Impact of Your Voice: Research That Shapes Our World – an interview with Meliza González and Alejandro Vásquez-Echeverría
March 12, 2025
Impact of Your Voice is a campaign that connects you with the authors and researchers whose work is driving meaningful change in society. Through insightful interviews, we uncover the stories behind their research and explore how their ideas are influencing real-world outcomes. From shaping policies to sparking new solutions, these conversations highlight the transformative power of knowledge. Join us for an interview with Meliza González and Alejandro Vásquez-Echeverría, where they discusses their research on '' School readiness losses during the COVID-19 outbreak. A comparison of two cohorts of young children” published in Child Development.
Meliza González graduated in statistics and master in mathematical engineering. She currently works as a researcher at the National Institute for Educational Evaluation and the University of the Republic, Uruguay, where she is pursuing a PhD. She has specialized in measurement and quantitative methods for public policies’ evaluation.
Alejandro Vásquez-Echeverría is a Professor of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology and psychometrics at the University of the Republic, Uruguay. He is responsible for the projects associated with the validation and implementation of the Inventario de Desarrollo Infantil (INDI) and other assessment instruments used in educational and public policies settings in Uruguay. His research focus on school readiness, assessment in early childhood, scale development, and future orientation.
Please can you give us a brief overview of your research? What were the most significant findings regarding the impact of the pandemic on motor and cognitive development, attitudes towards learning, and internalizing behaviour?
In this article, we analysed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on child development, specifically on school readiness in Uruguayan children aged 4 to 6 years. Two cohorts were compared: a control cohort (assessed before the pandemic, in 2018-2019) and a COVID cohort (assessed during the pandemic, in 2019-2020) using administrative records of a regularly administered school readiness measure, that fortunately could be implemented even in 2020. In Uruguay, the pandemic led to school closures from mid-March to June 2020, with a gradual and voluntary reopening starting in June. Although the country implemented digital initiatives to facilitate distance education, younger children, especially in preschool, faced challenges due to a lack of devices and the difficulty of adapting virtual learning for that age. Even though Uruguay had fewer days of school closure compared to other countries in the region, the disruptions significantly affected children’s development.
As main results we highlight that Children in the COVID cohort showed losses in cognitive skills such as language, basic math, and motor skills. These losses were more pronounced in children from schools with lower socioeconomic status (SES). Regarding socioemotional behaviour the effects were smaller compared to cognitive and motor outcomes: An increase in internalizing behaviours (such as anxiety and sadness) was observed, but a decrease in externalizing behaviours. Children from schools with highest SES suffered fewer losses compared to those from schools with middle and lower SES. This suggests that families with more resources were better able to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic. Lastly, we observed variability across schools, as losses were not uniform across schools, indicating that factors such as the quality of distance learning, family and community support or days loss specifically in each centre (that was also variable due to COVID outbreaks among children or teachers) played an important role.
What motivated you to study the impact of COVID-19 on child development in Uruguay?
Educational outcomes during and after the COVID context were a big concern for societies, but were mostly focused on older children and adolescents. We believe that the impact of this context will also extend to preschool aged children in a key moment of their lives, while transitioning to primary school. We wanted to determine the extent of the impact and which areas were most affected. Also we argued this to keep INDI assessment ongoing during 2020, as it had a lot of potential to inform policy-makers.
Can you explain the methodology used to compare the two cohorts of children and why it was suitable for this study?
As the INDI has been regularly administered in Uruguay in public preschools since 2018 , we benefited from a natural experimental setting: we had data regarding a cohort of preschool children with 3 INDI assessments previous to the COVID context (control group), and a cohort of children that started compulsory preschool before the pandemic but in Age 5 were affected by the pandemic and the educational disruption associated with it during the last assessment. That allows us to perform a specific analysis comparing the trajectories (that is three time points) of the two cohorts.
How do you interpret the less pronounced losses among children from higher socioeconomic schools?
That was a very interesting finding, unfortunately negatively affecting more disadvantaged children. Probably among the most advantaged families had more resources (economic, social and psychological) to compensate for the consequences of the pandemic that may impact child development such as school closures, economic burden, health-related diseases. For instance, children living in more advantaged families probably had more space at home, more toys and games, more family support and more opportunities to connect to sessions and follow recommendations proposed by kindergarten teachers.
What are the potential long-term effects of the pandemic on early child development, and how can future studies build on your research?
The long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children is still unknown, as it will be needed to perform follow-up studies regarding how much they were affected during the pandemic and later outcomes. We assume that the most affected children during this transitional period will be more likely to show worse educational outcomes in the 3rd of 4th grade for instance. Concerning newer cohorts of children, in another article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-024-01716-4) we showed that younger cohorts (specifically those who were attending Year 3 classrooms during 2020) showed similar developmental indicators as children in the pre-pandemic cohorts. Undoubtedly, future studies should focus on the impact COVID-19 had on school readiness and the long-term outcomes for those children who were in kindergarten during the pandemic.
What role do you see for community and government support in mitigating the impact of future disruptions on education?
Our results are crucial to inform policy-makers and to educational community to put into the balance the trade-offs of lockdowns, school closures and other mitigation measures during disruptions. Undoubtedly, the corpus of literature shows that there are developmental and educative losses for COVID-like crises, even among young children and support is needed. One way to prove support could be targeting interventions and services to the most vulnerable and affected children. Our results show that those with lower scores in school readiness before the pandemic were the most affected, as well as children from less advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. As an example, in future crisis, a reduced group of children (or even in one-to-one formats) may be invited to attend to specific sessions in the school. Family support and parenting programmes to foster and enrich parent-child interactions may also help to compensate losses. As losses were different given the developmental dimensions, programs may need to have focus on those areas that showed greater losses
What future research directions do you believe are necessary to further understand the impact of global crises on education and child development?
As said, we think it is crucial to understand the long-term impact of the pandemic in educational outcomes specifically in the cohort of children that probable are most affect, those transitioning from preschool and kindergarten to the first years of primary school.
More broadly, we need to better understand and measure the role of preschool environment quality and the impacts of unattendance and summer recess on early child develpment and school readiness. Also is crucial to better explore the interactions between family and preschool context quality and early child development.
What's next for you in this area of research?
We would like to explore educational outcomes of the cohort of children that were in kindergarten during the pandemic three years later, when they were assessed in 3rd grade of elementary school. That could provide an estimation of the pervasive effects of the pandemic-associated losses in school readiness in later educative outcomes.
