Family-School Cooperation: An Online Survey of Parents and Teachers of Young Children in Spain

Abstract

Given the closure of schools due to the global confinement resulting from the COVID-19 crisis, family-school cooperation has become a priority in most educational stages, but especially in Early Childhood Education and Care. This research analysed how parents dealt with this new situation, as well as the way in which family-school cooperation was established. Two online questionnaires were developed by the researchers. Respondents included 1266 families with children between the ages of infancy and six years, as well as 1235 early childhood education teachers from all regions of Spain. Results show that family-school cooperation is associated with several family and school characteristics and that families have neither the tools to face this new situation, nor the time to educate their children at home. This, together with the fact that some households do not have Internet access, makes family-school cooperation a challenging matter, especially in times of pandemic.

“The whole experience is still very high touch for parents”: Parent moves to support young children’s remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Across all these formats, early studies have begun to reveal logistical, technical, and school-based challenges (Abuhammad, 2020; Dias et al, 2020; Inan, 2021; McKenna et al, 2021; Tarrant and Nagasawa, 2020) as well as families’ difficulties in supporting young learners at home. Families have reported feeling overwhelmed (Barnett and Jung, 2021) and unprepared to support remote learning (Abuhammad, 2020; Otero-Mayer et al, 2021) and have cited children’s struggles with disinterest, attention, and engagement as well as difficulties with home- versus school-routines (Soltero-González and Gillanders, 2021; Timmons et al, 2021; Yıldırım, 2021). Further, families have shared beliefs that online teaching offers less supportive learning environments than in-person schooling due to child(ren)’s lack of social interactions, lack of focus on learning, lower self-regulation skills, inability to treat remote learning like school, as well as parents’ feelings of inadequate teaching authority when compared to teachers (Dong et al, 2020).…”

The Exploring Teacher-Family Partnerships in Infant Center-based Care

“…Although this study was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we are aware that the pandemic contributed to an increase in the challenges faced by ECEC professionals in communicating and establishing strong and positive partnerships with families. A recent study in ECEC (Otero-Mayer et al, 2021) found that families believe they don´t have the tools and time for educating their children at home, underlining the need for improving school-family cooperation at the start of the child's education, i.e., beginning with attendance in infant centre-based childcare. It is noteworthy that, in many countries, both mothers and fathers of young children return to work during their infant's first 6 weeks to 12 months of life and, thus, the need to place the child in centre-based care is becoming more prevalent.…”

Family and School Relationship during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review

“…In many cases, these platforms offer a few cognitive challenges for students [ 14 , 27 ], who must then wait until the next virtual class to contact the teacher and communicate any doubts they may have had [ 63 ], turning the teaching–learning process into a tedious and unmotivating activity [ 27 ]. Studies before the pandemic showed that the variety of activities and the feedback that students receive from teachers throughout the teaching–learning processes are vital for promoting meaningful learning [ 36 , 90 ].…”

“…Schools were forced to establish a double aspect of relationships with families [ 35 , 36 ] (who assumed the role of proxy teachers [ 37 ]) and students to continue developing the teaching–learning processes. Similarly, families had to internally strengthen relationships with their children for optimal educational processes.…”