We know that parents and the home learning environment (HLE) have a major influence on a child’s learning trajectory, from the early years through to the end of primary schooli.
The HLE has been brought into sharper focus in the last two years with the pandemic demonstrating the fundamental role that parent involvement in their child’s learning has to playii during a period of time which equated to children receiving an additional half a year of immersion in the home learning environmentiii.
Discourse during and since this time has focussed on an understanding of learning that is equated with curriculum content, with the emphasis on lost learning and catch up encapsulating a perception of the teaching/learning process as transmission of knowledge- knowledge that will now need to be covered for children more intensively, in shorter periods of time. This kind of discourse, focusing as it does on a specific area of learning, has a got a lot to answer for in generating more anxiety and fear for both parents and young people themselves.
This article will therefore draw on perspectives of parents themselves represented through surveys during lockdown to argue that, in our urgency to make up for lost curriculum time during Covid 19, we risk losing sight of i) the complex variety of learning experiences that children and families had at home during lockdowns ii) the diversity of responses to the opportunity to learn at home and iii) the opportunity for society to reappraise the role of parents and families in learning in the aftermath of the pandemic. It poses some questions for further conversation and discussion.
The variety of learning experiences at home