Parental involvement, learning participation and online learning commitment of adolescent learners during the COVID-19 lockdown

Abstract

During the escalating coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, attempting to contain its spread, a large number of educational institutions shut down face-to-face teaching and learning activities globally due to a complete lockdown. This lockdown revealed emerging vulnerabilities of education systems in the low- and middle-income countries of the world, with Nigeria being no exception. Given these concerns, this research study assessed parental involvement, learning participation and the commitment to online learning of adolescent learners during the COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria. An online survey questionnaire was employed to examine the level of online learning commitment and the contributory roles of each of the factors to online learning commitment of adolescent learners. In total, 1407 adolescents (male = 38.8%; female 61.2%) aged between 12 and 20 years (mean = 15: SD = 4.24) responded to the online survey, which was open for 2 months. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics of frequency distribution and inferential statistics of multiple regression. The findings revealed that the commitment level of adolescent learners to online learning was high. The findings further yielded a coefficient of R = 0.439 and R2 = 0.192 variance in the prediction of the outcome measure. Parental involvement contributed 32% (β = 0.322, p < 0.05) and learning participation contributed 23% (β = 0.234, p < 0.05) towards online learning. The study concludes that parental involvement and learning participation played a significant and positive role in the commitment of adolescent learners towards online learning during the COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria. The authors suggest that parents be encouraged to synergise with the digitalised revolution, while the need for further in-depth research on the subject is emphasised in the suggestions for future research.