Parental involvement and engagement during COVID-19 lockdowns: School staff and parents' reflections about children's learning at home

Abstract

Valuing parental engagement, as part of home–school collaboration, can benefit children's learning. This article focuses on parents and school-based staff's (N = 120) experiences of children's learning occurring at home during the COVID-19 lockdowns (2020–2021), both school-mandated and other learning activities. It examines qualitative responses from a survey of 11 educational settings partnered with a university-based teacher training institution in England. Participants reflected on experiences of children's learning, relationships, and well-being, to consider positive aspects, challenges, and opportunities for improvement. Inductive thematic analysis identified three key areas: contact – which focused on communication approaches and the connections established from the relationships between home and school; participation – which was school staff's facilitation of learning and parents' involvement in schooling and/or engagement with their children's learning, and the logistics of this; equitable access – which focused on evaluating the equity and accessibility of learning. Using the lens of Goodall's parental engagement continuum model, deductive analysis evaluated what learning occurred at home. This distinguished between parental involvement (where parents supported their children's learning through activities linked to coursework or homework, with limited parental agency) and engagement with their children's learning (where parents engaged with learning beyond school – through home, leisure, and family activities, with parents exercising greater autonomy to support children's learning and achievement). Findings indicated a greater propensity of parental involvement in schooling occurring, compared with parental engagement with their children's learning, and implications and recommendations are presented to consider how educators may reflect upon and develop parental engagement.