Teaching and learning during the first COVID-19 school lockdown: Realization and associations with parent-perceived students' academic outcomes

Abstract

Abstract. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all schools in Germany were locked down for several months in 2020. How schools realized teaching during the school lockdown greatly varied from school to school. N = 2,647 parents participated in an online survey and rated the following activities of teachers in mathematics, language arts (German), English, and science/biology during the school lockdown: frequency of sending task assignments, task solutions and requesting for solutions, giving task-related feedback, grading tasks, providing lessons per videoconference, and communicating via telecommunication tools with students and/or parents. Parents also reported student academic outcomes during the school lockdown (child's learning motivation, competent and independent learning, learning progress). Parents further reported student characteristics and social background variables: child's negative emotionality, school engagement, mathematical and language competencies, and child's social and cultural capital. Data were separately analyzed for elementary and secondary schools. In both samples, frequency of student-teacher communication was associated with all academic outcomes, except for learning progress in elementary school. Frequency of parent-teacher communication was associated with motivation and learning progress, but not with competent and independent learning, in both samples. Other distant teaching activities were differentially related to students' academic outcomes in elementary vs. secondary school. School engagement explained most additional variance in all students' outcomes during the school lockdown. Parent's highest school leaving certificate incrementally predicted students' motivation, and competent and independent learning in secondary school, as well as learning progress in elementary school. The variable “child has own bedroom” additionally explained variance in students' competent and independent learning during the school lockdown in both samples. Thus, both teaching activities during the school lockdown as well as children's characteristics and social background were independently important for students' motivation, competent and independent learning, and learning progress. Results are discussed with regard to their practical implications for realizing distant teaching.

School Performance among Children and Adolescents during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review

“…The research in databases retrieved 23,039 publications, from which 3515 were duplicates. After screening a total of 19,524 records by title, abstract, and full text, 42 of them were finally considered eligible [ 7 , 8 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 ] (Prisma Flow Chart— Figure 1 ).…”

“…The demographic characteristics are summarized in Table 1 . The majority of the studies were conducted in Europe (n = 19 studies) [ 13 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ], followed by Asia (n = 13 studies) [ 7 , 8 , 10 , 11 , 15 , 16 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 ] and America (n = 7 studies) [ 12 , 14 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 ], while two studies were conducted in Africa [ 48 , 49 ] and one in Oceania [ 50 ]. The performance of 15,385,942 students was assessed.…”

“…In some studies where the subjects’ age was defined, the age range of the students was between 8 and 22 years old. Concerning the study design, 17 of the studies were cross-sectional [ 7 , 8 , 12 , 14 , 15 , 17 , 18 , 25 , 26 , 28 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 36 , 40 , 41 ] and 13 were cohort studies [ 19 , 21 , 23 , 24 , 27 , 29 , 30 , 37 , 38 , 45 , 46 , 49 , 50 ], while the rest were case studies (n = 5) [ 10 , 13 , 16 , 42 , 48 ] or mixed design studies (n = 5) [ 11 , 22 , 35 , 44 , 47 ]. One study was a qualitative description study [ 39 ] and one was a qualitative projection study [ 43 ] ( Table S1 ).…”

“…Thus, parents or caregivers could monitor their children’s performance and voice concerns. Some of them reported that their children’s performance deteriorated [ 11 , 21 , 28 , 31 , 42 ], while others thought that online learning was beneficial due to unaffected contact with the teachers [ 32 , 36 , 41 ]. Parents or caregivers believed that younger children could not discipline or self-regulate in order to attend online classes and do their homework [ 11 ] while parental support was present [ 22 , 33 ].…”

Experiences and Perceived Self-Efficacy in Distance Learning Among Teachers of Students With Special Educational Needs

“…There are already a few studies on the experiences of students, their families and teachers during the school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic from different countries and school systems (e.g., Garbe et al, 2020 ; Huber and Helm, 2020 ; König et al, 2020 ; OECD, 2020 ; Vuorikari et al, 2020 ; Steinmayr et al, 2021 ; Thorell et al, 2021 ), but only a few studies so far investigated the situation of students with SEN during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Goldan et al, 2020 ; Nusser, 2021 ; Scheer and Laubenstein, 2021 ; Thorell et al, 2021 ). Those results indicate that students with SEN might go through more negative experiences and more problems whilst dealing with distance learning and challenging situations during school closures than students without SEN. Reich et al ( 2020 ) stated that students with higher school achievement seemed to be less affected by distance learning while more vulnerable student groups were experiencing greater problems with it.…”