Parents’ Challenges in New Normal Education: A Phenomenological Perspective ()
1. Introduction
Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic affects the education sector [1], and to contain the spread of the virus and reduce infection rates, most countries have temporarily closed educational institutions [2]. As a result of the pandemic, the education sector has immediately adapted to the new normal of teaching and learning. After an event, the new Normal substitutes the accepted, habitual, usual state [3]. Educational leaders in public and private institutions have provided options for learners and teachers to continue their education outside school.
For the continuity of education and attainment of the school’s mission and vision to provide quality education to every Filipino learner, the Department of Education in the Philippines implemented Distance Learning for the teachers to deliver instruction to learners despite the geographical distance [4]. The different learning modalities for distance learning include modular (printed), modular (digitized), online, educational TV, radio-based instruction, home-schooling, and blended learning [5]. Also, interactive online classes provide opportunities for social interaction and facilitate the continuity of education via remote learning; thus, their children’s learning process continues seamlessly during COVID-19.
The Department of Education (DepEd) asserted that parents and guardians act as facilitators wherein they are responsible for getting and returning modules; they serve as timekeepers for they must check their child’s schedule or workweek plan; and home innovators wherein they must provide their children with a productive learning environment to help them focus more on learning [6]. Also, parents must provide emotional support to children at times of uncertainty.
Furthermore, while millions of parents have made progress in guiding their children’s education under trying conditions, they continue to struggle to lessen the substantial disruption to education when schools are closed. They have been given crucial roles as learning facilitators and para-teachers, providing students with instructional support [7]. Furthermore, parents who help teachers in the classroom establish a rapport and serve as mentors for the children via online instruction [8]. Learning consequently happens in homes [9]. Nonetheless, the new learning modalities present challenges for parents and guardians [10].
Since home-schooling can be stressful for parents, especially working parents, single parents, or stay-at-home parents who are ready to devote time and energy to their children’s education, parents and guardians must learn to embrace the challenges of the new Normal education [11]. Virtual learning quickly replaced traditional face-to-face or in-class instruction [12]. Research has demonstrated that there are variations in the academic performance of kids according to parental involvement profiles. Specifically, children with low parental involvement tend to perform worse academically [13]. Little time was to plan or think through the possible risks and the potential opportunities to take advantage due to abrupt school closures and the quick transition to remote learning [14].
As the school system navigates the new Normal education, the researcher noticed that some parents and guardians of students at Tagoloan Central School in the Misamis Oriental Division are facing difficulties adjusting to the situation they are unfamiliar with. Thus, when implementing distance learning, school administrators and teachers need to extend considerations to parents because they face challenges as they try to fulfill their multiple functions as instant teachers to their homeschool children as they are partners during the school closure and still providers of family needs. By doing so, teachers and school administrators can work towards finding flexible solutions so that schools can help and support parents and guardians in facilitating their children’s remote learning. Together, parents, guardians, teachers, and school administrators can ensure that children receive a quality education, regardless of the circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Research Design
The difficulties and challenges faced by parents in the New Normal Education with the use of a qualitative approach data analysis and transcendental phenomenological design of Moustakas were applied. Ref. [15] defined the phenomenological approach as focusing on the meaning of experiences central to this approach. Transcendental phenomenology helps the researcher understand what an experience means for the persons who have had the experience and can provide a comprehensive description [16]. From the individual descriptions, general or universal meanings are derived; in other words, the essence of the experience structures. Meaning is the core of the transcendental phenomenology of science. Moustakas embraces the features of human science research, which focuses on the wholeness of experiences to search for the essence of parents’ and guardians’ struggles and challenges in new Normal education with an intuitive process that includes setting aside prejudgments as much as possible and using a systematic procedure for analyzing the data.
This original process allowed the researcher to see parents’ struggles and challenges in new Normal education. Transcendental phenomenology was appropriate for acquiring and collecting data that explain human experience [17]. It allowed the researcher to develop an objective essence by aggregating the subjective experiences of some individuals. Some individuals’ subjective experiences provide a framework for asking questions and recording answers [16]. This process allowed the participants’ perspective in telling their stories and not the researcher’s.
2.2. Research Setting
The place of the study is in the Philippines’ Region X, Division of Misamis Oriental, at Tagoloan Central School. The Division uses online and modular learning modalities to implement the new standard of education.
2.3. Participants of the Study
Nineteen parents and guardians of students at Tagoloan Central School in the Division of Misamis Oriental, Region X, the Philippines, participated in the study. There was a selection of participants through a purposive sampling technique. The selection criteria are guardians and parents of children who enrolled during the implementation of New Normal Education for the school year 2020-2021. And providing permission to be involved in the study and unstructured interview guide or interview protocol to collect participant experiences as they do their role as Para-teachers in their homeschooled children in the New Normal Education. The researcher conducted face-to-face interviews with the 19 parents identified as the participants; 10 are working parents, 5 are only husbands earning an income, and 4 are single parents. All participants are recipients of modular learning and blended learning.
2.4. Research Instrument
The research instrument is an interview guide questions with validation by experts and phenomenological interviews with open-ended questions encouraging the participants to share the specifics of their experiences. There was the formulation of insightful questions to obtain comprehensive accounts of the experiences required for the study and to clarify the meanings of the participant’ statements regarding their struggles and challenges as Para-teachers in teaching their homeschooled children during the New Normal of education. There was appropriate data collection and analysis to generate the rigor of the theme.
2.5. Data Collection
The school principal of the Division of Misamis Oriental, Region X, Philippines, was consulted before the conduct of the study. There was a purposive selection of target participants, and the interviews followed after approval of the permit to conduct the study. The researcher explained the aim and used an interview guide protocol by the researcher along with open-ended questions. The participants shared the specifics of their experiences. Throughout the interview, participants’ statements about the difficulties they encounter as Para-teachers in their homeschooled children through probing questions that elicit detailed descriptions. The study’s researcher interviewed the participants with adherence to ethical principles given assurance. Initially, the parents who participated in the study gave their complete consent. Subsequently, the researcher upheld the participants’ right to privacy and the confidentiality of their data. There was a recording of data through interviews for the transcription. In October 2021, the data collection was over, with strict adherence to safety protocols.
2.6. Ethical Considerations
In conducting this study, the researcher adhered to the Helsinki Declaration. Before the study began, Floramie R. Zamayla accepted the research protocol via email, and it was her responsibility to review, advise, and approve as the school’s research ethics committee. This committee was qualified, had open and honest communication, and functioned without undue influence from the researcher, sponsor, or other parties. It conforms to all applicable norms and standards, as well as national and international laws and regulations, that allow the partial or complete removal of research subjects’ protections. The committee is entitled to keep an eye on and monitor data from the researcher, particularly regarding any significant unfavorable incidents and no changes without the committee’s review and approval. The findings and conclusions were summarized in a final report that the researchers gave the committee ref. [18].
2.7. Data Analysis
Moustakas’ (1994) [17] phenomenological reduction appears in this study as a data analysis technique. The transcripts of all participants gathered from the interviews were analyzed using the following steps: 1) Bracketing, 2) Horizontalization, 3) Clustering into Themes, 4) Textural Description, 5) Structural Description, and 6) Textural-Structural Synthesis.
Bracketing is a strategy used to lessen the impact of beliefs and assumptions made before the commencement of the study. The process involved putting aside preconceived notions and biases. An interpretation was on everything from topic and population selection to interview design, data collection and interpretation, and research findings distribution.
The term “horizontalization” describes all verbatim expressions relevant to the research. Every statement is examined initially with equal weight. There was exclusion of superfluous, repetitious, overlapping, or outside of the study. Horizons, or the remaining sections after the data is analyzed, are the data constituent elements of the phenomenon. Horizons are endless, and the process of horizontalization never ends, in Moustakas’ opinion ref. [16].
The third stage in drawing conclusions research is clustering. It entails distilling experiences to invariant horizons, formulating central themes, and employing a variety of data sources to validate the invariant horizons. A review of research studies using methods other than the data-gathering methods used in the study, such as field note-taking, focus group interviews, and related literature, was conducted to validate the invariant horizons obtained from the statements into horizons and clustering into themes with the assurance that each theme has only one meaning and placed the phenomenon into a “textural language.” and accurate validation process was essential.
Textural description, also known as “what occurred,” or how the phenomenon was perceived, and to provide narration of the meaning units derived from the themes, the textual description of the participants’ experiences was verbatim from the interview. Natural description occurs and incorporates imaginative variation, which is a clever perspective and insight. A variation is a mental experiment on distancing oneself from one’s natural tendency through epochs to analyze the details and structures of the participants’ experiences and to produce a structural description attached to each paragraph of textural descriptions.
3. Results and Discussions
Parents and guardians faced difficulties in the new educational norm. According to the current study, parents and guardians faced challenges like conflict between work and parental responsibilities, difficulty motivating the learners, lack of preparedness for the new parental roles, distractions in the home environment, and weariness due to physical constraints.
3.1. Conflict between Work and Parental Responsibilities
When work demands and family obligations are mutually incompatible with one another, it can be challenging to balance work and parental responsibilities. Parents must actively assist their children in their academic endeavors as part of the new normal of education. When doing their functions to provide for their children’s needs, parents set aside time to retrieve and return the modules according to the school’s schedule. But not every parent has the spare time to fulfill the responsibilities placed upon them. Some parents also have to work to support their families. As a result, parents may find it challenging to complete their children’s assignments for distance learning. These are the shared statements of participants of difficulties in fulfilling their conflicting roles:
“As a parent, I am adjusting to being a working mother…. Especially in my case, I have children with my ex-husband. That is why I need to work to support my daughters, who are in Grades 4 and 5. My current husband won’t help me do follow-up, even in getting and returning modules… I find it hard as a working mother.” (P7).
“We are trying to cope and fulfill our role as para-teachers at home by doing follow-ups. Honestly, I am in the adjustment stage as a working mother who needs to do all the household chores. Sometimes, after all the cleaning and laundry work, my interest in assisting my child in her modules and online learning declined because I wanted to rest and relax. Especially when my work is on the evening shift, I need to sleep during the day. When I fall asleep, my child will just keep on playing without answering her modules.” (P16).
“I found it difficult managing and adopting to my new role. My attention is being divided into many responsibilities. In my case, I have my store, and I do online selling in a personal collection. I still do house chores every day. Hence, I felt very weak and very tired most of the time. Because of exhaustion, I could not make follow up with my child if the modules were answered already. I could not also assist her in her online learning. Sometimes, I just slept immediately. I have three children to look after and take care. These are the reasons why I cannot submit the modules on time.” (P1).
Homeschooling demands parents’ time and effort. However, supervising the children’s homeschooling can be challenging for parents working to earn a living. As cited by Participant 7, she has to earn a living while taking responsibility to get and return the modules regularly. Without the support of her new spouse, she found it difficult to accomplish her responsibilities for her children under the New Normal education 1, and 16 participants also claimed that after a day’s work, they already felt too exhausted to do the mentoring for their children’s studies.
With this new arrangement of children’s schooling due to school closure, parents have no choice but to change their daily routine and become more involved in their education. The time commitment in homeschooling their children has placed on many parents and caregivers a significant adjustment. They have frequently had to juggle several conflicting and strange roles. To fulfill their responsibilities for both work and homeschooling, some parents and caregivers have been forced to work longer hours each day, which may hurt their sleep quality and reduce their free time. Moreover, parents seek support from their family members to help them balance work and parental duties, and they believe in the effectiveness of parent-teacher collaboration to support their children’s education in distance learning fully ref. [19]. Based on the statements of the study participants, meeting the demands of work and children’s homeschooling entails real struggles on the part of the parents.
Furthermore, Participants 15 and 16 claimed the nature of the parents’ work was the primary factor that they could not adequately extend the support needed for their children’s distance learning. The work schedules hindered the parents from mentoring their children’s academic progress. The following were the statements given by the participants:
“In the situation now, we are adjusting to our role. My husband and I work in Del Monte, Philippines. Our work is on the night shift. We leave our house in the afternoon and go home in the morning. Our work condition makes it hard for us to monitor our child’s homeschooling. We could rarely assist our child well in her modules and online classes. No one can closely monitor her if my husband and I are at work. Nowadays, working parents find it extremely hard to meet our responsibilities as para-teachers at home.” (P15)
“Even though I have only one child, I still feel the pressure of dividing my time as a tutor to my child and a full-time working mother. I am only the one who does follow-ups with my child in her modules and online learning because my husband is working in a distant place. He comes home once a week only. It’s very difficult, and I know that I am not giving enough time to assist my child.” (P19)
The participants above encountered challenges in performing their roles in the new learning modality. For example, they could not give due attention to the remote learning of their children because of their work responsibilities. Also, the parents’ conflict schedule due to the demands of the family needs made it difficult to check on their children’s finished tasks found in the modules accordingly. Thus, parents got delayed in submitting the modules. Parents struggled to homeschool their children and create study routines because of work and household responsibilities ref. [20].
Studies reveal that parental involvement affects students’ academic performance based on subject areas, school levels, or geographic locations, and there is a correlation between parental involvement and academic achievement. For distance learning resulting from school closures to be successful, parents’ physical presence in the new educational norm is required ref. [21]. In the study, Participant 19 expressed the pressure of finding a means of income to sustain her family’s domestic needs. With the daily needs demands, extending assistance to her child’s homeschooling became difficult. The parent could not monitor her child’s academic needs because of the pressing material concerns. On the part, Participant 1, being a solo parent, admitted being unable to support her child nor monitor her child’s home learning activities. Though with her grandparents around, the child was left all by herself to her homeschooling. In this regard, the participants found the New Normal education difficult for the learners and the parents who admitted unavailable for their child’s distance education, and these are some statements of participants who struggle to give ample time to their homeschooled children.
“We are facing difficulty adjusting to homeschooling, particularly during this pandemic in the financial aspect. It is very hard to sustain the daily needs during lockdowns because our movement is limited. I would be very honest. I cannot concentrate on assisting my child in her modules because I am very disturbed about how to look for food every day. The crisis brought this COVID-19 is disturbing, especially for us who are not financially stable.” (P19).
“I found it very hard. I am a single parent working in Cagayan De Oro City. Every day, very early in the morning, I go there. I leave my child with my elderly parents. When I leave home, my child is still asleep. There were times when I arrived home, and she was asleep already. Hence, I could not teach her anymore. I would not know if she studied during the day because her grandparents easily get tired due to old age.” (P1).
Single parents deal with plenty of tasks and time constraints. Having to care for children whose schools and playgrounds are closed and whose caregivers are unable to assist them because of travel restrictions can be fatal for single parents. Parental involvement also differs according to the parents’ marital status. Academically, students with parents who were very involved in their education outperformed those whose parents were not as involved. Ref. [22] Single parents have difficulties covering their children’s tuition, school support, and financial stability and offering them emotional support due to their busy lives. The abrupt changes in the roles of the parents in the New Normal education caused stress on the parents. They are balancing between meeting domestic demands and homeschooling the young learners. Though they may be willing to facilitate the children’s learning, they face unfamiliar situations that make it difficult to do their roles effectively.
3.2. Difficulty Motivating the Learners
Difficulty motivating the learners good learning outcomes first require motivation, but pupils fail to spark motivation because of the learning environment. Because of the pandemic, homeschooling presents unique challenges compared to traditional classroom settings. Learners are not in regular classrooms but in their respective homes. Also, the learners hope to become independent learners through the guidance of their parents or guardians. However, despite the efforts done by the latter, the learners may still show a lack of motivation to accomplish their home learning activities. The parents found it frustrating to see the children’s apathy in doing the activities expected of distance learning.
“I make a follow-up on my child because I stay at home, being a housewife. I can always find time to follow up on her activities. However, I found it hard to motivate her to study her lessons. Also, it isn’t easy to make her accomplish her tasks on time for us to pass the modules on the due date. If she is forced to do so, she cries.” (P5)
“We find it hard to motivate our child to work on the modules… She does not like studying and answering her modules anymore.” (P6).
“There were always delays in accomplishing the modules of our children because we could not motivate them to respond to it promptly. It is very difficult for us parents.” (P10).
Based on the participants’ statements, they found it hard to make their children stay motivated to accomplish the tasks from the modules. Because the schools consider the parents as partners in the children’s distance learning, they felt an urgency for the learners to do the academic tasks. However, the latter showed a lack of interest in accomplishing what is indicated in the modules, making the parents feel ineffective as para-teachers. A child’s interests arise when they are into something, someone, or something, and they are encouraged to participate. However, one of the most evident disadvantages of homeschooling is that it can hinder motivation. Homeschooled students receive separate instruction, and parental motivation is the primary for homeschooling, regardless of the student’s interests or attitude ref. [23]. Other barriers include parents not knowing about homeschooling proper role and uneasiness about their ability to homeschool. And parents’ contact with teachers was limited, leaving parents with primary responsibility for managing homeschooling. Parents also reported increased stress, worry, social isolation, and domestic conflict ref. [24].
Furthermore, the parents expressed dismay over their children’s seemingly waning interest in accomplishing the modules’ activities and tasks. Over time, the children lost interest in working on their home-learning activities, perhaps due to the boredom and monotony of doing repetitive activities at the start of distance learning. With the learners not accomplishing the modules promptly, the parents felt discouraged and ashamed for not being able to return the modules on time to the teachers.
“I know don’t what has happened to my child. At first, she was very excited about homeschool or modular distance learning. She was very eager to answer the modules that she answered without being told. But, as time went by, she didn’t like to answer the modules anymore. I planned to let her stop homeschooling or modular distance learning because I didn’t know how to motivate her. I felt ashamed if I could not return the modules on time.” (P6).
“Honestly, I don’t like to get the modules anymore because my child doesn’t like to answer them. At first, she liked to answer, but now she doesn’t want to study. I don’t know how to let her work, and I do not know what motivation I will use for her to be motivated.” (P16).
“My child was once an honor pupil who loved reading and studying. But now, with homeschooling or distance learning, she doesn’t like answering the modules. I feel discouraged in getting the modules because my child doesn’t like to answer them any more. Last School Year 2020-2021, I let her stop from modular distance learning.” (P14).
Ref. [21] states that deteriorating children’s and parents’ interests, emotional difficulties, learning disabilities, family problems, and concentration issues affect children’s learning. In addition, kids struggle with other developmental skills and academic performance due to the COVID-19 school closure, and lack of enthusiasm and drive for learning affect homeschooling. Ref. [25]. The New Normal Education, which has been in place for a considerable period, made the children lose their eagerness to learn. But on the other hand, the parents felt frustrated with the observable apathy of their children. In this vein, distance education has become unappealing to the learners, with the parents feeling disturbed by the learners’ lack of engagement in remote learning.
3.3. Lack of Preparedness for the New Parental Roles
Lack of preparedness for the new parental roles is the level of parents’ preparedness that affects the children’s homeschooling during the pandemic. In the New Normal, homeschooled children bear the huge responsibility of parents for maintaining educational continuity. They were briefed or reoriented on the roles to enable distance learning at the beginning of the academic year. However, the parents discovered they were ill-prepared for their parental responsibilities regarding their children’s education. The participants realized they lacked the necessary skills for homeschooling their children because they had no prior experience teaching students in their homes in all academic subjects.
“We find it hard to adjust to the new responsibilities because we are not used to them. We are not used to becoming para-teachers to our children. It is very hard because we are not sure if our child is learning, especially since we do not have enough background on how to teach the lessons.” (P6).
“We find it hard to motivate our children. Because we don’t have any background of being teachers, it is hard for us to teach our children.” (P10).
“I am helping my child in learning at home. I have tried my best to teach my child to answer the modules and guide him in his online classes... He also has the attitude that he does not like doing anything about school anymore.” (P17).
Participants 6 and 10, on the other hand, admitted difficulty in their new roles in the New Normal Education because they do not have a background or orientation in mentoring their children. Also, they found it difficult to motivate their children to work on the modules provided by their respective teachers. In distance education, the learners hope to be independent in working on the activities or activities reflected in the modules. The parents observed that the children lacked the motivation to work on the modules, and the parents found it frustrating not knowing how to motivate the young learners to complete their academic tasks. On the part of Participant 17, the parent claimed to give her time and effort to her child for distance learning. However, the parent observed not focusing on his child’s learning activities, and in case of interpersonal conflicts, her child tended to disregard school-related matters.
The teaching culture has changed during the pandemic from face-to-face to homeschooling when classrooms shut their doors and recognizing the crucial role of parents as Para teachers for homeschooled children in providing effective learning and giving homeschooling students a diverse environment that will hone their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Not every homeschool tutor or parent has gone to school to become a teacher or an expert, and parents might not have the same depth of knowledge in all areas even though they have a high degree of education. Thus, parents and other caregivers are now facing a time commitment to homeschooling. Parents claim that the demands made by the schools on them were unreasonable, and they often juggle multiple conflicting and strange roles. These made the stress of the quarantine and job losses even worse. In addition, parents had to shoulder the responsibility of taking care of the home, working full-time, and providing their children with a weekly lesson plan that was frequently short and “shallow,” devoid of reliable assessment tools and unclear expectations ref. [20]. Parents know how important it is to be involved in their kids’ homeschooling. Their lack of academic training may make them unsuitable tutors for their kids when they learn. They consequently feel unqualified to fulfill their roles as collaborators or facilitators of remote learning.
3.4. Distractions in the Home Environment
Distractions in the home environment are hard to teach at home, mainly associated with distractions by other family members while teaching, and noise from the environment increases stress and difficulties for parents in teaching their child. In the New Normal education, the learners are in the confines of their homes. They are trying to accomplish the activities and tasks indicated in their modules. However, homeschooling is not conducive to learning due to various distractions in the learners’ immediate physical and social environment. Hence, the parents and guardians found it challenging to ensure that the learners attended to their academic activities accordingly. Effective delivery and attainment of remote learning make it impossible to attain maximum accomplishment because of the environment to which the learners belong. The following were the statements of the participants:
“Our surroundings are very noisy, and it is very hard to sleep at night. My child sleeps and wakes up late. The noisy environment makes my child’s home learning less effective. I cannot control the noise outside our home. She cannot concentrate on her studies.” (P5).
“It is hard to compel my child to answer his modules. Our environment has many people and children around. It is very hard for the child not to be tempted to join the children playing outside our house. He would feel sad just watching the other children. He wanted to play with them. He could not concentrate on answering his modules.” (P8).
“I found it very hard in this homeschooling arrangement. Sometimes, my child didn’t follow when I gave her instructions in her modules and lessons. When forced, she would cry and lose interest in studying her modules. Some, I lost my temper and got angry…We live in a slum area… many disturbing things around that divert her attention.” (P10).
The three participants above expressed frustration with the distractions in the learners’ home environments. Even if the parents wanted to make remote learning take place away from the traditional classroom, they admitted that making the learning space conducive to the learners was beyond their control. The parents implied that learning outside the face-to-face classroom was ineffective because the children could not focus on the academic activities given.
It is dismaying, uninspiring, and daunting in this unsettling atmosphere. The noise produced by industry, construction, railroad, airport, and other outdoor activities is environmental noise pollution ref. [7]. Furthermore, parents during the New Normal education felt stressed and worn out from juggling competing demands and responsibilities [25]. It is challenging for parents to ensure their children learn when there is physical noise in the immediate environment. Parents may find it hard to support learning when there are many distractions in the learners’ surroundings. They do not have the authority to impose limitations on distant learning outside of the home domain.
3.5. Weariness Due to Physical Constraints
Weariness due to physical constraints is a state of lack or exhaustion brought on by physical limitations. It may be a sign of a more serious mental or physical illness, or it could be a typical response to exercise, emotional strain, boredom, or insufficient sleep. It can also refer to the state or circumstance of being worn out from effort, strain, and hard work on both a physical and mental level. Distance learning requires parents and guardians to observe the routines to deliver modular and online learning. However, some research revealed that some learners have not lived with their parents but with their grandparents. With the physical constraints of old age, the participants found tasking roles in the New Normal education. Participants 6 and 7 gave the following statements:
“I am having difficulty in this home learning. I am only her grandmother. Her mother left her to me when she was still an infant. I am the one who takes care of the child… I am also busy finding some income to support our daily needs. That is why I seldom make a follow-up with her school work.” (P6).
“I am only his grandfather. I have many grandchildren left to be taken care of because their parents were separated. I have a grandchild in pre-school, Grades 4 and 5 children, and one high school student. For my elementary grandchildren, I get the modules for them, while my high school grandchild can manage to get his modules. Honestly, I cannot make a follow-up with my grandchild anymore because I am already old, and my vision is not clear anymore.” (P7).
The two participants said grandparents work hard to meet their needs, and as a result, they were already physically exhausted from keeping an eye on the kids in their care’s academic progress. Furthermore, the grandparents’ health issues make it impossible for them to mentor the children’s homeschooling. If the biological parents separate or divorce, grandparents look after and support their grandchildren. Likewise, the grandparents provide food and childcare for the younger children [26]. Living with grandparents, however, may be linked to poor mental and physical health as well as a low socioeconomic status [27]. When parents are not around, grandparents often take on the responsibility of caring for their grandchildren. In the current situation, where education has shifted to a new normal, they try their best to meet the needs of their grandchildren. However, due to physical limitations, it can be challenging for them to assist the children with homeschooling and provide everything they need to guide children in homeschooling because of physical limitations.
4. Conclusion
Some parents and guardians of students are finding it difficult to the new Normal education as they are adjusting to the situation and the role they are unfamiliar with. Numerous parents found that homeschooling was low quality and had detrimental effects on parents, guardians, and their kids. Additionally, parents reported higher stress and domestic conflict levels. The New Normal Education presents parents and guardians with roadblocks. Their responsibilities as caregivers, providers of family needs, and immediate tutors for their homeschooled children through remote or distance learning resulting from school closures gave pressure and challenge. As such, parents and guardians prepare themselves for circumstances for which they are unprepared and unfamiliar. Even though they understand how important it is to react quickly to the new learning modalities, they find it stressful and disappointing to do their role.
Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest.