Parental Facilitation of Young Children's Technology-based Learning Experiences from Nondominant Groups During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shifted family life across home, work, and education, especially families from nondominant groups. As schools and other educational programs moved online, parents became the primary facilitators for their children's learning. In this work, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 parents from nondominant groups. Insights from interviews highlight the technology-based learning experiences of young children during the pandemic, how parents facilitated these learning experiences, and the challenges parents and children encountered in these learning experiences. We summarize four parental facilitation patterns for children's learning (i.e., designing learning, finding resources, managing, and teaching) and highlight equity issues in distance learning, such as unequal access to learning resources and quality education. Finally, we further reflect on potential solutions to address the challenges parents have reported and share implications for designing technologies that better address children's and parents' needs during a crisis.

The kids are alright: adolescents’ experiences during COVID-19 disruption

“…While some of the pandemic-related stressors will fade away, helping adolescents stay organized, motivated and focused on learning will remain important, as well as minimizing teen stress and anxiety associated with the learning process. The positive experiences associated with online learning point to the need to further explore virtual instruction options for children who are anxious and shy about public speaking, could benefit from more time on assignments and fluid deadlines, prefer to learn at one’s own pace and learn better independently without social distractions of in-person school (Yu et al , 2021).…”