Home-schooling during COVID-19 lockdown: Effects of coping style, home space, and everyday creativity on stress and home-schooling outcomes

Abstract

The present study examined parents’ experiences of home-schooling their children during the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK. A total of 322 parents completed an online survey between the 1st May and the 24th July 2020. Relationships were explored between predictor variables (coping mechanisms, household income, adequacy of space) and outcome variables (parenting self-efficacy, discipline, home-schooling relationships) mediated by stress and moderated by creativity and parenting dimensions. Moderated mediation analyses showed that inadequate space at home and negative coping mechanisms resulted in elevated stress and worse outcomes in terms of parents approaches to discipline and their experience of home-schooling their children. Negative outcomes were more pronounced for parents who used high levels of behavioural control. In turn, negative outcomes were reduced when parents had higher levels of self-perceived everyday creativity and outcomes were improved by positive coping strategies. Implications and applications of these findings are discussed.

Time Spent on School-Related Activities at Home During the Pandemic: A Longitudinal Analysis of Social Group Inequality Among Secondary School Students

“…While there are preliminary results on the impact of parents’ working conditions during the pandemic on parenting behavior mediated by parental stress ( Chung et al, 2020 ), it is not clear precisely how work-family arrangements and the need to supervise children’s school activities actually affect children’s distance learning at home. Aznar et al (2021) provide first results on this question for the United Kingdom, and Verweij et al (2021) for a rather small sample of parents in the Netherlands; however, both studies use non-random samples and therefore do not provide generalizable results. Finally, we do not have enough information in our data about schools and the differences in school policies during and after the school closures in spring 2020 to shed light on school-related effects in our model.…”

U.S. Parents’ Reports of Assisting Their Children with Distance Learning during COVID-19

“…There is a growing body of research about the stressors families are facing during COVID-19 [27][28][29][30][31] For example, Prime et al [30] posited that the social disruptions families experienced during the pandemic can adversely impact the short-term and long-term wellbeing of the family. Relatedly, Adams et al [32], using a short-term longitudinal design with 433 parents of children between the ages of 5 and 18 years, found that parent-reported stress increased during COVID-19.…”

“…These results provide information about the types of digital learning activities taking place in homes during a period of unprecedented closures. This study provides initial data that may be used as a starting point to conduct longitudinal studies and to explore how the home literacy environment and digital usage changed throughout the pandemic [27].…”

Parent health and wellbeing at home before and during COVID-19

“…The UK government directed periods of home-working where possible and school closures for most children ( IfG, 2021 ). Home-schooling created “unprecedented demands on the time of parents” ( Blundell et al., 2020 , p.306) and parents experienced heighted stress ( Hiraoka and Tomoda, 2020 ) and increased depression, particularly those in single-parent households, low-income households, and parents with child(ren) with special education needs and/or neurodevelopmental differences ( Shum et al., 2020 ; Aznar and colleagues (2021 . p304-305) concluded “inadequate living space” was associated with increased parental stress during home-schooling, whereas “adequate” indoor space was associated with higher parental self-efficacy (mediated by parent creativity).…”