Are Social and Ethnic Reading Inequalities Increasing During School Closures?—The Mediating Role of Parental Involvement in Distance Learning

Abstract

From spring 2020 many countries throughout Europe and beyond temporarily closed schools to tackle the spread of the coronavirus. First studies indicate that these school closures resulted in lower learning gains compared to learning gains in preceding years and widened social and ethnic disparities by affecting disadvantaged students more strongly than their more advantaged peers. Moreover, during school closures, parental involvement in distance learning is regarded as crucial for successful learning, especially for younger children. In the current study, we examine whether social and ethnic disparities in the reading achievement of primary school students widened during COVID-related school closures in spring 2020 and whether increased disparities are mediated by parental involvement in distance learning. We use data from 409 Austrian 2nd graders, whose teachers participated in an ongoing study on the use of learning progress assessment. Adopting a within-subject design, we first compare the effects of social and ethnic family background on reading achievement during a pre-lockdown period with the respective effects during a lockdown period of similar length. Controlling for pre-lockdown reading differences, we found that low socioeconomic status and non-German language use at home negatively predicted post-lockdown reading achievement, indicating that post-lockdown disparities were larger than expected due to disparities at pre-lockdown. In contrast, we found no such effects during the pre-lockdown period. Second, a series of mediation models did not provide any support for the hypothesis that parental involvement accounted for family background effects on reading achievement during the lockdown period.

Explaining inequalities of homeschooling in Germany during the first COVID-19 lockdown

“…As a possible explanation for the additional support, the author of the study considered parents' additional free time due to unemployment (Green, 2020: p. 10). However, the associations are not always entirely clear; for example, Weber et al (2021) found an effect of social background on post-lockdown reading achievement for Austrian primary school students, but the results did not suggest that this difference was related to social differences in parental involvement. The issue of parental help with schoolwork was also addressed with data from the Dutch LISS panel (Bol, 2020), showing that highly educated parents provided more support with schoolwork during the COVID-19 pandemic than other parents and felt more capable of doing so.…”

Parental Involvement and Student Achievement: A Meta-analysis of Publications in the Scopus Database

“…This greatly affects the learning interactions between teachers and students (Herwin et al, 2021;Pujiastuti et al, 2021). In this situation, parental involvement is a very crucial trigger for learning success (Weber et al, 2021). Parental involvement is very important in the learning process during the lockdown period and this has been shown to have the potential to improve children's social relationships, sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy.…”

Long-Term Consequences of Repeated School Closures During the COVID-19 Pandemic for Reading and Mathematics Competencies

“…The efforts of students and their families likely played a crucial role during school closures. Successful remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic also depends on students' motivation and parental involvement (e.g., Weber et al, 2021).…”