Dr. Elizabeth Burke Hadley is an assistant professor of literacy studies at the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on supporting oral language development and emergent literacy in pre-k classrooms. Her studies have investigated how children learn new vocabulary words in the context of shared book-reading and play activities. In particular, her work focuses on ensuring young children have equitable opportunities to engage in language interactions in public pre-k classrooms. She has been funded by the Spencer Foundation and her work is published in the top journals in her field, including Reading Research Quarterly and Early Childhood Research Quarterly.
Session Description
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.