Dr. Mustafa Dolmaz

The Effects of Covid-19 on the Education Process and Social Lives of Students from Parents’ Perspective

The original full text of this study was published in Turkish in the journal with the citation information below. This part of the text is only an English summary of the study.


Please Cite As: Dolmaz, M., Metin, Ö . (2021). Ebeveynlerin Gözüyle Covid-19’un Eğitim-Öğretim Sürecine ve Öğrencilerin Sosyal Hayatlarına Etkileri . International Journal of Social Science Research , 10 (1) , 96-121 . Retrieved from https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/ijssresearch/issue/63420/947247

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the education and training process and students’ social lives from the perspective of parents who are the closest to the students and who at the same time act as a natural observer. The study is conducted with a phenomenology pattern among qualitative research methods. The study group of this study consisted of 40 parents living in 6 different cities selected with the criterion sampling method. For this study, spending the maximum amount of time with the students during the pandemic and to live in cities where the researcher can conveniently find participants are accepted as the criteria. The data collection tool of this study is a parent interview form created by the researchers. The findings of this study show that both learner and teacher experienced certain negative aspects as well as certain learning outcomes in distance education in terms of education and training during the pandemic. Another important finding of this study is that parents have different expectations regarding sustaining the education-training process. Additionally, parents believed that the pandemic had caused partially positive and partially negative fundamental changes in students’ social lives. According to the parents, there are certain problems in the education and training process including the lack of feedback, decreased education quality, problems with internet access, insufficient technical infrastructure, disrupted equality of opportunities, low efficiency and technical device problems. Based on the results of this study certain recommendations are provided to solve the negative changes and negative effects identified in the education-training process and social lives during the pandemic.

Keywords: Educational sciences, distance education, pandemic, parental views, covid-19, coronavirus.

The English extended summary of the study is at the bottom of the study. Click here to access the study.

The Effects of Covid-19 on the Education Process and Social Lives of Students from Parents’ Perspective

Mustafa DOLMAZ & Özge METİN

İmportant: The original full text of this study was published in Turkish in the journal with the citation information below. This part of the text is only an English extended summary of the study.

Please Cite As:  Dolmaz, M., Metin, Ö. (2021). Ebeveynlerin Gözüyle Covid-19’un Eğitim-Öğretim Sürecine ve Öğrencilerin Sosyal Hayatlarına Etkileri. International Journal of Social Science Research, 10(1), 96-121.

Introduction

While individuals prepare for living under the knowledge, values, skills and competencies for the expectations of the society in the education and training process, this preparation process might be interrupted in some cases. Especially factors such as wars, tsunami, floods, earthquakes and pandemics might cause both short-term and long-term breaks in education and training (Meb, 2018; Kahraman, 2020). One of these factors is the COVID-19 pandemic that first emerged in Wuhan, China and spread around the entire world. The pandemic has caused the existing order in social life, tourism, economy, health and education to completely change and led social and physical activities of the individuals to be shaped around this change (Telli Yamamoto & Altun, 2020; Gümüşgül & Aydoğan, 2020; Kahraman, 2020b). The education sector is among the leading sector following the health sector that is influenced by this pandemic. With the increase of the pandemic, certain precautions are taken in the education systems and distance education approach was rapidly adopted and applied by various countries to prevent crowded groups to be in the class environment and to prevent any disruptions in the education (Telli Yamamoto & Altun, 2020). In fact, the distance education approach is not something foreign for the education sector which is an education approach often used for supporting face-to-face education and appears as the only reference guide to sustain the education and training during the pandemic period. While the countries with the technical infrastructure used their own distance education infrastructure during the pandemic, various countries used different applications such as Google applications, Microsoft applications, Moodle and Zoom individually or collectively (Yılmaz et al., 2020; OECD, 2020; Aldemir & Avşar, 2020; Türk et al., 2020; Üstün & Özçiftçi, 2020; Dikmen & Bahçeci, 2020). Parallel to the transformation speed experienced in the education period, the social distancing rule in the social life, lockdown practices and decreased social activities have caused a significant change process (Kurt Demirbaş & Sevgili Koçak, 2020). Because of all these reasons, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of the pandemic on the education and teaching processes and students’ social lives from parents’ perspectives as natural observers.

This study aims to reveal the effects of COVID-19 on the education-training process and students’ social lives based on parents’ views. For this general purpose, this study investigates answers to the following questions:

1.  What do the parents know about COVID-19?

2.  What are the negative effects of COVID-19 on the education and training process?

3.  What are the learning outcomes (if any) in the education and training during COVID-19?

4.  What are the parents’ expectations for sustaining education and training during COVID-19?

5.  What are the problems-gaps in education and training during COVID-19?

6.  What are the negative effects of COVID-19 on students’ social lives?

7.  What are the learning outcomes (if any) in students’ social lives during COVID-19?

Method

This study uses a phenomenology pattern among qualitative research methods. Phenomenology is a qualitative research method that focuses on assessing the experienced lives and therefore aims to reveal the common meanings forming the basis of this phenomenon and to explain the individual’s experiences who experienced this phenomenon (Jasper, 1994; Miller, 2003; Baker et al., 1992; Rose et al., 1995). The study group of this study consists of 40 parents selected for criteria to spend maximum time with the students and to live in cities where the researcher can conveniently find participants (Ankara, İzmir, Samsun, Niğde, Tokat, Sivas).  As the data collection tool of this study, the “Parent Interview Form” developed by the researcher and consisting of 7 open-ended questions is used. The data collection process approximately lasted 4 months and the content analysis method is used for data analysis. The data are coded and visualized with MAXQDA 18 package program.

Results

The first finding of this study is that parents have sufficient knowledge about COVID-19 and can define the disease with its symptoms. This shows that the parents know and can define the phenomenon.

The second finding of this study is that COVID-19 has various negative effects on students and teachers in the education and teaching process context. According to parents, the pandemic open doors for various important issues for students such as insufficient knowledge gain, technology dependency, lack of motivation, not participating in activities, lack of application, lack of peer interaction and not participating in the class. The parents expressed the negative effects of the pandemic for the teachers such as difficulty in class dominance, method-technique limitations, challenges in measurement, anxiety, insufficient feedback and decreased respect towards the teacher.

The third finding obtained from this study is that the pandemic process provided certain learning outcome opportunities for teachers and students. According to parents’ views, students learned individual learning, actively used technology in education, understood the value of the school environment, gained reading habit and find opportunities to improve their skills-habits. Teachers gained the personal development opportunity, had time for works that can contribute to their academic development, gained competencies in education technologies use and enabled to teach independently from the space in this entire process.

The fourth finding of this study is that while parents had different expectations from the education application style, it was seen that parents generally focus on two different views which are distance education and education from home and applying face-to-face and distance education.

The fifth finding of this study is that according to parents, there were problems such as decreased education quality in the education and teaching process, low efficiency, problems with internet access, technical device problems, insufficient technical infrastructure, lack of feedback and disrupted equality of opportunities during the pandemic.

The sixth finding of this study is that parents expressed that students experienced socializing problems, decreased consciousness of responsibility, unable to discharge their energy, faced with digital addictions, become individualistic, changed their eating habits and experienced problems with a sleeping routine during the pandemic. The last finding of this study is that according to the parents, students obtained certain learning outcomes from the social life during the pandemic. According to parents, students understood the value of friendship, gained cleaning habit, had a chance to spend more time with their families, allocated more time to plays, understood the value of the school, used education technologies, improved their hand skills and developed their sense of responsibility during the pandemic.

Conclusion and implication

As a result of this study, it is found that parents expressed that pandemic had certain negative effects on the education and training process for student and teacher dimensions however, certain learning outcomes from the two elements of the education and training process matched with views regarding the distance education advantages and limitations. Another obtained result is that parents had different expectations about the education and training application style and there were applications that met these expectations in practice. Additionally, parents’ views show that the problems with education and training during the pandemic are related to distance education-caused problems and initial cost-focused problems.

Additionally, it is found that according to the parents, staying home, keeping the social distance and differentiated social life was highly influential for the students’ differentiation of the social routines. Some of the changes are positive changes such as skill development, technology use in education, cleaning and reading habits, increased playtime, development of the sense of responsibility and learning to learn. Others are negative changes such as lack of socializing, inability to attend to skill activities, decreased sense to trust, individualization, digital addiction and decreased sense of responsibility. The general result of this study shows that according to parents, the pandemic process brought positive and negative changes and experiences both in the education and training process and student’s social lives.

References

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