Differential socioemotional and educational profiles in early childhood and primary education students in a lockdown situation

Front Psychol. 2024 May 9:15:1296333. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1296333. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Recent lockdown situations have highlighted social relationship deprivation of schoolchildren and the need to develop the teaching-learning process in informal contexts. The aim of this study was to analyze differential socioemotional and educational profiles in Early Childhood and Primary Education students using variables relating to academic performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Correlational, descriptive, and inferential statistical analyses were performed that yielded differential explanatory models depending on the stage of education. The results reveal statistically significant differences in all the variables except for family-school relationship. In the linear regression models, the most statistically significant variable for school performance in both stages was family-school relationship. However, differences were found between both profiles: emotional impact for Early Childhood Education students and social impact for Primary Education students. Lastly, leisure activities at home were included as an explanatory variable only in the Primary Education regression model. The final conclusions highlight the need to attend to the evolutionary characteristics of students in each stage to improve school performance in similar lockdown situations.

Keywords: child development; family; informal learning; lockdown; socialization.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research was funded and supported by the following project: the following project: Design a digital system of international standards for the evaluation of early childhood teachers [PID2019-109986GB-I00], Spanish Government call for proposals 2019. MINECO (FEDER); Department of Didactic of University of Cadiz; Research plan of the University of Cádiz.