Disengaged, Positive, or Negative: Parents’ Attitudes Toward Learning From Home Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

Pratama, Ahmad R.; Firmansyah, Firman M.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many countries to close their schools and to change their education system to adopt the learning from home (LFH) method, which arguably requires more direct involvement from parents to succeed. This study explored parent’s attitudes toward LFH policy based on a survey of 261 participants from 16 provinces in Indonesia. Employing latent class analysis, we revealed three distinct groups of parents with unique compounds of attitudes toward LFH (i.e., disengaged, positive, and negative). Disengaged parents neither consider LFH useful, nor do they see it as demanding. In contrast, the other two groups of parents have quite the opposite views on the usefulness and demandingness of LFH. Further analysis using multinomial logistic regression revealed that older parents from low-income households tend to be disengaged while fathers of young children tend to have negative attitudes toward LFH. Interestingly, the ownership of a personal computer at home seems to be a key indicator of parents with positive attitudes toward LFH after controlling for other demographic factors. How the findings provide a firsthand insight on the existence of digital divide by highlighting the importance of access to personal computers at home is further discussed.