The Instructional Shift of Early Childhood Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic

One of the prevention measures used to stop the spread of COVID-19 was to stop face-to-face learning at all levels of education, including early childhood education programs. Early childhood education, which is rich in teacher-student interaction, has been transformed into virtual learning. The purpose of this article was to look at how the early childhood education program in Kendari changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a descriptive qualitative study. Data were collected through documentation analysis and interviews with key informants, such as school principals, teachers and parents of the students. Triangulation techniques were used to assess the validity of the findings. The results revealed that the early year program in Kendari underwent significant transformations in almost every aspect of learning, including curriculum, educators, strategies, media, learning objectives and learning outcome evaluation. The COVID-19 pandemic caused a change in all learning components, namely psychological and social distancing, so that learning activities were no longer carried out in the classroom with teachers and friends. PAUD teachers now involve parents in implementing learning in each student’s home. Keywords: transformation, teaching model, educatio