Fuzzy Identification and Prioritization of Virtual Education Challenges in Preschool during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic

The current study aims at identifying and prioritizing the challenges of virtual education in preschool during and after the COVOD-19 pandemic. The present study can be considered among mixed-method (qualitative-quantitative) research studies in terms of its (data collection) methodology. The qualitative part of the study was conducted through research synthesis (purposeful selection of select articles) and phenomenological method (semi-structured interviews with preschool teachers). In the quantitative phase of the research, the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) method was used to identify and rank-order the relevant challenges. The sample of the study in the phase of extracting challenges and their indicators included all the articles related to virtual preschool education (during and after the COVID-19 pandemic) as well as preschool teachers; for this quantitative phase, in particular, the experts including 21 trainers (preschool teachers) and 15 specialists from the National Organization of Child Education and Training were purposefully selected. To analyze the qualitative and quantitative data, qualitative content analysis method in three levels and Chang's Fuzzy method were used. Based on the data analysis findings, 5 components as well as 34 indicators were identified as influential in terms of the challenges of preschool virtual education. The identified challenges in order of their importance include: content and education (30.70), infrastructure (27.54), educators (22.30), children (14.38) and parents (5.09).