Making sense: digital kindergarten during COVID-19 lockdown

Abstract

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially during the period of lockdown, great changes in education have occurred, in which preschool education has not remained an exception. The biggest change in education during lockdown was the switch from live contact to a digital context in which learning took place. On the one hand, this has led to a large number of studies that have included perspectives of the system, families, and teachers, and their perceptions about education during the lockdown, but on the other hand, there was a very small number of studies which were focused on the perspective of children, and none of them included perspective of preschool children. In this paper, we mapped all recognized (non)sense of the digital learning experience in kindergarten during 52 days of COVID-19 lockdown in Serbia. Thirteen children from different parts of Serbia were co-researchers in this paper, and they were consulted about some specific topics such as activities that were realized and how relationships with peers and educators were established in a digital environment. We strived to establish the connections with possible reasons for the lack of meaning and relevance of digital learning not just for children but for all actors in contemporary education by relying on postqualitative way of interpreting data.

Izbijanjem pandemije kovid-19, posebno u periodu izolacije, došlo je do velikih promena u obrazovanju, u čemu predškolsko vaspitanje i obrazovanje nije ostalo izuzetak. Najveća promena u obrazovanju tokom izolacije bila je prelazak sa živog kontakta na digitalni kontekst u kome se učenje odvijalo. S jedne strane, ovo je dovelo do velikog broja studija koje su uključivale perspektive sistema, porodice, nastavnika i vaspitača, i njihove percepcije o obrazovanju tokom izolacije, ali s druge strane, postojao je veoma mali broj studija koje su bile fokusirane na perspektivu dece, a nijedna od njih nije uključivala perspektivu dece predškolskog uzrasta. U ovom radu smo nastojali da mapiramo sav prepoznati (be)smisao iskustva digitalnog učenja u vrtiću tokom 52 dana izolacije kovida-19 u Srbiji. Trinaestoro dece iz različitih delova Srbije su bili koistraživači u ovom radu, a konsultovani su oko konkretnih tema kao što su aktivnosti koje su realizovane u periodu izolacije i kako su se uspostavljali odnosi sa vršnjacima i vaspitačima u digitalnom okruženju. Nastojali smo da uspostavimo veze sa mogućim razlozima nedostatka smisla i relevantnosti digitalnog učenja ne samo za decu već i za sve aktere obrazovanja oslanjajući se na postkvalitativni način interpretacije podataka.