Early Childhood Educators’ Multimodality Practice During the COVID-19: A Systematic Review
Abstract
This thesis is a systematic literature review focused on educators using multimodality in the early childhood classroom during COVID-19. This thesis collected data from 26 empirical studies published between 2020 to 2024. The research questions are: 1) What are the teachers’ preferences for modalities (e.g., visual, auditory, kinesthetic) within early childhood education during COVID-19? 2) What are the effects of multimodality adopted in early childhood classrooms during COVID-19? 3) What challenges do early childhood educators encounter in integrating multimodality into their teaching during COVID-19? Through thematic analyses, this review identified the visual mode that emerged as the most popular modality for teachers in COVID-19. Multimodality was found to enhance meaning expansion, capture students’ attention, and facilitate language learning. The review also found that challenges of integrating multimodality into the classroom can be categorized into three main areas: insufficient resources; inadequate teacher preparation; and children being excluded from technology-based communication. The study concludes with recommendations for future research and practices that aim to support educators’ multimodality practice in early childhood classrooms.