Roles of the Parents in Online Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic - A Phenomenological Study

Oct 15, 2026

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The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted education, triggering an abrupt transition to online learning and reshaping the education system. As key stakeholders, parents assumed significant responsibilities at home to support children’s learning. This phenomenological study examined 28 parents of children aged 7–13 using interviews and open-ended questionnaires analyzed through thematic analysis. Findings describe parents organizing daily life, explaining learning processes, managing challenges, and acting as reinforcer, supervisor, motivator, and controller. Support from family or caregivers, partnerships, and external resources can help address these difficulties, increasing parental involvement in teaching responsibilities.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages22

Reading Time55 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

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Parent's Roles in the Education Process

Roles of the Parents in Online Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Phenomenological Study Gül Kurum Tiryakioğlu Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected the education process. A sudden shift to online learning changed the mechanism of the education system. As key stakeholders, parents have to undertake the responsibility of this process at home. This study aims to reveal the roles of parents in online learning during the pandemic. It was conducted with a phenomenological research design. The study group consists of 28 parents having children aged 7 to 13 years old. Data collected employing interviews and open-ended questionnaires were analyzed by the thematic analysis method. According to the findings, parents organize their daily lives at home according to online learning of their children. They explain the online learning process in the context of family circumstances, the challenges they experienced, the educational environment, household chores, job responsibilities, and relationships. It is challenging for parents to undertake the roles of reinforcer, supervisor, motivator, and controller in online learning at home. To overcome the challenges they take family or caregiver support, make partnerships, and use external sources like tutoring, web applications, etc. All these findings suggest that with the emergent shift to remote teaching , parents get much more involved in the education process by undertaking the responsibilities of the teachers. Keywords: Parent roles, parent involvement, online learning , primary education, COVID-19 . Highlights What is already known about this topic: • Parents organize their daily lives at home according to the online learning process of their children • Parents played an intermediary role in helping teachers reach children in the emergency remote teaching process. What this paper contributes: • Parents especially mothers have taken responsibility for their child's online learning • Parents have undertaken such roles as reinforcer, supervisor, motivator, and controller in online learning. • Parents consider that school management and the teachers are too poor to guide them in this process. Implications for theory, practice, and/or policy: • As a result of the wider use of digital tools in daily life parents and children must be qualified as digital citizens. • By revealing parents' changing roles and responsibilities in an online era , this study will contribute to reframing the parent involvement types for the researchers. Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2019 in the world and profoundly affected all humanity for about three years. In this regard, countries took certain measures in areas such as economy, health, social life, and education. The COVID-19 pandemic, which was found to be transmitted through close contact, especially deeply affected the field of education (Balci, 2020) . In this context, to prevent the spread of the virus, schools, where students, teachers, and parents kept close contact, were closed down. As an emergent response to the pandemic. Turkiye also kept schools closed on March 16, 2020. Globally the pandemic affected about 1.5 billion students and youth and during the pandemic schools kept closed for 41 weeks and more in most countries of the world including Turkiye ( United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [ UNESCO], 2022) . With the increase in the number of cases, emergency remote teaching was started (Yilmaz et al. , 2020) . Emergency remote teaching is an unplanned and temporary instructional delivery mode because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is a crisis circumstance for humankind (Hodges et al. , 2020) . It takes place through online learning , which means studying from anywhere and at any time (Ferri et al. , 2020) . However, it is different from the wellplanned version, which is seen as a modality (fully online or blended) to invest time and limited resources

FAQs

What is the main purpose of the study?

To reveal the roles parents play in children’s online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How was the study conducted?

A phenomenological research design was used with 28 parents. Data came from interviews and open-ended questionnaires and were analyzed thematically.

What roles did parents take at home during online learning?

Parents organized daily life around children’s online learning and supported the process by taking roles such as reinforcer, supervisor, motivator, and controller.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by Mabel