There’s a picture that went viral early in the pandemic that became a symbol of how hard emergency remote schooling was for the youngest students.
The image showed a 5-year-old student sitting at a small desk in his family’s kitchen, facing a laptop computer. He’s holding a pencil in one hand, pulling up the neck of his T-shirt with his other hand to wipe tears away from his eyes.
To understand the stakes of the image, it’s worth looking to a new Harvard University research report that begins: “Although children have largely been spared the direct health consequences of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), there is increasing concern about the pandemic’s influence on other aspects of child health and development.”
It turns out the Harvard researchers who wrote that have a unique window into how young students are faring during pandemic schooling. They're working on a research project called “The Early Learning Study at Harvard,” where they’re following a group of a couple thousand families in Massachusetts and looking at what’s happening to children as they shift back and forth from in-person classrooms to remote learning.
Just this month those Harvard researchers published their latest findings from the study, focused on whether school learning format (online or in person) impacted student behavior and well-being.
So what did they find?
For this week’s EdSurge Podcast we’re digging into that question, talking with two researchers working on the study: Stephanie Jones, a professor of early childhood development at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and Emily Hanno, a postdoctoral researcher at the school.
Spoiler alert, we talk about plenty of meltdowns like the one from that viral photograph.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts, or use the player on this page.
