Chapter 3: Teaching Preschool During COVID-19: Insights From the Field

The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has left educational systems in crisis due to the unprecedented need for distance learning at all levels of schooling, starting in preschool (Bao et al., 2020). Since March 2020, many schools around the United States, and indeed the world, have turned from in-school learning to forms of distance learning as a means of protecting children, teachers, and staff from the spreading of the COVID-19 virus (Hoffman & Miller, 2020). Although there have been many news reports of how families and teachers are faring (e.g., Sonnenschein & Grossman, 2020), there is only beginning to be scholarly reports. Most of the empirical reports queried families and asked how they are faring (e.g., Russell et al., 2020; Schmidt et al., 2020). Reports that have focused on teachers and schools are far fewer, and U.S. samples are underrepresented in those reports (e.g., Alea et al., 2020; Hebebci et al., 2020; Kim & Asbury, 2020). And, of particular relevance for this chapter, based on our search of the research literature, almost no studies include preschool teachers (cf., Samuelsson et al., 2020). Relatedly, although virtual or distance learning has been around for over a century (Barbour & Reeves, 2009), we are unaware of any widespread applications in preschool.