Predictors of First-Grade Teachers’ Teaching-Related Time During COVID-19

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam

Study examining pre-COVID predictors of how much time first-grade teachers devoted to teaching-related activities during emergency remote teaching in spring 2020. Teachers’ pre-pandemic job commitment predicted greater overall remote teaching time. Pre-pandemic executive functioning and observed classroom instructional and organizational quality predicted additional remote teaching time, while older teacher age and a higher proportion of high-needs students were linked to less remote teaching time. Findings inform professional development levers for supporting educators under widespread disruptions.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

Predictors and teaching-related time during COVID-19

Context: emergency remote teaching in early elementary

Study purpose and rationale

Importance of time spent on teaching for young students

AERA Open January-December 2022, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1–14 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584211067798 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2022. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Predictors of First-Grade Teachers’ Teaching-Related Time During COVID-19 Anna D. Johnson Owen N. Schochet Georgetown University Sherri Castle Diane Horm University of Oklahoma–Tulsa Deborah A. Phillips Georgetown University Exposure to teachers and teaching-related activities is vital for young children’s learning. When COVID-19 closed schools, teachers responded with a mix of live-and prerecorded lessons and one-on-one communication with students, which necessitated shifts in planning time. The current study identifies pre-COVID predictors of time teachers devoted to each of these teaching-related activities to illuminate actionable levers for supporting educators during widespread educational disruption. Teachers with higher prepandemic job commitment devoted more overall time to pandemic-induced remote teaching. Teachers’prepandemic executive functioning and observed classroom instructional and organizational quality—features of successful teachers during normal times—predicted more during-pandemic time remote teaching, while teacher older age and having more high-needs students was associated with less remote teaching time. These results contribute to an emerging literature that spotlights potential promising avenues for supporting teachers via professional development during normal times as well as in future widespread educational disruptions. Keywords: COVID-19, remote teaching, instructional time, low-income, teachers, elementary school When COVID-19 struck the United States in spring 2020, most school districts rapidly terminated face-to-face (F2F) instruction and moved all teaching online in what scholars are referring to as “emergency remote teaching” (Beattie et al., 2021). There is virtually no evidence on effective practices for online teaching in preschool through early elementary school (Darling-Hammond et al., 2020) . With little guidance and no preparation time before initiating emergency remote teaching, most elementary teachers were given tremendous autonomy in how much time to spend on teaching and teaching-related activities, and in what format: for instance, live “synchronous” versus prerecorded instruction. A sudden pivot to emergency remote teaching likely required increased planning time to sustain effective instruction in this new context (Branch & Dousay, 2015) . Simultaneously, many school districts and scholars urged teachers to prioritize maintaining connections with their students—especially for low-income and otherwise vulnerable populations of students, like English language learners (ELLs) and students with special learning needs (SNs) who may be particularly challenging to engage remotely (Kraft et al., 2020; Kuhfeldet al., 2020; National P-3 Center, 2020) . With such public calls for teachers to prioritize frequent and meaningful connection with students and families (Schwartz, 2020), an additional dimension of emergency remote teaching thus became regular communication with students and parents. The overarching goal of the current study is to identify predictors ofthe time teachers devoted to these key teaching and teaching-related activities during the sudden pivot to remote instruction during the spring of 2020. It is critically important to build this body of literature with emerging data from the current pandemic because while COVID-19 is considered the most widespread educational disruption in recent memory (Collie, 2021), it is unlikely to be the last such event. To our knowledge, there exist no prepandemic empirical studies of the predictors or consequences of elementary school teachers’ remote teaching as online instructional model

FAQs

What is the main goal of the study?

To identify predictors of the time teachers devoted to key teaching and teaching-related activities during the sudden pivot to remote instruction in spring 2020.

Which pre-pandemic factors were associated with more remote teaching time?

Higher pre-pandemic job commitment, pre-pandemic executive functioning, and higher observed instructional and organizational classroom quality were linked to more remote teaching time.

What factors were associated with less remote teaching time?

Older teacher age and having more high-needs students were associated with less time spent on remote teaching during the pandemic.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam