Accidental homeschoolers: Associations between parenting stress and children’s engagement in homeschooling

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Solicited Content: COVID-19 Related

Abstract

By March 31, 2020, over 91% of the world’s student population, or 1,576,021,818 children, were affected by temporary school closures implemented by governments in over 150 countries to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic (UNESCO, 2020). Although governments implemented different measures of homeschooling and distance learning to mitigate the immediate impact of school closures (UNESCO, 2020), the forced and sudden transition to online schooling may be a new barrier to education for many children. Consequently, public concerns about potential negative effects for children’s education increased (Washington Post, March 27, 2020). It is not only concerns about lack of access to technology that limit the reach of online learning resources, but also concerns that online learning is not an effective replacement for in-person interactions between students and teachers to keep students engaged in learning.
As millions of parents were turned into “accidental homeschoolers” (Burke, 2020), they were encouraged to take an active role in their child’s online schoolwork and to take proactive steps to foster their children’s involvement in learning. Yet, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on parents as well, with recent studies finding a significant increase in parents’ negative mood (e.g., Gassman-Pines et al., 2020). Temporary school closures impacted millions of parents who were confronted with sudden changes to child care and schooling arrangements. Not all parents were able to take time off their work to take care for their children, leaving children unattended at home (Wang et al., 2020). Even for those parents who could work from home, it was not always possible to homeschool a child while working at the same time.
Informed by the Family Stress Model (Masarik & Conger, 2017), the present study investigated associations between parenting stress and children’s engagement in homeschooling. More specifically, main and interactive effects of various risk and protective factors (Figure 1) were tested in a sample of US-American 78 mother-father-child tryads. The Student Engagement Scale (Reeve, 2013) was adapted to the homeschooling context to measure children’s engagement and completed by mother, father and child. Parents indicated their parenting stress. Assessed risk factors included spousal relationship quality, health problems, number of children homeschooled and length of homeschooling. Protective factors included perceived support from school and satisfaction with school support, and parents’ online social network.
Path models were run that simultaneously estimated main and interactive effects (Figure 2). Among the risk factors, weeks in homeschooling were consistently negatively related to engagement. Among the protective factors, parents’ perceived support from the school was positively related to engagement. Interactive effects were found: Low parenting stress combined with high child liking of the homeschooling situation were linked with high engagement. After establishing measurement invariance across informants, we also tested different combinations of informants for parenting stress and child’s engagement but did not find significant differences in the patterns of associations. Results highlight the immediate impacts of prolonged school closure on parents and children and call for immediate support in addressing families’ needs during large public health crises.

Authors

• Antje von Suchodoletz, New York University Abu Dhabi
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susanna Fullmer, Brigham Young University
  Presenting Author

• Ross A Larsen, Brigham Young University
  Non-Presenting Author