Parents’ Perspectives on Remote Learning in the Pandemic Context

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The focus of this research is interesting as it focuses on the role of parents as necessary agents in the teaching work of students. During the confinement caused by the Covid19 pandemic, new technologies have been essential but as the research shows, parents have been just as essential in this equation.

All figures appear with a comma. Should it be with a period?

In line 157 it says ‘where 1 = most teachers did/used it, 2 most teachers did/used it’: it must be a mistake as the concept is the same for each value.

In line 170 it says ‘Several family members shared one device […] which generally indicates relatively good technological support’. Is it important to take into account that sharing devices could mean not having it when necessary?

Author Response

Dear colleague,

Thank you for your valuable comments. 

Indeed it was a mistake where it was mentioned twice "most teachers". There should be said "all teachers" in one of the cases. It is corrected. 

The data are calculated in SPSS and the commas were provided by the system but we have corrected them to the dots

Reviewer 2 Report

Introduction:

• Could be interesting to see what age school children are as is mentioned parents’ role is very big, later it is mentioned but for reading from beginning it would be good to meet the information in the introduction or even in Abstract.
• There are no mentioned challenges for parents, as well as not identified in the section.
• grammar: “scenarios was”.

Methods and materials:

• “The questionnaire was created using Google Sheets” – is that correct?  Don’t be “Google forms”.
• Not clear was it national research or regional and what was respondents to take.

Section Results

• I found this section quite easy to read, data is clear and well presented.
• however, tables 4 and 5 are mentioned but not well described and presented. I recommend extending the description on the arguments mentioned in the tables 4 and 5.

References

Please insert all the dates of printing of all papers in the list.

Overall, I find this paper actual and useful, however the short list of the literature shows that snowballing method for literature review mentioned in the paper probably was not used, as now there are much more papers on the actual topic related with COVID2019, I recommend to include more citations on the topic.

Author Response

Dear colleague,

Thank you for your valuable comments. 

1) The information about parents is added in the abstract:

(313 responses about 1-4^th graders; 362 responses for 5-9^th graders and 63 responses for 10-12^th graders) 

2) We have added few more sentences on challenges possed to parents

3) The grammar mistake is corrected "scenarios were"

4) Term "Google sheets" is changed to "Googe forms"

5) We have added some more explanation on tables 4 and 5 

6) Snowball sampling was used for data collection and the principle was introduced by Goodman (1961). This principle was not used for the literature review

7) The information on publishing information is added to the list of references

8) More references are added to the list 

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is focused on a very relevant and important theme: the remote learning during pandemic context. However, it presents some problems :

1.  The use of the concept "home schooling" doesn't seem appropriate to describe the situation triggered by pandemia. "Home schooling" is a situation that results completely from parents' choice and for which they feel prepared.
2. My main concern is connected with the absence of a sampling method for the survey. The potential participants were contacted through "social networks and contacts of academic members of University where researchers work". The sample is neither representative of all Latvian students (families without access to technologies didn't participate) nor of different levels of education (the 10th, 11th and 12th grades are almost not represented). This way, the results can not provide evidence on the Latvian reality during pandemia. In lines 134-136 it is written that these limitations don't affect the results of the study; I completely disagree, because, this study doesn't describe at all the reality of many parents that were not at all involved in the remote learning process of their children (these students were not offered remote learning opportunities, on the contrary of what is said in line 165).
3. Several results are not presented in a clear way: a) the levels 1 and 2 of the Likert scale are presented as the same (most teachers did/used it); b) the way table 2 is presented doesn't offer useful information regarding any differences between the teaching methods used in different levels of education (no statistical analysis was done regarding possible differences); c) figure 1 is quite difficult to read/understand.
4. Several sentences seem controversial, requiring some literature support: a) line 249 - "the learning process requires synchronous learning"; b) line 251 - "the learning platforms used are more usable in STEM subjects"; c) lines 253-254 - "Less emphasis has been placed on assigning various tasks in which critical thinking or the ability to argue one's point of view are required" (no data was presented about this aspect).
5. The conclusions seem rather basic and no suggestions/advices are given to the schools or to the Latvian Ministry of Education regarding how to improve the described situation.

Author Response

Dear colleague,

Thank you for your valuable comments.

We will answer them step by step:

1) The term "home schooling" was chosen because accidental homeschoolers is a term coined by Time4Learning to describe those who come to homeschooling unexpectedly, and often—suddenly. The term is also used by several authors to explain the situation when all the parents became a homeschoolers and it was caused by pandemics. Some more references are added to the manuscript. For example to English, Rebecca, 2021 and Lindsey M. Burke, 2020

2) We agree with your concern that the data can not represent the situation of all students in Latvia. Our main goal was to identify the support parents receive during the remote learning and in this case, the goal was reached because most of the parents indicated that they have received the information from schools about the organizational processes but no information on how to support the learning, how to use digital tools and learning materials. This information was helpful to understand the gaps in organizing remote learning and to provide appropriate support. the sampling was made by using the snowball principle introduced by Goodman (1961).

3) the mistake with the term "most teachers" is corrected. There should be the different term "all teachers"  and "most of the teachers" 

4) For the conclusion "the learning platforms used are more usable in STEM subjects" references are added

5) The sentence "Less emphasis has been placed on assigning various tasks in which critical thinking or the ability to argue one's point of view are required" is removed.

Reviewer 4 Report

The tables and figures must be improved to be more readable in the final paper.  It made it difficult to find and interpret the relevant information while reading through the text of the paper.  Tables should fit onto one page, turned to landscape orientation if necessary.  Figure legends were cramped and labels difficult to read.  Since the primary value of this paper is in presenting its original data, the tables and figures need to be clear.

Author Response

Dear colleague,

Thank you for your valuable comments.

The figures and tables are made bigger and it is ensured that they are in one page.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

My concerns regarding topics 1 and 3 were answered by the authors.

However, my concerns regarding some of the other topics still remain:

1. My concern connected with the absence of a sampling method for the survey continues. The participants obtained are not representative of Latvian families. This way, the results can not provide evidence on the Latvian reality during pandemia. 
2. Several sentences seem controversial, requiring some literature support: a) line 249 - "the learning process requires synchronous learning" (Why? Who says this? This way, it is not possible to learn through the involvement in a discussion forum, for example); b) line 251 - "the learning platforms used are more usable in STEM subjects" (the references added by the authors (24-25), don't bring any contribution about STEM subjects); c) lines 253-254 - "Less emphasis has been placed on assigning various tasks in which critical thinking or the ability to argue one's point of view are required" (no data was presented about this aspect).

Author Response

Dear colleague,

Thank you for your valuable comments. It would be an interesting discussion with you about sampling and research methodology.

Here are answers to your comments:

1) We are sorry that we didn't clearly explain the research project idea where the parent survey was used as a pilot study for further steps for the research project. We have added information that it was a pilot study and we have used the form of nonprobability sampling - convenience sampling. We also added more references to this sampling method

2) We have restructured the sentence and removed the part "the learning process requires synchronous learning". The message was unclear there.

3) In the sentence where we have stated that learning platforms used are better for STEM education we have added the indication to our country (Latvia) because we have evaluated all the learning platforms which are used in our country and we added the reference to the paper where those results are summarised. The data shows that in the learning platforms different STEM subjects are better covered, there are a good number of different tasks, automated feedback, the system provides new tasks if a student had a mistake, but for social sciences there are only few tasks and no option for automated feedback, there is no space to express own opinion but it is important in social sciences.

4) The sentence "Less emphasis has been placed on assigning various tasks in which critical thinking or the ability to argue one's point of view are required" was already deleted during the previous revision.