The parents' ratings of the quality of TV teaching during the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus

Abstract

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the conditions in the state of emergency had forced the bigger part of school lessons in primary schools and high schools to be broadcasted on the public media services RTS 2 and RTS 3, as well as on the Internet platform RTS Planeta. In that sense, parents had a big role and responsibility in educating their children. In this paper, we present the results of the study concerning primary school parents' (mostly mothers) perception of the TV teaching, which is a part of a broader research on distance learning. According to the general goal (to determine in what way parents perceived different aspects and the quality of TV learning), the following tasks are set: 1) to asks parents' opinion on the quality of TV learning within: the exact schedule of classes, the pace of presenting educational contents, estimating the level of parents' ease of keeping up and estimating the need to reconcile home responsibilities with distance learning, and 2) to determine the differences in the parents' perception of various aspects of the quality of TV learning (dependent variables), with respect to the following independent variables: place of residence of the parents, degree of education, employment status during a state of emergency and the number of school-age children in the family. The research was conducted on the sample of 554 parents from Serbia. A newly constructed online questionnaire for the purpose of this research was used. The quality of TV teaching was assessed through nine items. The results showed that parents equally perceive the advantages and disadvantages of TV learning. They single out the existence of an appropriate schedule and the pace of broadcasting TV content within the curriculum as the most positive sides, which implies that, even if they weren't prepared, they had already developed certain competencies for keeping up and participating in this model of learning. The parents' perceptions differ according to the place of living, degree of education, employment status during the state of emergency, as well as the number of school-age children in the family. The results of this research have shown that special support for parents and children who originate from suburban and rural areas is needed, as well as for parents of a lower education level, parents who are employed and working during a state of emergency, whether they go to work or work from home, and finally, the parents who have a larger number of children in the family. The assessment of the quality of TV learning by parents is conditioned by a number of factors which originate from their social environment as well as educational and professional context. The research findings provided guidelines for further improvement in teaching practices in emergency conditions and gave a preliminary image of the parent's perception on TV teaching.

Keywords

• covid-19 pandemic
• distance learning
• tv learning
• parents' perception
• primary school