Early reading education during Covid19: Perceptions of teachers and parents

Abstract

As a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, schools in Hungary were closed from March, 2020. The Hungarian government decided to implement digital education: children learning at home were assisted by teachers in the form of remote teaching. We have little information as yet about the effectiveness of digital education during this period. We do not know how the knowledge acquired by students during remote teaching compares to that acquired during face-to-face education. This research therefore aimed to explore the effectiveness of the early teaching and learning of reading. We asked grade 1 and grade 2 elementary school teachers as well as parents about their perceptions of reading education during the period of remote teaching. A voluntary, anonymous online questionnaire was completed by 117 teachers and 83 parents. The findings show that most of the teachers tried to adapt traditional methods of teaching reading to the digital environment during the pandemic, which turned out to be less effective than face-to-face teaching. Both teachers and parents thought that children progressed more slowly with the process of learning to read. For the majority of the students reading motivation was decreased compared to face-to-face learning. The close cooperation of teachers and parents seems essential for effective remote learning in the early years of school. New teaching methods need to be developed and disseminated to increase the effectiveness of early reading education.