Predicting Coping With Self-Regulated Distance Learning in Times of COVID-19: Evidence From a Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students worldwide have experienced fundamental changes to their learning. Schools had to shift to distance education as part of the effort to stop the spread of the virus. Although distance learning undoubtedly resulted in challenges for all students, there is much concern that it exacerbated existing educational inequalities and led to disadvantages – particularly for students who were already struggling academically and lacking support from family and school. The aim of this paper was to investigate the possible impact of family and child characteristics, school performance prior to lockdown, and support at home and from school during lockdown in coping with self-regulated distance learning during times of COVID-19. The paper draws on data from a two-wave longitudinal study surveying 155 lower secondary school students aged 13–14years from a rural-alpine region in Austria. Data were collected 1year before the start of the pandemic and directly after schools had returned to in-class teaching after the first lockdown. Our findings support the notion that distance learning poses a substantial risk for exacerbating existing educational disadvantages. They show that coping with out-of-school learning was especially challenging for students with low academic achievement and learning motivation prior to the pandemic. Furthermore, findings demonstrate that the support from parents and teachers foster students’ capabilities to cope with the self-regulatory demands connected with distance learning. Although the importance of competencies for self-regulated learning became particularly evident in the context of the pandemic, from our findings, it can be concluded that in the future, schools should strengthen their investment in promoting competencies for self-regulated learning. Self-regulation must be recognized as an essential educational skill for academic achievement and life-long learning.

Effect of teacher autonomy support on the online self‐regulated learning of students during COVID‐19 in China: The chain mediating effect of parental autonomy support and students’ self‐efficacy

“…Some researchers even argued that whether students could succeed in the online learning largely depends on their online SRL ability (Serdyukov & Hill, 2013 ; Wang et al, 2013 ). Recently, the importance of SRL competence for online learning became particularly evident in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic, and researchers have suggested that schools should strengthen their investment in promoting the development of students' SRL competencies (Berger et al, 2021 ).…”

The Design of Tasks to Suit Distance Learning in Emergency Education

“…This points at distance education as having the potential to be part of students' learning in regular times. Other studies reported that, with support from parents and teachers, students could cope with distance learning [45], which means that it is possible to benefit from distance learning even in regular times.…”

Who cares?

“…Verunsicherung, Einsamkeit, Lockdown und Distance Learning (Berger et al, 2021;Huber und Helm, 2020): Bereits vor der Pandemie litten mindestens 20 % der österreichischen Jugendlichen an psychischen Problemen (Wagner et al, 2017) So konnte mit dem Projekt open2chat durch Forschung schon vor der Pandemie der Bedarf eines niederschwelligen Behandlungsangebots als asynchron sowie synchron nutzbares Chat-Programm identifiziert und die Entwicklung bereits 2019 begonnen werden (Mägde et al, 2020). Bei der Entwicklung wurden Jugendlichen von Anfang an mit involviert (Mittmann, Schmalwieser, Diendorfer, Schrank, & Boeckle, 2022).…”