Experiences of parents forced into emergency remote instruction during COVID-19

The phenomenon of Emergency Remote Instruction (ERI) is not new, but in 2020 it was experienced at a historic scale. The purpose of this study was to examine the parent engagement experiences of parents with students in kindergarten through second grade during the COVID-19 school closings and their perceptions of their roles through the lenses of Joyce Epstein’s Parental Involvement Framework and Uri Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological System’s Theory. Video recordings of the semi-structured interviews were captured, and transcripts were analyzed using three separate coding cycles. Through an interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA), findings revealed two themes related to parent perceptions of roles they assumed during COVID-19 ERI and shifts in parent engagement approaches based on how schools implemented school closings. This study has implications for increasing parent engagement in schools, improving relationships between home and school, and developing a remote instruction method that incorporates the support of parents based on their feedback.