Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies: Home

Article Title: Systematic Literature Review of Role of Parents in Supporting Home Based Online Learning of Early Grade Learners
by Mary Najjengo and Alfred Buluma

Abstract:
COVID-19 outbreak around the world has changed various aspects of life, the education system not being spared. The learning process has changed from face to face class attendance to synchronous and asynchronous online pedagogical practices. Consequently, key actors in the provision of education have greatly changed from professionally trained teachers to parents that are either fully or partially locked at home with their children. In this study, researchers explore the role parents have played in facilitating children�s online learning during COVID-19 in order to continue their education and see them complete one stage and move to the other. In this study, researchers have utilized a systematic literature review of existing articles published at Google scholar between January 2020 and August 2021 to analyze the problem under study. In total, 35 out of 10400 articles were systematically selected and analyzed. Among these, 63% articles were investigated using qualitative research approaches and 37% were quantitatively studied. Key findings reveal that parents have played a vital role in sustaining and supporting online learning through acting as educators, guides, facilitators, communicators, supervisors and motivators. Further findings reveal that the level of support to online learning offered by parents has been greatly affected by their levels of education, technology savvy, social class and family setup. That is to say, the educated, rich, nuclear family and urban based parents have played a greater role in online learning than their counterparts. Hence, successful adoption of both online and home based learning requires a concerted effort to improve parents� technology skills and attitude on lifelong learning. Further, they need the assistance of teachers in order to implement their role. Therefore, it is critical to develop both andragogic and pedagogical competencies among teachers in order to realistically support parents as the latter facilitates both online and home based learning. Equally, teachers who cannot effectively use technology, the future has foretold that they might be replaced by those who can and thus totally end up kicked out of the education field.

Keywords: Parents, Early Grade Learners, Home Based Learning, Internet Based Learning, Online Learning.

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