ABSTRACT
The COVID-19-related lockdown interrupted children's learning progress and discontinued social learning and regular activities that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) rely on socially and physically. Negative consequences for children with ASD were reported far and wide. To investigate this problem in Kazakhstan, we conducted a mixed-methods study that drew on data from an online survey with 97 parents and semi-structured interviews with 14 parents. While parent-report quantitative results suggest that children were likely to experience negative impacts of the pandemic due to disrupted educational and therapeutic services, qualitative findings confirm that they have experienced an elevated mental health and behavioral challenges during the lockdown. Remote educational and therapeutic services were not helpful as families coped with pandemic-caused problems on their own. We highlight that continued support and care during and after a crisis is vital not only for children with ASD but also for the families under-resourced mentally and socially.
ABSTRACT
Combining motherhood and academic work in higher education has been discussed for decades with the pandemic further exposing the inequalities. This crisis has significantly impacted the daily life of mothers in academia as they devote more time to keep their careers on track, produce papers, and take on other parenting and schooling responsibilities. This paper employs photovoice as an online methodology to document the real-life experiences of 68 women from nine countries who work and parent children in the sudden transition to remote working and learning environments. By explaining the photographs from their perspective, the participants in this study were able to capture their lived experiences, discuss working from home while guiding children in online learning, and create suggestions for ways academic institutions can alleviate gender inequality. The article explores the critical issues of academic work and childrearing drawing international attention to address issues of equity and inclusion in higher education among researchers, policymakers, and institutions.
ABSTRACT
This research occurred in a special context where Kazakhstan's recent decision to switch from Cyrillic to the Latin-based alphabet has resulted in challenges connected to teaching literacy, addressing a rare combination of research hypotheses and technical objectives about language learning. Teachers are not necessarily trained to teach the new alphabet, and this could result in a challenge for children with learning difficulties. Prior research studies in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) have proposed the use of a robot to teach handwriting to children (Hood et al., 2015; Lemaignan et al., 2016). Drawing on the Kazakhstani case, our study takes an interdisciplinary approach by bringing together smart solutions from robotics, computer vision areas, and educational frameworks, language, and cognitive studies that will benefit diverse groups of stakeholders. In this study, a human-robot interaction application is designed to help primary school children learn both a newly-adopted script and also its handwriting system. The setup involved an experiment with 62 children between the ages of 7-9 years old, across three conditions: a robot and a tablet, a tablet only, and a teacher. Based on the paradigm-learning by teaching-the study showed that children improved their knowledge of the Latin script by interacting with a robot. Findings reported that children gained similar knowledge of a new script in all three conditions without gender effect. In addition, children's likeability ratings and positive mood change scores demonstrate significant benefits favoring the robot over a traditional teacher and tablet only approaches.