Difficulties and Support Needs of Directors on Inclusive Child Care Centers due to COVID-19

A Mixed-Methods Study of Early Childhood Education and Care in South Korea: Policies and Practices During COVID-19

“…This finding suggests the need for a more multifaceted policy response and services to promote children's development and learning in both the current and post-COVID eras. In the case of the 'Challenged' tenet, there were many limitations for teachers to provide creative and challenging learning environments and activities for fostering children's creativity and higherlevel thinking skills due to frequent school closures and the transition to virtual schooling (Kim et al, 2020;Park & Bae, 2020). Under these circumstances, the government's limited guidance related to reinforcing a challenging, comprehensive curriculum should indeed be acknowledged; however, early childhood educators and parents could also use this unprecedented time as an opportunity to equip children with critical thinking and problem solving skills through navigating the uncertainties together (Seale, 2020).…”

“…Instead of dividing learning content by age, the Revised Nuri Curriculum presents the five learning areas (physical exercise and health; communication; social relationships; artistic experience; and nature exploration) that all children aged 3 to 5 should experience, and grants every institution and teacher a higher level of autonomy in applying the curriculum to their specific context. Due to the pandemic however, South Korean early childhood educators were challenged to successfully provide child-centered and play-based learning according to the curriculum (Kim et al, 2020;Park & Bae, 2020).…”

“…Most of the published literature is written in Korean, and the topics focus on the challenges and needs that families and early childhood educators are experiencing during the pandemic. For example, these topics include the dilemmas and challenges due to the school closure and re-opening, emergency child care services, and shift to distance learning were examined from the experiences of pre-service and in-service teachers (Han, 2020;Kim et al, 2020), directors (Park & Bae, 2020), and children and their parents (Lee & Shin, 2020), and the responses from the government and early childhood institutions during the first 2 months of the pandemic (Choi, 2020). These studies together suggested that active collaboration between school and home, transformation of teaching and teacher education, and the government's systemic support are essential to the success of children's development and learning.…”