Meditating a new pedagogical approach in Early Childhood Education post COVID-19 in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Many learning institutions across the globe are currently operating under emergency-response mode because of the global pandemic of COVID-19 which has affected the education sector. COVID-19 has forced academics to meditate education for young children and project how it could be like when the pandemic is over. The purpose of this study is to explore meditated thoughts of internship students and faculty supervisors about the implementation of early childhood education programmes in the United Arab Emirates post COVID-19. The study was guided by the question: Would you recommend incorporating online teaching as part of early childhood program after COVID-19, and why? Five faculty supervisors and twelve internship students were purposively selected to complete an open-ended questionnaire. Results show that participants advocated for a new pedagogical approach which involves blended learning where face-to-face strategy pre-dominates online learning.