The research sought to access the voices of children with a range of socio-economic backgrounds because previous studies (e.g. Waters-Davies et al., 2021) have indicated that learning experiences varied widely across diverse groups. Four schools in the South of Wales were recruited to participate, from which 20 children (five per school) were included in the study. Each school was visited on four occasions by two researchers to complete data collection with the children. Following this, teacher and parents were interviewed online. Data collected will be analysed using inductive qualitative approaches, coding and generating themes (Roberts-Holmes, 2018). The approach involves constructing patterns within the data to further understand children’s experiences of their learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and the implications of this. The research received full ethical approval from Swansea University’s Ethics committee and in line with the respectful stance taken towards children, researchers worked with heightened ethical sensitivity in an attempt to reduce issues of power between adults and young participants.

Currently we are unable to provide detail on the findings from the data collection which is being undertaken in February 2022, however - this research is of significance since it adds to the body of empirical evidence that informs policy and practice about how to acknowledge and cater for the varied learning experiences of children during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: BERA (British Education Research Association) Conference 2022
• Start Date: Sep 5, 2022
• End Date: Sep 9, 2022
• Deposit Date: Nov 3, 2022
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10117406
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