Abstract:

Homeschooling refers to educational practice of children or youth choosing to be educated at home rather than in a private or public school. Prior to the COVID-19 contingency in the USA, the National Home Education Research Institute estimates there are approximately 2.3 million homeschooled students in the United States, with a growth rate of 2%-8% per year from 2010 to 2015. In the Latin American context, mainly in Mexico, homeschooling is an infrequent practice in the education of children, nor is there a political-educational regulation that legitimizes it. The objective of this exploratory research was to analyze the perception of parents on the challenges and support received for the implementation of distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic. A quantitative-cross-sectional research was designed, data were collected from June to September 2020, it was conducted through respondent-driven sampling. The final sample consisted of 82 participants distributed in different locations in Mexico. The results were analyzed through the multi-method analysis strategy with MAXQDA2020. In the quantitative analysis it was identified that 56.1% of parents/caregivers perceive that they have no contact with their children's schools to carry out home-based education, compared to 20.7% who perceive that they always receive this support. 68.3% perceive not having strategies and/or tools to support home education. The qualitative analysis revealed that the main challenges reported by parents are: lack of skills in the use of technology, limited access to ICT resources (internet, mobile devices, etc.), supervision of academic activities and the establishment of roles/schedules at home. For their part, support resources were: having a support network (family, friends, neighbors), contacting teachers through social networks, and communication within the family. We conclude that there is a need to generate strategies such as training, workshops or community support so that families have more resources to cope with distance education, which is a recently implemented educational modality in countries such as Mexico.

Keywords:

Home education, distance education, parent school relationship, parent role, electronic learning.