THE IMPLEMENTATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IN THE TIME OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Purpose of the study: The study examined the implementation of early childhood education during the pandemic of COVID-19. Methodology: A systematic review identified the implementation in early childhood education settings. Electronic databases such as PubMed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus and manual search on Google Scholar were explored with specific keywords from the inception of the pandemic COVID-19 to November 30, 2020. Main Findings: Early childhood education has been influenced due to school closure. Most of the children experience online learning, to reduce the spread of the outbreak, especially when face-to-face learning cannot be conducted. Parents and teachers have significant roles in supporting the children to improve their cognitive and social development. However, the implementation of home learning causes some difficulties in relation to the self-regulation of very young children, the readiness to utilize digital technology and learning materials, parent’s beliefs and attitudes on online learning compared with traditional learning, and requirements of demanding time and knowledge to accompany the children. Therefore, it is important to have good communication between parents and teachers to support early childhood online learning during the outbreak. Applications of this study: This article will provide evidence from some countries about the matter of early childhood education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study will be useful for improving the quality of early childhood education. Novelty/Originality of this study: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the early childhood education has changed from the traditional system to online education system to reduce the spread of the diseases. This article will show the various implementations of learning system during the outbreak and the lesson learned.


INTRODUCTION
Since March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19 as a global pandemic (World Health Organization, 2020). It is recommended to work from home, the school from home and physical distancing to slow down the spread of coronavirus. The school-age population have been impacted by the school closure, including those in early childhood. The daily interactions and activities among early childhood have changed during the pandemic due to school closure, confinement and cancellation of social gatherings (Garbe et al., 2020; OMEP Executive Committee, 2020).
Playing and social interactions with others are the important aspect of children's development and early learning (OMEP Executive Committee, 2020). Daily physical activities among children have changed (Boland & Mortlock, 2020). Spending time for games, sports, study, and play with friends in the parks, school, playgrounds, and gardens become limited due to physical distancing and public places closure (Lau & Lee, 2020). During the pandemic, the safety and health of the children are important as a concern for parents (Garbe et al., 2020).
Early childhood is an important milestone in children's life when children's learning and developmental process are created for their future (Anderson et al., 2003). Earlier literature show that early childhood education is a worthy investment due to its impact on children's development outcome, cognitive-academic outcomes in their school-age, healthier lifestyles, economic performances in the future as productive employees and citizens, and reducing social costs (Heckman, 2011(Heckman, , 2012Paananen et al., 2015). However, due to school closure, many education systems move from traditional face-to-face learning to online learning to ensure the class meeting continue during the outbreak (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2020). Online learning is a platform of learning that many schools adopted during the pandemic.
The practices of online learning are challenging for families with early childhood children. The study examined the implementation of early childhood education during the pandemic of COVID-19.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, almost all of the education system moved to online learning. An educational method that provides access to the internet is called as online learning (Kim, 2020). Online learning can make the learning system more flexible, timetable and available and also reduce the educational barriers because of geographical location (Dong et al., 2020;Kim, 2020). To achieve the target, online learning needs different learning teaching and strategies from those used in traditional learning. For some lessons that need practice such as practicum courses, video observation is one method that suggested as an alternative for student teaching (Kim, 2020).
Approaching digital technology for young children is challenging especially when parents play significant roles as teachers, facilitators and coaches that need parenting and educational skills during the online learning (Abuhammad, 2020a;Garbe et al., 2020). Digital technology is related with to issues of interaction exploring, including social interactions, among very young children. Even though online learning is used for early childhood education, teachers should facilitate and enhance children for learning, thinking and communicating online.
Digital technology can help young children to grasp the complexity of their social environments, adapt to new social experience and empower children to learn the leadership (Danby et al., 2018). Digital tools such as touch screen tablets are believed can promote early children to develop their literacy skills (Neumann, 2014). There is a possibility of parents who are discomfort and unwillingness to use online learning for their early childhood. Parents have significant roles in providing access and the use of digital devices at home for their children, which may turn effects for children's learning (Neumann, 2014). Previous research reveals that very young children's access to digital tools has a positive relationship with children's skills in writing skills and letter-sound (Neumann, 2014).
In the remote areas, slum areas or rural areas where the internet connection is limited and many low-income families lived, online learning becomes difficult to achieve. The inequality to access technology still occurred in Indonesia which makes some students vulnerable because they facing the barriers of education (Azzahra, 2020). Digital technology such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet connection is needed as support equipment in online learning.
There are some advantages of implementing online learning such as quick and efficient delivery of courses through geographical and time constraints, flexible, convenient, increased accessibility and interest for non-traditional students, increased participation rates, and cost-effective (Heirdsfield et al., 2007;Kim, 2020). However, there are some drawbacks of online learning for young children such as depend on the technological abilities of students and teachers, need parent/adult guidance, need more interactive methods to make young children focused in online learning (Kim, 2020). A study in Jordan reveals there are four barriers of distance learning during the pandemic: 1) Personal barriers which included lack of training and support, lack of technical expertise, inadequate communication and lack of qualifications; 2) Technical barriers which included insufficient investment and maintenance and poor connectivity; 3) Logistical barriers which included difficulties when using distance learning, lack of student preparedness, dissatisfaction with distance learning modality and the inability of distance learning to meet student's needs; and 4) Financial barriers which included inability to buy technology and inability to pay for internet services (Abuhammad, 2020b). Moreover, there are some barriers of inclusion and participation of digital for childhood education: 1) psychological access (such as discomfort to use computers or other digital devices); 2) material access (such as do not have access to online devices); 3) skills access (such as limited skills to utilize digital technologies); and 4) usage access (such as the possibility to use digital devices in various ways) (Danby et al., 2018).

METHODOLOGY
This study was a systematic review study, in which literature in the English language was evaluated using an electronic search strategy of the different database in PubMed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, and manual search on Google Scholar. Searching in databases was used by exploring of a web-based engine and hand searching using keywords of "early childhood", "children", "education", "online learning", "pandemic", "home learning", "home-schooling", "kindergarten", "outbreak", and "COVID-19". The keywords were chosen for evaluation in the PubMed database in accordance with the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) system. In a hierarchy called a tree, MeSH concepts are grouped, with more specific concepts arranged under wider forms (Ecker & Skelly, 2010). The use of MeSH terms expands the search strategy and optimizes it (Ecker & Skelly, 2010).
Articles were included in this study if fulfilled the following inclusion criteria: (1) reported as publication or reports and written in English, (2) the previous study is qualitative or quantitative research or a literature review, (3) focused on the process, factors and outcome related with early childhood education or very young children, (4) the study related to the situation of COVID-19 pandemic, (5) published between December 2019 and November 2020. Studies were excluded pre-print articles, opinion and commentary, About 68 paper abstracts were selected and reviewed in term of the inclusion and exclusion criteria in the beginning evaluation of the article titles. Based on the criteria, there were 15 articles were appropriate to be further reviewed. In the next phase, Author prepared the full paper of each article's title. The author tried to find the full-text article through various databased. However, if the full text could not be found, the Author tried to send a request of the full article to the correspondence author's email directly. Only studies which fulfilled the inclusion and exclusion criteria and found the full text would be extracted and included in the study. The articles were classified based on scientific content.

Early Childhood education
In the digital era, early childhood is familiar with touchscreen technologies with an internet connection (Kim, 2020). Early childhood education focuses on learning by playing, interacting and exploring by using various languages, their body interaction and movement for communication (OMEP Executive Committee, 2020). Early childhood education involves multifunctional activities can build young children's emotional and affective relationship. Therefore, gesture, physical contact, body language, facial expression, dynamic movement, outdoor playground, or hugs are needed for the children learning system. Home confinement has caused potential physical and mental health problems such as weight gain, stress, frustration, boredom, lack in-person contact (Wang et al., 2020). Guidelines of the learning system for early childhood should be clear and easy to understand in achieving the educational requirements and promoting a healthy lifestyle, so it is not overburdening the pupils (Wang et al., 2020). However, isolation or confinement may also increase the risk of domestic violence (Yoshikawa et al., 2020).

Challenges of online learning
School closures significantly reduce the transmission of the virus. Most of the children experience online learning, to reduce the spread of the outbreak, especially when face-to-face learning cannot be conducted. Online learning is an important learning system during the pandemic. By online learning, the educational contents and materials can be delivered. Moreover, young children can meet and interact with their teachers and friends. Stimulating activities among young children can be developed through online learning.
The implementation of home learning has challenged families with young age children. Some potential challenges are occurred during home learning in relation with self-regulation of very young children, remaining focused and concentrated during online learning, the readiness to utilize of digital technology and learning materials, parent's positive beliefs and attitude on online learning compared with traditional learning, motivation to be active and interactive during online learning, accessibility to digital technology tools, quality of the preschool program, development of distance learning curriculum, and requirements of demanding time and knowledge to accompany the children (Dias et al., 2020;Dong et al., 2020; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2020; Tarrant & Nagasawa, 2020). Young children may not have technological abilities like adults such as typing some words, sharing files or uploading the assignments, but they can utilize the simple technology such as mute the microphone, turn on the camera or leave form the meeting.
There are three phases which need to be enhanced in the process of home learning: planning, implementation and reflection (Kim, 2020). In the planning session, teachers should prepare the syllabus, materials, online learning tools and virtual instruments to support the process of online teaching. During the implementations, teachers should have good communication with the parents by sending emails to inform the preparedness needed for the learning process and ensure the timetable of each class. Then, teachers should create an interactive and creative class to encourage physical and cognitive development for early childhood. In the reflection session, teachers ask their student to share the insight and reflections of the lesson and experience during online learning (Kim, 2020).
Online learning for very young children has led to some difficulties such as the lack of focus and interest of early childhood, the interruption from other family members during the virtual meeting, and limited resources and materials for online learning (Lau & Lee, 2020). As preschool students, it is difficult for young children to keep concentrated during online learning. Children's behaviours such as jumping on the chair, rolling on the floor or bringing their pets or toys to online class are unavoidable during the virtual class (Pramling Samuelsson et al., 2020). Moreover, parents experience difficulties for handling some problem related to changes in children behaviour since the beginning of the pandemic (Yoshikawa et al., 2020). Therefore, the teacher's and parent's cooperation are needed to create the class more conducive.
A study in China reveals that parents of young children appear to oppose the online learning due to the limitations of online learning, the insufficient self-regulation of young children, and parent's lack of time and technical expertise to facilitate online learning (Dong et al., 2020). Furthermore, there are some parent's negative belief of online learning such as less effective when online learning compared with traditional learning, probability lead to vision problems such as myopia among early childhood because increasing of screen time, and limited physical activities especially for children who addicted with gadgets during stay at home (Dong et al., 2020;Lau & Lee, 2020). A study in Sweden shows that parents see preschool as a secure place including how the workers minimize the potential risks from a highly contagious virus in school (Pramling Samuelsson et al., 2020).
In Indonesia's online learning, unequal access to the internet connection, the inequality in teacher qualifications and education quality and also the limited ICT skills are becoming a barrier especially during the COVID-19 Pandemic (Azzahra, 2020). Teachers need to equip with the knowledge to use and deliver the lessons by using ICT because it is not easy to deliver lessons for early childhood with online learning.
Toxic stress among very young children may change the brain structure and function which can influence children's learning (including cognitive development, linguistic ability, social and emotional skills), health and behaviour (Shonkoff et al., 2012). Moreover, children who experience stress such as trauma, suffer adversity and lose stable attachment and bonding have detrimental effects on children's health, wellbeing and lifelong learning (Shonkoff et al., 2012).

Teachers' and Families' support
Besides the students, the teachers also need capacity building to use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) effectively in their teaching then practice it in facilitating their students to enhance the learning process. Capability to handle online learning by developing teacher's presentation skills, skills to make children stay focused and interacting are needed by teachers to accomplish the online learning goals.
Open communication needs to be developed between children, their parents and teachers to help the young children are they have any physical and psychological problems during online learning and home confinement (Wang et al., 2020). Good and intense communication between parents and teachers are needed to achieve online learning goals. Parental emotional support and teachers enthusiasm towards online learning are associated with learning attitudes such as pupil's