ERIC Number: EJ1380725
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023-Jun
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1476-718X
EISSN: EISSN-1741-2927
Kindergarten Children's Reactions to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Creating a Sense of Coherence
Paryente, Bilha; Gez-Langerman, Roni
Journal of Early Childhood Research, v21 n2 p133-146 Jun 2023
This article examines kindergarten children's experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to understand the children's thoughts, emotions, and coping strategies regarding the presence of the COVID-19 virus in their daily lives, using the salutogenic approach to study their sense of coherence and promote relevant professional instruction. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were held with 130 five- to six-year-old children with an equal number of boys and girls. All of the children were recruited from kindergartens affiliated with the state's secular education system. Data were structured into three themes: (1) the child's perception of the pandemic as "manageable" through significant accompanying and absent figures; (2) the child's "comprehension" of the virus as dangerous, age-differentiating, and contagious; and (3) the child's "emotional processing" of the pandemic as arousing fear of death and through images, such as "thorny" and "monster." The results demonstrate the young children's sense of coherence, characterized as extrapersonal perception, interpersonal coping, and intrapersonal emotional processing, and the need for greater acknowledgment of child-parent educators' informed interventions that could give children a partial feeling of the adult's awareness of their needs.
Descriptors: Kindergarten, Young Children, Student Experience, COVID-19, Pandemics, Coping, Student Attitudes, Emotional Response, Psychological Patterns, Opinions, Cognitive Processes, Foreign Countries, Concept Formation
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Early Childhood Education; Elementary Education; Kindergarten; Primary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Israel
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A