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

Abstract

This qualitative study examined families’ experiences supporting young children’s (ages 3–8) remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Twenty-three participants completed open-ended questions in an online survey and three of those participants shared further in an online, recorded focus-group interview. Parents revealed young children’s challenges with remote learning and the multiple strategies families took up to support their young learners, including many forms of managing and facilitating online work, several forms of communicating to seek support, information, or changes, and multiple forms of motivating their child(ren) to stay engaged and complete activities. Parents also shared the tensions that arose with more unfettered access to their child(ren)’s online classrooms, teachers’ variation in communication, and families differing levels of participation due to multiple responsibilities. The findings demonstrate both the challenges and families’ creative strategies to bolster their child(ren)’s remote learning, and they inform teachers and school personnel of the importance of developing continued recalibration of communication, family support, and family input on home learning experiences when young children cannot engage with in-person learning.

Remote schooling and screentime during COVID-19: Exploring the experiences of low-income families with young children

“…Consistent with previous work (Carrell Moore, 2022;Dong et al, 2020), families perceived significant barriers to the success of remote schooling. The most frequently cited was challenges with children's behavior and attentional capacity.…”

“…Of the existing studies of parents of young children, none were identified that focused specifically on economically vulnerable families, who are likely to experience the largest impacts of disruptions. Nevertheless, internationally, studies of the experiences of parents’ of young children have identified several barriers to remote schooling including difficulties with technology access (Abuhammad, 2020; Otero-Mayer et al, 2021; Timmons et al, 2021), caregivers’ lack of time and knowledge to support online learning (Dong et al, 2020) and children’s difficulties with self-regulation (Carrell Moore, 2022; Dong et al, 2020). In other work, early education teachers reported that reliance on parents to facilitate remote learning was a major challenge (Ford et al, 2021; Steed and Leech, 2021).…”

Educators by proxy: Emergency remote teaching and learning in the voice of parents

“…Parents' efforts to help their children with ERTL included managing and facilitating online work (such as helping with assignment instructions, managing technology, working one-on-one with their children, and organizing their learning spaces), communicating with others (parents, teachers) and finding support, and motivating their children. Parents expressed difficulties with children's attention and motivation during online classes, and that meant they tried to keep children on task, encourage them, and sometimes had to stay near the children during class to help make sure they were focused on the tasks being asked of them (Carrell Moore, 2022). These efforts have put a strain on parents, but also reavealed their capacity to adjust to a difficult situation.…”