Rhetoric, Problem, or Necessity? A Research on Parental Involvement during Covid-19

Even if the alarm caused by coronavirus in Italy has actually arisen as a medical emergency, it soon became apparent that there would be other spill-over effects. The education system has been immediately affected by this pandemic, as schools and universities have been closed since the very first weeks. Schools have thus begun to build new ways of schooling in order to keep in contact with students and families and to go on with teaching activities. This article aims to investigate lockdown short- and medium-term effects on the school-family relationship, considered as a crucial key in managing this emergency, focusing on its opportunities and risks. This relationship was already rather problematic and complex (Llevot, Bordalba, 2019), as parents tent to have little trust in teachers, confirming this crisis of school-family alliance and the adult crisis of authority in the transmission of values, norms and models (Furedi, 2012; Massa, Colombo IJSE). But, because of Covid-19 emergency, this relationship is now becoming more and more essential and relevant, even if it is facing new challenges, especially for young pupils and parents, in particular mothers, who are making considerable efforts to keep in touch with the school and to support teachers’ didactical proposals during distant learning (Manzo, Minello, 2020). In many occasions, this relationship became stronger and more cooperative, but sometimes also quite lacking or totally absent. In the light of these considerations, here are the main research questions: 1) Has the pandemic led to new ways of experiencing this relationship? 2) Did students, parents and teachers live more frequently opportunities for closeness or distance? 3) What sort of relation processes occurred? 4) Were there meeting points about perceptions and experience of the “difference” in distance learning among parents and teachers?