Distance learning during the first lockdown: impact on the family and its effect on students' engagement

The study presented in this paper investigates how Emergency Remote Education (ERE) impacted families during the spring 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, and to what extent the impact of pandemic on the families and the ERE strategies adopted by teachers influenced student's engagement during that period. In particular, the study investigates how the instructional approach used during the ERE, the student and family characteristics affect the students' engagement. In addition, the study explores the extent to which the impact of the ERE on the family, measured in terms of space and equipment sharing, moderates the effect of student and family characteristics on students' engagement. The study derived from the administration of an online survey to 19,527 families with children attending schools (from nursery schools to upper secondary school). The total number of student records collected amounted to 31,805, since parents were asked to provide data for each school-age child in the family. The survey contains 58 questions, divided into three main sections, with the first two sections designed to provide a reading at the family level and the third section to gather data for each child in the family. After verifying the validity of the engagement construct through confirmatory factor analysis, two structural equation models have been estimated to analyze the students' engagement. The main findings reveal how the impact of the ERE on the family has had a significant role in predicting students' level of engagement observed by parents with respect to different predictor variables. As a final remark, we argue that it is necessary to follow a holistic approach to observe the challenges imposed by the switch of the process of deferring teaching from presence to distance, imposed by the pandemic emergency on families. In fact, a holistic approach can promote student