Affiliation:
1. School of Psycho-Social Education, Faculty of Education, COMBER Research Focus Area, North-West University, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated school closures and movement restrictions that disrupted holistic development and adaptive coping in learners worldwide. Adaptive coping is also referred to as resilience. Holistic development covers the biophysiological, psychological, social, spiritual and educational domains of child development. Several researchers have explored the impact of developmental risks caused by school closures and movement restrictions on learner development. With this article we aim to present a synthesis of these reviewed papers. We reviewed 81 peer-reviewed papers that were published globally from 2020 to 2023. The focus of these papers was on biophysical, psychological, social, religious and academic development in learners. We did not develop a priori themes to guide us; instead, themes emerged from the articles that were reviewed. The findings show that although the lockdown restrictions were aimed at preventing the spread of the virus and saving lives, the imposed restrictions affected the development of learners in biophysiological, psychological, social, educational and religious domains. Furthermore, the findings show that the impact of the lockdown necessitated multisystemic interventions on different levels to enable learners to overcome backlogs and promote resilience.
Publisher
Education Association of South Africa
Reference94 articles.
1. Abi-Hashem N 1999. Grief, loss, and bereavement: An overview. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 18(4):309–329.
2. Adebiyi BO, Roman NV, Chinyakata R & Balogun TV 2021. The negative impacts of COVID-19 containment measures on South African families - Overview and recommendations. The Open Public Health Journal, 14:233–238. https://doi.org/10.2174/1874944502114010233
3. Ahmed GK, Mostafa S, Elbeh K, Gomaa HM & Soliman S 2022. Effect of COVID‑19 infection on psychological aspects of pre‑schooler children: A cross‑sectional study. Middle East Current Psychiatry, 29:42. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43045-022-00207-y
4. Al-Balushi B & Essa MM 2020. The impact of COVID-19 on children: Parent’s perspective. International Journal of Nutrition, Pharmacology, Neurological Diseases, 10(3):164–165. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijnpnd.ijnpnd_55_20
5. Amorim R, Catarino S, Miragaia P, Ferreras C, Viana V & Guardiano M 2020. The impact of COVID-19 on children with autism spectrum disorder. Revista de Neurología, 71:285–291. https://doi.org/10.33588/rn.7108.2020381