Recommendations for parents in the distance education process

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çağla Gür and her student Sedanur Öztürk from the Department of Basic Education of Faculty of Education, Cyprus International University (CIU) found out in their study with 2500 parents who have children between the ages of 7-10, that children spent 60% of their time with online activities in the coronavirus period.

It was stated that 44% of the online activities are related to education, and the rest are games, cartoons, etc.. Additionally, 40% of the time is spent on offline educational activities, and the interactive time spent with parents and children is 16%. The families frequently expressed their concerns about the education losses of their children in the process, said Gür and added that they felt the need to do research by taking these concerns as the starting point.

Assoc. Prof. Dr.  Gür stated that according to their findings, the parents primarily focus on academic achievement and the time children spent is for distance education, before and after the education they spend time with random activities in front of the screen, however, it was concluded that effective family communication is insufficient.

It was noted that focusing on solely academic success of children has its drawbacks; the evaluation of success in life only based on the scores obtained from the tests can affect the success of both personal and social life.

Parents should first enable their children to gain organizational skills and "it is important to have a certain order and discipline in life, but this should not be imposed and harsh, however, it should be descriptive and motivating," said Gür.

Gür reminded that every task should be done with sincere motivation in order and discipline. “Children should be aware of what they are doing and why they should set their goals and proceed in this direction. The fact that distance education is in question should not mean that the children will act as they wish whenever they want,” said Gür.

It is important to have communication with children in this process and “it is time to get to know our children better, to teach them how to think by establishing cause-effect relationships, not what to think. It is also the time to discover our child's interests, talents, and needs,” said Gür.