Using teach ECE to observe the quality of online teaching during the pandemic: an exploratory study in a pre-school in Chile

During COVID-19, many schools worldwide were closed. In this unprecedented context, some students accessed distance or remote education. Assessing the quality of in-person early childhood education has a long-dated challenge and doing the same within a preschool online setting is unprecedented. This study aimed to utilize the Teach ECE observation instrument developed by the World Bank in 2021 to explore the quality of synchronous online lessons across 8 preschool classrooms in a private school in Chile. The tool is designed to observe 28 quality teaching behaviors organized into four areas. The dataset encompassed 640 min of video recordings capturing synchronous online classes over a 5-month period. Findings revealed that 7 out of the 8 preschool teachers exhibited low or medium-low quality practices across all three areas examined in this study. Average scores per area indicate that Classroom Culture obtained the highest score, followed by guided learning, and finally by socio-emotional Skills.