Families with young children during the COVID-19 pandemic-The importance of family type, perceived partnership roles, parental stress, and social support for changes in the home learning environment during lockdown.

Beginning in March 2020, the lockdown precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many challenges, especially for families with young children. Many children had little or no access to institutional education. Therefore, they were even more dependent on their parents providing them with home learning activities (HLA) to support their development. We examined the adaptability of families with regard to changes in parents' provision of HLA in traditional two-parent families, single parent families, and large families compared to before the lockdown. We focused on family resources, such as a supportive distribution of roles within the partnership, or social support, as predicting factors of adaptability in N = 8,513 families with children aged 18-69 months. In addition, we considered parental stress as a further influencing factor. The cross-sectional data depicts families from a nationwide online survey, which we conducted during spring 2020 in Germany. We found that (a) all three family types offered their children more learning activities at home, albeit with slight differences between the families. However, (b) we identified differences in the factors influencing families' adaptability: Across all family types, we found slight to medium negative relations between adaptability and parental stress. The relations were most evident in large families. Furthermore, social support exhibits somewhat positive relations to the adaptability of large families. For adaptability in single-parent families, gender differences were initially evident. Among single fathers, the change in parental HLA was stronger than among single mothers. However, this relation disappeared when we took parental stress and social support into account. For traditional two-parent families and single parents, our analyses revealed (c) barely significant relations between the investigated predictors and changes in HLA during lockdown. Overall, our study confirms that high stress limits the adaptability of providing HLA in families and that social support mitigates negative relations between stress and the provision of HLA, especially in large families. In order to develop effective and needs-based family support programs, it is therefore important to help parents cope with stress and provide them with low-threshold social support. The extent to which these services need to be adapted to different family types must be surveyed in more depth.

Reasons Given by ECEC Professionals for (Not) Being in Contact With Parents During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the German government took drastic measures and ordered the temporary closure of early childhood education and care services (apart from emergency care). Most pedagogical professionals in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings were unable to provide institutional care for children during this period, and thus experienced difficulties fulfilling their legally mandated professional obligation to educate children. Building on the importance of professional-parent collaboration, this study investigates the reasons ECEC professionals gave for (not) being in contact with parents during the pandemic. The database comprises a nationwide survey conducted between April and May 2020 (n = 2,560 ECEC professionals). The results show that the vast majority of respondents were in contact with parents; their stated motives include providing informational or emotional support for parents and children, maintaining a relationship, or inquiring about family wellbeing. The explanations for not being in contact with parents include already existing contact with parents by another member of the ECEC staff, an employer-mandated contact ban, problems on the parents' side, or personal reasons. We find some differences between managers in center-based childcare, pedagogical employes in center-based childcare, and professionals in family based childcare. Practical implications concerning professional-parent collaboration and the temporary closure of ECEC services are discussed.

Changes in Parents' Home Learning Activities With Their Children During the COVID-19 Lockdown - The Role of Parental Stress, Parents' Self-Efficacy and Social Support.

As a result of the abrupt closures of daycare centers in Germany due to the COVID-19 pandemic, parents' ability to provide learning opportunities at home became all the more important. Building on the family stress model, the study investigates how parental stress affected changes in parents' provision of home learning activities (HLA) during the lockdown, compared to before the lockdown. In addition, the study considers parental self-efficacy and perceived social support as protective factors that may play important roles in disrupting the negative effects of stress. Data stems from a nation-wide survey of 7,837 German parents of children ages 1-6 years, which was conducted in Spring 2020 during the first wave of COVID-19 infections and at a time of strict restrictions in Germany. Results revealed that parental stress was negatively related to changes in the provision of HLA. Parental self-efficacy and an intact social support system were protective of parental stress during the lockdown. Additionally, parental self-efficacy and - to a larger extend - perceived social support interacted with parental stress in the relation to changes in the provision of HLA. Specifically, self-efficacy and perceived social support acted as protective factors that buffered the negative influence of stress on parents' ability to provide educational activities for their children at home. These results have important implications for supporting families with young children during challenging times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the temporary closure of daycare centers.

[(Digital) parent-educator cooperation in preschool during Corona pandemic. Digitization boost or missed opportunity?] / (Digitale) Elternzusammenarbeit in Kindertageseinrichtungen während der Corona-Pandemie. Digitalisierungsschub oder verpasste Chance?

The closure of day-care centres as a measure to contain the corona virus presented early childhood educators with changed working conditions and opportunities to implement the continuing educational mandate. The cooperation between parents and educators, including through digital tools, plays an important role in this respect. The paper examines a) how often and of what type early childhood educators implemented digitally supported parental cooperation during the closure of day-care centres, b) which attitudes educators had towards general as well as digitally supported parental cooperation, and c) what role their qualifications, their attitudes and their perceived support through the centre played for their digital and non-digital parental cooperation during the closure of day-care centres. The study is based on a nationwide online survey of 3513 early childhood educators in day-care centres during corona closing time. The results show that educators' perceived importance of parental cooperation had a positive influence on whether or not educators had stayed in contact with the parents. Whether this contact occurs via digital media, in turn, depended on educators' attitudes towards digital media, the expected reaction of parents to this form of parental cooperation and the availability of technical support for implementing digital media in parental cooperation. The results are discussed with regard to the structural conditions of institutions and the professional skills of early childhood educators for a broad implementation of digital media in early childhood education practice.

Burnout undermines empathising: do induced burnout symptoms impair cognitive and affective empathy?

Empathy is crucial for the quality of social interactions and thus highly relevant in human service professions. At the same time, people belonging to this occupational group are especially vulnerable to developing burnout symptoms. With this study, we aimed to investigate the causal link between burnout symptoms and empathy by using a novel experimental design. Our participants (N = 355; 44.5% women; Mage = 36.37) filled out an online questionnaire; in an autobiographical memory task, the experimental group retrieved previous burnout experiences, whereas one control group retrieved a neutral memory and another control group received no intervention. After measuring current burnout symptoms as a manipulation check, we measured the cognitive and affective empathy of all participants. Findings indicate that the experimental group reported significantly higher burnout symptoms compared to control groups, validating our intervention method. Furthermore, we found that the experimental group scored lower on one of the cognitive empathy measures, suggesting negative effects on the relational skills of burned-out individuals. Results are discussed with regard to ecological validity and implications.

Longitudinal Effects of the Family Support Program Chancenreich on Parental Involvement and the Language Skills of Preschool Children.

When they enter primary school children already vary significantly in their language skills, depending at least in part on their family's social background. In particular, the home learning environment plays a significant role in children's development. For that reason, early intervention programs have been developed to obviate learning difficulties and to promote health, children's development, and educational equality. The family support program Chancenreich aims to encourage the interaction and relationship between parents and children through two different course formats. The present study examines the longitudinal effects of attending the Chancenreich program and different course formats on (a) parents attending further educational services for children after completing the program, (b) children's vocabulary and level of grammar development at the age of 5 and (c) the children's vocabulary development between the ages of 3 and 5. Furthermore, we examine the relationship between family characteristics and the attendance rates of different course formats of the Chancenreich program at the first and second point of measurement. The study follows a longitudinal design with two points of measurements (T1: Mage = 41 months, T2: Mage = 68 months), and a sample size of 121 parents and their children at T2 in the intervention group and 41 parents and their children in the comparison group. Findings indicate that attendance of the Chancenreich program's courses is related to child and family characteristics and to later patterns of course participation after completing the program. Further, both children's level of vocabulary skills (PPVT) at the age of 5 and their development between the ages of 3 and 5 benefit from the parental participation in parenting skills training at the age of 3. Implications and future research on the effectiveness of family support programs are discussed.

Impact of Process Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care on Academic Outcomes: Longitudinal Meta-Analysis.

This meta-analysis studies the association of pedagogical processes in early childhood care and education with outcomes in two academic domains: language and literacy as well as mathematics. It synthesizes evidence from 17 longitudinal studies in nine European countries with 16,461 children in regular center-based care spanning the period between ages 3 and 16. Results of a three-level meta-analysis provided small overall effect sizes for both global and domain-specific process quality, and indicated lasting associations with academic development over children's school career (ES = .11, Cohen's d = .22, and ES = .10, Cohen's d = .20). Effects varied by outcome domain, type of process measure, and differences in adopted analyses, with important implications for pedagogical practice and future research.