Education and COVID-19: Parents as Teachers in Uganda

• In Event: Poster Session Group 10
  In Poster Session: Education and COVID-19: Parents as Teachers in Uganda

Proposal

COVID-19 disproportionately disrupted education in developing countries than their developed counterparts. When the virus hit, not only were there no technological infrastructure to enable remote learning, they experienced prolonged school shutdowns too. Data from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) shows that the East African nation of Uganda kept schools closed longest (2021). “All these institutions, without exception, should close so that we deny this virus concentration spots. We don’t want the virus to find dry grass ready for ignition,” President Museveni said on March 18, 2020. Over 15 million learners have since missed out on 77 weeks of schooling, and the situation is not likely to change until January 2022. Against this background, I set out to determine how parents had become teachers to their children during the pandemic and what we can learn from their experience as we go forward. My focus was on parents who had primary school pupils in the peri-urban areas of Bweyogerere, Entebbe, Maganjo, and Nansana in the district of Wakiso. In this social context, we could get a picture of what was happening in urban areas throughout the country. For this study, I pursued a qualitative methods approach. I relied on in-person interviews, a focus group, field notes, and pupil work samples to collect data. Only homesteads where there is at least one primary school pupil qualified for participation. I selected interlocutors that painted a gender-sensitive picture. Each interview lasted about 30 minutes, and I transcribed them for the record. I reached out to as many parents as was possible across the entire context, and we had follow-up interviews in some cases. We explored questions on subjects as varied as what lessons, events, strategies, and life lessons were in play during this experience. Additionally, I invited ten parents from across the context to form a focus group which lasted 2 hours and was recorded as well. Lastly, I took and recorded pictures of pupil work samples for further analysis. Contrary to what is often assumed, parents are involved in their children’s learning in a myriad way. Many parents I interviewed had come up with learning timetables that their children had to follow before breaks, lunches, or going to play. In this way, parents were facilitators of learning processes just as teachers. Though technology in children’s education carried a stigma with it before COVID, the pandemic shifted this notion as more parents bought mobile phones, laptops, and desktops for their children to access learning materials on the internet. In addition, parents became more aware of educational programs available on radio and TV sets that they pointed their children to listen to and watch. Last but not least, I witnessed a language of discussion (Luganda, indigenous) working well with a language of instruction (English, colonial) in homes which is not the case in schools as they tend to stigmatize indigenous languages to the detriment of the child. This study can inform Uganda’s education policies in the areas of homeschooling, technology, and language.

Author

• Dick Witington Kimeze, GSE, University of Pennsylvania