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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 10, No. 1
Publication Date: January 25, 2023
DOI:10.14738/assrj.101.13938.
Capodieci, A., Galvani, S., Nobili, L., Ramenghi, L. A., & Uccella, S (2023). The Impact of Distance Learning on Academic and
Emotional Aspects of Primary School Children. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, Vol - 10(1). 546-570.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
The Impact of Distance Learning on Academic and Emotional
Aspects of Primary School Children
Agnese Capodieci
Department of General Psychology, University of Padua
Stefania Galvani
Department of General Psychology, University of Padua
Lino Nobili
Department of Neurosciences, Rehabilitation, Ophthalmology,
Genetics and Maternal, and Child Neuropsychiatry Unit,
IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini, Genoa, Italy
Luca A. Ramenghi
Neonatology Unit, IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini, Genoa, Italy,
Department of Neurosciences, Rehabilitation, Ophthalmology,
Genetics and Maternal
Sara Uccella
Neonatology Unit, IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini, Genoa, Italy,
Department of Neurosciences, Rehabilitation, Ophthalmology,
Genetics and Maternal, and Child, Neuropsychiatry Unit,
IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini, Genoa, Italy
ABSTRACT
To reduce the COVID-19 spread, people have been forced to reduce social
interactions and this strategy has also been applied to the school world. Italian
schools were closed from February to early June 2020 (and, also, thereafter), and
distance learning (DL) was adopted to maintain the teaching process. Concerns
about consequences for students' learning and affective wellbeing have been risen.
In the hypothesis that DL may have influenced students’ learning, we conducted,
starting from November 2020 a screening for learning, reading, writing, and
calculating skills in children from grade 1st to 3rd grade, to detect any differences
between their performance and normative data. Moreover, a survey was carried out
on adults (parents and teachers) close to the children involved in the research, to
verify whether the experience of the lockdown may have caused emotional and
behavioral changes through a questionnaire addressed to parents and teachers.
From the analysis of the results, a general lack of performance in the writing tests
emerged, with lower performances in children attending second and third-grade
classes. Moreover, a consistent prevalence of children’ malaise was observed by
adults close to them during the second pandemic wave, with behavioral
manifestations seen by the 69.5% of teachers and by the 54.1% of parents.
Keywords: learning, reading, writing, COVID-19, primary school children
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Capodieci, A., Galvani, S., Nobili, L., Ramenghi, L. A., & Uccella, S (2023). The Impact of Distance Learning on Academic and Emotional Aspects of
Primary School Children. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, Vol - 10(1). 546-570.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.101.13938
INTRODUCTION
The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak has profoundly altered many
aspects of life, as it has involved the implementation of drastic measures (including schools’
closure) to contain the virus spread [1, 2].
In Italy schools of all levels were forced to interrupt face-to-face learning activities all over the
country. From February to early June 2020, for a total of eighteen weeks, the schools were
closed with the possibility, at the discretion of each school, to carry out the lessons according
to the remote mode use of distance learning (DL) [3].
Many schools, therefore, were challenged to convert teaching and work activities from face-to- face to remote mode, with a lot of difficulties. A survey conducted by Ranieri and colleagues,
during the first lockdown, which involved Italian primary school teachers, found out that the
Italian schools weren’t ready to face this change because teachers weren’t trained in the use of
remote teaching, students hadn’t always the possibility of using technological devices to attend
the lessons or they hadn’t suitable environments. It was reported that some children hadn’t
always the possibility of attending the online lessons because other members of their families
needed the computer, their families hadn’t the economic means to buy the necessary
technological devices or parents hadn’t the skills to help their children attend the online
lessons. This study highlighted that, teachers mainly used recorded lectures, monodirectional
synchronous video lessons, homework sent through platforms. Moreover, they overlooked
cooperative learning which might have instead supported the acquisition of subjects but also
promoted social interactions among students and reducing the feeling of loneliness [4].
Therefore, we might suppose that the teaching in Italy wasn’t that good to grant children to
achieve good results in reading, writing and math in an effective and affective way, slowing
down their learning.
During the first wave other authors explored school achievements among undergraduate
students all over the world. Tomasik and colleague conducted a study on primary and
secondary school Swiss students on learning gains in the eight weeks of school closure,
comparing them to the ones of eight weeks before. They observed more evident interindividual
differences among primary school children during the DL in comparison to the previous period.
In contrast, secondary school students didn’t show any slowdown in their learning pace despite
the school closures. The difference between primary and secondary school students in learning
during the school closures might have been explained by the younger pupils need of relying on
cognitive scaffolding during instruction. Moreover, their executive functioning and their
capabilities for self-regulated learning might not be fully developed yet [5].
On the contrary, a study carried out in Australia found equal primary school students’
achievements among the late 2019 and late 2020. This maybe because Australian school year
starts in late January and ends in late December (being closed from March and April) so that
students might have had the possibility to regain the learning slowdown due to the DL in the
previous months [6].
In fact, also in The Netherlands (a country which underwent a relatively short lockdown like
Switzerland, and which has regular school activity from March to June), a decrease in learning
results in mathematics, spelling and reading among students aged eight to eleven years old was
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 10, Issue 1, January-2023
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
observed. Their results also showed that the learning loss was more pronounced for students
belonging to disadvantaged socio-economic contexts [7].
Parallelly, Kapasia and colleagues interviewed with an e-survey a sample of 232 college and
university Indian students, finding high levels of anxious-depressive symptoms and of stress
due poor facilities to access DL (including bad internet connection and unfavorable study
environment at home). Even in their study, subjects from marginalized areas faced the greatest
challenges for studying during the very beginning of COVID pandemic [8].
The topic of social-cultural differences has been widely investigated [9, 10] and it had already
been warned by experts at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak [2].
Analysing literature, we can find out that the COVID-19 pandemic related lockdown has had
emotional and psychological effects on parents and their children [11, 12, 13, 14, 15]. It has
been shown that children’s and (less) adolescent’s psychological distress was related to their
parents’ perception of the situation, and more specifically to how much they find it difficult
dealing with the quarantine restrictions [16, 14, 17, 15, 18]. This directly impacted children’s
behaviour and emotions but also it could have had an indirect (or direct) influence on children’s
and adolescent’s school learnings and achievements.
We therefore might suppose that school closures, DL and the malaise experienced (by the
youngest and their parents) during the quarantine may have affected school children’s learning,
particularly the one of primary school pupils, that should have been the most affected ones [7,
18]. We aimed to assess primary school children’ performances in reading, writing and math in
the last months of the 2020 (after the first lockdown) and to relate them to their emotional and
behavioural state, according to parents and teachers’ point of view.
METHODS
Participants
This study was conducted on a convenience sample of first, second and third grade primary
school children of North-Eastern Italy attending the Casier Institute (located in the province of
Treviso, Italy). Distance learning was carried out for 2-3 hours a day per 3 or 4 days a week
from October 2020. During this period the teachers provided explanations and exercises to be
done in presence or alone at home.
Children already evaluated or diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders (specific learning
disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, attention deficit disorders or others) and children who
had carried out less than 50% of the tests were excluded.
Learning Skills Assessment
Performances of these children were analyzed by comparing them with the existing standard
norms of the tests used.
Children were assessed individually on their reading, writing, comprehension, and calculation
skills. The assessment was performed by an experienced developmental psychologist (AC),
trained in learning disorders.