Following the interruptions brought on by the unforeseen periods of school and university closure in Malta due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, in March 2020, two academics from the Department of Early Childhood and Primary Education (DECPE) at the University of Malta felt the need to do something to react to the challenges being faced. This led to the inception of the Early Childhood and Primary Education (ECPE) research group. Eight female academics from the DECPE started to work together through online collaborative research work as they (i) felt the need to interact and support each other while maintaining physical distance and (ii) identified an urgent need to fill in a gap in local research on COVID-19 and early and primary education in Malta.
In 2020, the eight members published their first research paper that tracks the birth and growth of the ECPE research group (Bonello et al., 2020) and another two related to COVID-19 and education. In 2021, five members continued to develop and extend the group’s initial research work on COVID-19 and Education in Malta (Cov-EM) study: Dr Charmaine Bonello Dr Rosienne Camilleri Prof. Josephine Deguara Prof. Josephine Milton Dr Tania Muscat