Gender differences in early literacy in a virtual learning environment

ABSTRACT

Past studies have found that in the elementary grades, females perform better in literacy achievement than their male counterparts when instruction is provided in an in-person learning environment. With the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, schools in the United States switched to a virtual instructional model. This study sought to determine if a transition from in-class to virtual instruction would impact the literacy achievement of primary grade students and if there would be gender differences when students transitioned from in-person learning to virtual learning. The study was conducted with first and second grade students attending a charter school in a large city in the northeastern region of the United States.This causal-comparative, ex-post facto quantitative study analyzed 404 reading level equivalencies scores of first and second grade students who participated in the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System (BAS) using the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 BAS reading level equivalencies.The BAS was used to determine students' grade level reading equivalencies twice during each academic year, once in September and again in January, to find the levels of growth when learning in-person and virtually.Through statistical analysis of the 404 pieces of non-normal, ranked data using a series of Mann-Whitney tests to report significance and by comparing the medians of the data, it was determined that there was no effect on grade level reading equivalencies of first and second grade students by instructional model and there was no difference in the literacy achievement of males versus females in this group. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)