Eunsook Kim, Ph.D. is a professor of Educational and Psychological Studies at the University of South Florida. As a quantitative methodologist, she contributes to the literature on methodological issues faced by applied researchers, and provides practical guidelines to the research community confronting these issues.
Session Descriptions
School climate is an important construct in educational research in the Caribbean countries. Due to lack of a school climate scale developed for the population of students in the Caribbean countries, a scale developed in the western contexts is adopted. However, because of differences in cultures, languages and educational systems, to name a few, a scale developed for the US student population may not be relevant in the Caribbean countries. In this study, we examine the psychometrics of the Elementary School Climate Assessment Instrument – Student (SCAI-E-S, version 3.1; the Alliance for the Study of School Climate, California State University, Los Angeles) for its use in primary and secondary schools in five Caribbean countries.
“Longitudinal Impacts of COVID-19 on U.S. Pre-K Children’s Language and Literacy Development“
In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 arrived in the United States, disrupting the education of millions of students. To date, reports the impacts on American children’s learning have typically focused on children in elementary school or older, with little information about impacts on children in pre-k. The present study aims to fill this gap, analyzing the short- and longer-term impacts of COVID-19 on pre-k children’s language and literacy development. We ask the following research questions: 1) what are the impacts of COVID disruptions on pre-k children’s language and literacy at kindergarten entry? 2) what are the longer-term impacts of COVID on language and literacy development from pre-k to 1st grade? 3) did long- or short-term COVID impacts vary for children from different subgroups? We draw on data collected by a large school district in west-central Florida from pre-k through 1st grade. Our dataset includes two cohorts of children: a pre-COVID cohort who attended VPK in 2016-2017 (n = 1,211), and the COVID cohort (VPK in 2019-2020; n = 1,167). Results indicate that there were no significant differences between the COVID and pre-COVID cohort in terms of language and literacy scores at pre-k entry. However, children’s language and literacy learning trajectories in the COVID cohort flattened over time as compared to the pre-COVID cohort, suggesting a delayed negative impact of COVID for children who missed a portion of their pre-k year. Finally, we found that no subgroups were differentially impacted by COVID-19 in terms of their language and literacy outcomes.