Distance education in the conditions of a Youth Center of Sociotherapy (YCS) in the opinions of the pupils' parents

Abstract

Objectives The main goal of this article was to learn the opinions of over 50 parents of students with special educational needs on the ways and the effectiveness of emergency remote teaching and to come up with ideas for future improvements to organization of distance education of students at special education centres. The following three queries were set for examination ahead of this research: (1) General assessment of preparedness of special education centres for distance education needs; (2) Assessment of distance education quality at special education centres and out of the centres’ premises; (3) Assessment of communications quality at special education centres. Material and methods Research toolkit and statistical analysis: Survey for parents comprised 26 questions including 24 closed-ended questions, two open-ended questions plus three demographic questions (the child’s sex, school form and group number). Research material was statistically analysed in reliance on SPSS v. 27 software. Results Parents indicated the following subjects as the most challenging: Foreign Language (62 per cent of responses), Mathematics (54 per cent) and Polish (52 per cent). Parents also rated their children's use of counselling. Thus: 94 per cent of students consulted therapists, 93 per cent of students consulted boarding school tutors, 84 per cent of students consulted class teachers, 82 per cent of students consulted subject teachers, 54 per cent of students consulted psychologists. Conclusions The activities of teachers and educators should not end with the end of the pandemic and should go further - in the direction of strengthening the competence of independent learning (in students) and teaching (in teachers) and handling computer technology (in both groups).

Keywords

• parents
• distance learning
• youth center sociotherapy
• covid-19
• distance student-pedagogue communication