Abstract:

Over the past decade, education standards have emphasized the value of student-guided learning in which students are responsible of their own learning and they are actively involved in higher-order tasks and cognitive standards (Hannafin, Hill, & Land, 1997; Shea et al., 2012). This requires applying active learning approaches, such as the Flipped Classroom (FC) methodology, which offers students access to online video lectures/tutorials (flips) prior to in-class sessions, so that they are prepared to take part in more interactive, collaborative and higher-order activities within the classroom (Bergmann, Overmyer, & Wilie, 2012; Davies, Dean, & Ball, 2013; Fulton, 2012; Hughes, 2012; Lage, Platt, & Treglia, 2000; Talbert, 2012; Zappe et al., 2009).

Students benefit from this pre-class exposure to materials and outside classroom events because they can adjust their learning pace to meet their individual studying style and levels of understanding. However, the limitations which exist, such as the young age of K-12 students and/or their incompetence to monitor a self-paced learning mode, brings about questions on how parents can or how much they are willing to support the pre-class and after-class sessions. International FC research has not yet considered parents’ experiences and perceptions on the matter and this is what this multiple case-study research has tried to address, by collecting data from the parents of 132 students in five different primary schools in Cyprus during a FC model implementation.

Therefore, the research is based on the idea that there is a lack of evidence regarding parents’ experiences and perceptions on FC model implementation and this formed the research question of the study. Data collection for the research was based on parents’ questionnaires, with open-ended questions regarding the two out of the three phases of FC implementation, which encompass parents’ presence at home: pre-class and after-class. Results have revealed positive parents’ experiences and perceptions, highlighting the development of their children’s ICT skills and how the FC methodology has helped in guiding their children during homework and revision time. Future research could focus, though, in how parents can be better trained during a pilot phase of FC implementation so as to overcome adaptation and technical issues at home, e.g. wi-fi connection and compatible devices for all kinds of flips.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, student-guided learning, parents' experiences, parents perceptions.