Role Conflicts at Home: A Qualitative Case Study on College Students’ Online Learning During the COVID-19 Based on the Social Role Theory

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 since the end of 2019 led to large-scale online learning among college students. Because of the overlap of learning and home environment at home, students need to play a variety of roles. With the Social Role Theory as the theoretical framework, this qualitative case study had an in-depth investigation on seven college students’ current self-role and the current learning situation at home during COVID-19. Findings highlighted that the students mainly faced the following three role conflicts: First, the conflicts caused by difficulties in adapting to multiple roles of the students. Second, the conflicts caused by different role expectations on the students’ behaviors. Third, the conflicts caused by insufficient role comprehension on role cognition. This study also revealed that these role conflicts would have a certain negative impact on students’ learning and living. Implications are discussed in detail.