Authors:
Mariana León, Quality Leadership University, Panama
Nanette Archer Svenson, Centro de Investigación Educativa de Panamá, Panama
Debbie Psychoyos, Fundación ProEd, Panama
Nyasha Warren, Centro de Investigación Educativa de Panamá, Panama
Guillermina De Gracia, Quality Leadership University, Panama
Andrea Palacios, Centro de Investigación Educativa de Panamá, Panama
Email: mariana.leon@qlu.pa
Published: December 4, 2022
https://doi.org/10.22492/ije.10.3.06
Citation: León, M., Svenson, N. A., Psychoyos, D, Warren, N., De Gracia, G., & Palacios, A. (2022). WhatsApp Remote Reading Recovery: Using Mobile Technology to Promote Literacy during COVID-19. IAFOR Journal of Education, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.22492/ije.10.3.06
Abstract
School closures because of the COVID-19 pandemic affected over a billion young people worldwide and presented a threat to long-term learning, particularly for public school students in low socioeconomic situations. This article offers quasi-experimental evidence on a low-cost strategy for distance learning applied in the Republic of Panama to minimize the negative consequences of the pandemic on public elementary school children’s reading levels. We conducted a 12-week intervention that utilized mobile phone technology and dissemination of reading material through WhatsApp, a cross-platform messaging freeware service, to maintain and improve children’s reading levels during the pandemic school shutdown. The objective was to determine the feasibility of using WhatsApp as a digital tool to facilitate education and inform evolving practice and policy responses. Results among 292 students between the second and sixth grades indicated overall mean gains of up to 10.3% in the number of words read per minute, with statistically significant improvements overall and higher gains among the second and third grades. In addition, the adoption rate was high, with a reported average of 84% completion of the daily readings. The results of this low-tech intervention have immediate and longer-term implications for using mobile technology as a supplemental or complementary learning tool, especially for developing regions and during school closures or school vacations.
Keywords
EdTech, evaluation research, literacy