Teaching practices with early childhood during Covid-19. The emergence of virtual environments in early childhood education

Abstract

As in any educational initiative, early childhood teachers face the challenge of continuous improvement and updating, which becomes more acute in extreme situations such as the one imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Interested in this phenomenon, this article presents the results of a research whose objective is to make visible the virtual environments that emerge in the practices of early childhood teachers in an official educational institution located in Bogotá-Colombia. Methodologically, qualitative research was chosen, with a critical social approach, under the narrative biographical method, and it is based on an exercise of co-creation of a life story, with the micro-story of two teachers. The information is collected through: body map, self-report, biographical interview. The findings show that early childhood teachers conquer the use of technology, which associated with the COVID-19 contingency, represents a transformation of learning environments between virtual and face-to-face. The conclusions clarify the conditions and the impact of the change in teaching practices in correlation with the learning environments, which had an impact on teachers, children and their families as they adapted to each of the experiences generated.