These numbers of new tasks and unpredictable process of the pandemic increased Turkish pre-school teachers’ responsibilities and worries. At this point the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Family and Social Policy, and Ministry of National Education produced an emergency policy documents to support them during the pandemic and supplied some instruments for educational stakeholders, parents and children.

The current research

This research aims to present a short form of Turkish educational policy implemented for pre-school children in Turkey during the global pandemic. The research teachers’ expectation, their theories, and current situations. At the same time, the results of the research will shed a light for policy makers for them to understand teachers’ perspectives as they are implementers of the policy documents. The gap between policy makers and implementers will be filled as this research came up with an evaluation of policy documents. The need for policy documents and their language (rhetoric) and teachers’ thoughts were noted. The main aim was to learn whether the policy instructions were operated during the diluted education period and what the teachers needed more or less as well as their suggestions. In this context, the main problem was formulated as: did the Turkish teachers in early years’ education cope with implementation of policy documents? The main problem was investigated with the three specific problems:

1. Which policy documents did the teachers use?

2. To what extent did the teachers use the related policy documents?

3. Did they reorganize/arrange the learning process and how?

As highlighted above, there were difficulties especially in managing and implementing the policy documents during the diluted educational process. Unquestionably, there were many issues which led to this research. However, policy documents had less impact because of un-implementable context such as infection prevention, control action, preparation of less contact activities in early years. Early years education institutions were kept with cautions taken in some countries such as Germany, England. The policy documents of these countries provided to workers in the education sector helped to successful manage their operation during the pandemic (Karao?lu and Özbay-Karl?da?, 2021). In Turkey, Ministry of National Education, Ministry of Health, and Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Services operated together. In this research, all the documents created by the related ministries were implemented in the early year’s education sector from the teachers’ perspectives. This makes the research unique based on the teachers’ thoughts which drive the research and help children to keep themselves healthy under the procedures (policy documents) during the diluted educational process. It has been questioned in this research are how the policy documents used actively and effectively in the early years education field. We hope to contribute to this line by firstly determining the gaps of implementations and then making suggestions to fill the gaps.

This study, a mixed-method research,utilized both qualitative and quantitative approaches to determine how much precautions were taken in preschool education based on the policy documents during the COVID-19, and the teachers' thoughts about all procedures of precautions, their suggestions, and criticisms. Whereas qualitative research contains variables placed in specific categories due to similar characteristics, quantitative research is numerical and can be ordered or ranked (Bluman, 2013). The mixed-method provides a way to check the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative methods (Maxwell, 2013). According to Creswell (2014), qualitative and quantitative data collection process could be done concurrently in mixed research design. This study used convergent parallel mixed design. Therefore, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected concurrently. The preschool teachers were invited to complete an online survey which included 47 closed-ended questions and 8 open-ended questions. The closed-ended questions allowed teachers to select an answer from opinions provided while the open-ended questions allowed respondents to voice individualized answers (Fraenkel et al., 2015).

Participants, sample and procedures

For the selection of preschool teachers to be included in the study, snowball sampling was used. In accordance with this, the researchers firstly sent the online survey to preschool teachers who they could reach easily from different regions of Turkey. Afterward, each preschool teacher, who filled out the online survey, passed the online survey access link to other preschool teachers they knew. In this way, the researchers reached 118 preschool teachers. The demographic data of the participants can be found in Table 1. Almost all of the participants that completed the survey were women and only two were men. Teachers were mostly between the ages of 31 and 39; their teaching experience was mostly between 11 and 15 years. Also, 92% of the participants have a Bachelor's degree (Table 1).

Instruments

The researchers used survey to collect data from the study participants. The instrument was a Google survey completed by all preschool teachers. The survey was administered online sent through email. The survey was created by the researchers to reveal how the precautions taken in accordance with the policy documents in preschool education during the COVID-19 and the teachers' thoughts about all the procedures of precautions, their suggestions, and criticisms. The survey consists of 47 closed-ended questions. The first question is 1=yes; 2=no. The second is 1=yes; 2=no, and 3=1 have no information. Using a 4-point Likert scale where 1= no knowledge, 2=never used, 3=occasionally used and 4= quite useful (questions three to 14). Question 15 to 47 offered 1=yes and 2=no. The survey questions were created by making use of the policy documents which are derived from the Ministry of National Education, Turkish Standards Institute, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Family Labour and Social Services. The precautions to be taken as stated in the policy documents (Ministry of National Education and Turkish Standards Institute, 2020; Ministry of Health, 2020; Ministry of Family Labour and Social Services, 2020) were turned into survey questions. In addition to the 47 close-ended questions, eight open-ended questions for the preschool teachers were provided. In close ended questions content, 12 of 47 are teachers’ level of use of the policy documents on COVID-19, 13 of 47 are about general precautions, 7 of 47 are the precautions of cleaning and disinfection, 6 of 47 are the precautions of educational environment, and 7 of 47 are the precautions of learning process. Two of them are about whether they were informed by their institutions about the fight against COVID-19 and whether they were  prepared  for  infection  prevention  and control action plan. In the open-ended questions, it was asked whether there were any other precautions taken apart from the close-ended questions.  In the open-ended questions, it was aimed to obtain information about the following four situations: whether there are any measures taken other than close-ended questions; the adequacy of the precautions taken; what precautions need to be developed; and the most successful practice in their schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ethical considerations

The participants were reassured of their confidentiality and considered by the researchers. The following precautions were implemented to safeguard the confidentiality of the participants: (1) pseudonyms were used instead of the participants’ names to protect their identities. For example, pseudonyms such as P1 (participant 1), P2 (participant 1) etc. were used when citing important parts of participants' views to support the findings. Also, any information containing personal identifiers were deleted from the participants’ answers. (2) All data were received from the online survey. Although the data obtained from the online survey are hosted in a cloud server, only researchers can access them with their own passwords. The data hosted on a cloud server will only be stored for 3 years.

Data analysis

In the analysis of quantitative data, descriptive statistics was used. It allowed us to describe the gathered information using by numerical form (Fraenkel et al., 2015). The descriptive statistics are useful tools in presenting information from the Likert-type scale survey items. In this research, the findings obtained from the Likert-type scale survey items were presented using numerical format. Qualitative research was used to assist with the understanding of the open-ended questions. The goal of this research was discovering teachers' thoughts of the precautions taken during COVID-19 by using open-ended questions. Quantitative data were analysed through content analyse. During the content analysis, teachers’ statements which support the findings obtained from the quantitative data were used directly (Corbin and Strauss, 2008).

In this part of the research, the findings will be presented within the framework of sub-problems which are obtained from the analysis of the data collected in accordance with the purpose of the research.

The use of the policy documents

The use of the policy documents was identified as “Which policy documents did the teachers use?” There were three questions for the teachers to explore this issue. Firstly, the teachers were asked whether they were informed about the fight against COVID-19 or not by their institutions. While 93.2% of the teachers stated that they were informed, 6.8% of the teachers stated that they were not. The second question was whether the teachers’ institutions were prepared to prevent the infection and for the control action plan after the lock-down. Here, 52.5% of the teachers stated that their institutions were prepared for the infection prevention and control action plan, but 10.2% of the teachers stated that their institutions were not prepared. Interestingly, there are 37.3% of the teachers stated that they did not know whether their institutions were prepared for the infection prevention and control action plan. The teachers, who stated that their schools were prepared for the infection prevention and control action plan, reported the preparing process:

“The guides prepared by the Ministry of Health and Ministry of National Education were followed” (Respondent no. 83); “All the instructions of the Ministry of National Education were applied” (Respondent no. 7); “The plan was prepared in consideration of the Ministry of National Education’s policy documents and videos” (Respondent no. 75); “We took all necessary precautions based on the lead of the Ministry of National Education” (Respondent no. 32).

Most of the teachers commented that they formulated their infection prevention and control action plan based on the policy documents. One described the preparing process of the plan as follows:

“We adopted the Ministry of National Education’s information into our school’s conditions.” (Respondent no. 107), “There was collaboration between the Ministry of National Education and the local government” (Respondent no. 69).

In this context, the evidence suggests that the action plan of the infection prevention and control is prepared based on the policy document from Ministry of Health and Ministry of National Education guides and schools’ conditions. At the same time, it can be seen that some schools carry out this design and implement the plan process in cooperation with the municipalities to provide hygiene to the school buildings.

Lastly, the third question asked the teachers was how they use the policy documents about COVID-19. The statistics on teachers' level of use of the policy documents about COVID-19 are given in Table 2. The policy document of Ministry of National Education used frequently ¨Improving Hygiene Conditions in Educational Institutions and Infection Prevention Control Guidance¨ (43.2%) and ¨Children Aid Guidance for Families¨ (41.5%). The policy document of Ministry of Health used frequently ¨Ministry of Health New Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Information Page¨ (42.4%), and also the policy document of Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Services used  frequently  ¨Coronavirus  (2019-nCoV)  In formation Document¨ (28%).

Precautions based on policy documents

Precautions taken based on the policy documents come from the second research question: “To what extent did the teachers take precautions based on the policy documents?” Table 3 shows that the results of frequency analysis were applied to determine whether the teachers have practiced the general precautions which were prepared based on the policy documents. Table 3 indicates that majority of the teachers applied the general precautions of policy documents. 96.6% of the teachers considered ¨Visual stimuli used to comply with the new perception of hygiene and hand washing and the social distance rule; while minority of the teachers (33.9%) considered,  ‘The temperature of children is recorded more than once during the day’. Majority of the teachers stated that they applied the necessary precautions for cleaning and disinfection in line with the policy documents. The results of frequency analysis that was applied to determine whether the teachers received the precautions of cleaning and disinfection to be taken in line with the policy documents are given in Table 4. In Table 4, it is seen that more than half of the teachers apply all the precautions of cleaning and disinfection. However, almost all of the teachers stated that they provide adequate ventilation in the environment after using cleaning products (94.1%) and that they dispose of garbage safely on a daily basis (94.9%). In this research, there is another point that must highlighted: food and serving. While 97.5% of the teachers (n=115) stated that they stopped serving food, only 2.5% of the teachers (n=3) stated that they kept serving food. All the teachers, who said that they kept serving food, stated that the children brought their prepared food from their home and that the children and the staff washed hand before and after meal.  One of the teachers from the food serving schools stated that they served food in the classroom as suggested by the policy documents; on the contrary, two of the teachers used the dining hall. Overall, most of the teachers commented that they applied precautions in the educational environment as suggested by the policy documents.  Table 5 indicates the result of frequency analysis that was applied to determine whether the teachers implemented the precautions in the educational environment based on the policy documents.

There is a further question whether the teachers clean and disinfect the school environment. “We advise the children not to use any of their friends' belongings except their own” (Respondent no. 61). On the other hand, few teachers (n=3) stated that they all replaced the bins with pedal ones. One of them said the traditional taps were replaced with sensor taps. Another one removed the carpet in the classroom and requested for personal water bottle for each child. Seven teachers stated that the tables and chairs in the classroom were positioned considering physical distance. Four teachers labelled table and chair with the children’s names in the classroom. Moreover, only a teacher spotted “The classes are divided into two groups. The first group comes to school on Monday and Tuesday, and the second group comes on Thursday and Friday” (Respondent No. 28). 

The precautions of learning process

The precautions of learning process were identified as “Did they reorganize/arrange the learning process and how?” In order to examine this sub-question, teachers were asked a total of eight questionnaire items, seven of which were close-ended and only one was open-ended. The teachers answered the close-ended questionnaire items based on two options as “yes / no”. The results of frequency analysis are given in Table 6. Apart from these precautions taken in line with the policy documents, teachers were asked whether they had different practices related to the learning process and if so, what are they. While the majority of the teachers stated that they did not do a different practice, some of the teachers said that:

“We planned contactless plays and individual activities. Currently, we are progressing very efficiently and smoothly.”  (Respondent no. 3), “We enable children to play contactless plays” (Respondent no. 16), “I keep away from activities that bring children together as much as possible.” (Respondent no. 18), “Each child's table and  chair   has   been  labelled.  Usually individual  table activities are planned” (Respondent no. 63). 

When these expressions of the teachers are examined, it can be seen that some teachers try to include more individual and non-contact activities. In addition, a teacher said, “Children are made aware of hygiene, Coronavirus and nutrition by using cartoons and images more often” (Respondent no. 65). 

The research discovered that children from different classrooms were kept in common areas, classrooms were ventilated by opening doors and windows, number of toys was reduced such as plush and furry toys,  hard to clean toys were removed, and dirty toys were separated from children. In a similar way but more comprehensively, England’s related policy document recommended a cautious approach for hygiene such as to ventilate indoors regularly,  reduce the number of common used toys, being careful using easy-clean materials and toys and decrease the number of children for comfortable physical distance (EYFS: Coronavirus Disapplications, 2021). In Australian early years settings, it is paid attention to wash toys and play materials (Early Childhood Australia, 2020). However, in Croatia early years’ settings, the items that children use in their play are disinfectable, so, natural, furry and plush toys are forbidden in classrooms (Visnjic-Jetic et al., 2021). This study revealed the parts of the learning process considered in the early years’ settings. The policy documents recommended that teachers should keep physical distance in classrooms. For instance, daily learning activities should be organised class by class and there should be no combined classrooms. If weather condition is suitable, outdoors daily learning activities can be planned frequently. Again, in similar way, English related policy document advised that teachers must be careful about children’s physical distance in learning centres or areas in their daily activities (EYFS: Coronavirus Disapplications, 2021). China is another country is similar point related to outdoor activities; the related policy documents supported children’s indoor free and group play shift to outdoor play (Park et al., 2020).

Even though other countries developed their own policy documents about the integration of COVID-19, there is lack of research on educators’ perspective on the extent at which the documents’ indicators were applied. This point makes this research unique. Another different and unique point detected is the use of language is banned as well as negative language  instead of encouraging language For instance, Children in different classes must not be brought together in common areas and group rooms¨ could be replaced with another rhetoric which motivates workers such as: Children from different classes should be kept separated in common areas or group rooms¨. There are similar examples such as instead of ¨Mostly silent activities used in indoor activities¨; the preferred expression is ¨ There are no loud activities in the classroom ¨. As Hewison and Morrell (2013) discussed in their study that rhetorical devices in policy texts are a vehicle used to create an impression on actions and innovations, and they appeal to people’s emotions (O’Neill, 1998). In this study, no teacher commented on this point; however it would be useful to use inspiring and positive language in related policy documents to get more benefit from them.

The COVID-19 pandemic affected the world to bring new normal, and this brought new arrangements in policy documents. During the pandemic, first, schools were closed all over the world, and then actions were developed to start face-to-face education by the governments’ related offices. Early years’ sector was affected negatively during this process. This study shed light on Turkish policy perspective on what the conditions are in early years’ settings to challenge COVID-19 in the context of school settings. The main focuses of this study were policy interventions, the implementations of policy documents, and teachers’ experiences of these policy documents in early years. In this study, not only Turkish Ministry of Education’s policy document was evaluated but also the policy documents from different ministries were considered as they also aim at teachers providing hygienic and healthy classroom in the new normal process. This study also puts a lens on what other countries apply during the COVID-19 and their implications and compared at some points to develop quality understanding about the new normal process. There are some limitations in this study. This study filtered the related documents from the perspective of early years’ settings especially health safety in physical environment; however, there are no in-depth investigations across the other educational levels or hybrid learning process. Moreover, there is lack of research on implications of COVID-19 policy documents developed by the other countries’ government. For future research, what kind of challenge will Turkish early years’ education survive can be explored from the perspective of children and parents on how learning activities and teachers’ practices affected the impact of the COVID-19 in schools  and how these issues are supported in the related upgraded policy documents during the new\ normal.

The authors have not declared any conflict of interests.