Comparative Views on Parent’s and Teacher’s Responsibilities toward Online Teaching and Learning

Comparative Views on Parent’s and Teacher’s Responsibilities Vol. 11(3) 2022, Pg. 267 Abstract Online teaching and learning have been implemented in our education due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Teachers and parents have faced challenges and changes in ensuring the children's education by utilising online teaching and learning. Teachers and parents, appear to have different preferences when it comes to their responsibilities. Our goal is to identify differences and similarities in parents' and teachers' views on the responsibilities of online teaching and learning for their children/students. The target samples in this study are parents who have children in primary education and school teachers. Findings show that most views assessed are different between parents and teachers. This gives insight on the preference of aid or assistance that should be provided by the government to support online teaching and learning in school.


Introduction
According to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Education (MOE), Malaysia in 2021, 36.9% of the country's 900,000 school children lack access to electrical gadgets that might aid them in online teaching and learning (TL) (www.malaysiakini.com/news/520818). Moreover, teachers should improve their online teaching skills, according to former Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin. Additionally, Deputy Education Minister Datuk Dr. Mah Hang Soon argues that, in order to motivate their children, parents should lead them through online learning.
Despite the fact that both sides (parents and teachers) sought to ensure that online TL was implemented well for their children and students, the preference for online TL aspects became the main topic (Hodges et al., 2020;Reimers, 2020). There are some ambiguous variances in teachers' and parents' preferences for online TL. Teachers may emphasise how they may give content to their students and the best platform for doing so, but parents appear to be more concerned about their children's emotional and physical well-being when allowing online TL at home (Fauzi and Khusuma, 2020).
If neither group receives adequate aid and support from the government or related corporate sectors, the differences may have a negative influence on the students. According to studies, the abrupt alterations in education had an impact on children's mental health, behaviour, emotion, and communication (Pirskanen, 2019;Wang et al., 2020). One likely explanation of this issue is the different preferences between these two groups, which have the greatest influence on students. The goal of this study is to fill up the gaps in knowledge concerning different views on responsibilities between teachers and parents. Teachers' and parents' perspectives will be investigated, as well as their preferences for online TL elements.

Literature Review
The sudden transition of TL from school to home has forced education institutions (especially teachers or educators) to make preparation in a very short time in assessing effective steps to address students' needs, preparation and approach on different levels, and also reassurance to students and parents. Teachers have to craft simple approaches, orientation to curricula and design specific assessments (Daniel, 2020). A study by Reimers and Schleicher (2020) on teachers' perspective describes the challenges facing various education systems depending on online education as an alternative modality. Tzifopoulos (2020) highlighted those teachers and students should be familiar, at least, with basic computer programs and related web applications to successfully engage in online TL. Fauzi and Khusuma (2020) also stated that the dilemma faced by teachers in conducting online teaching and learning activities is the access of information technology.
Accordingly, the transition from school to home TL is a critical transition in children's lives that has importance for socio-emotional and behavioural functioning. Pirskanen's (2019) finding shows children's emotional skills reported to be both positive and negative in emotions and behaviour by children living through the transition phase are based on their socio-emotional level. Additionally, family and parents do influence children's emotional skills during the transition. From the perspective of parents, they found that their children feel burden, fear, worry and also have changes in sleep rhythms. Supported by Wang et al (2020), parents should be aware of the downside of home quarantine and help to find ways to cope with children's physical and mental changes as they are the ones closest to their children. Results show that when child psychological needs met their expectation with the right parenting approaches, family bonds can be strengthened. Obviously, the differences between teachers and parents on online TL are comparable. Teachers more concerned about the delivery method of online teaching to the students, while parents are concerned about their ability to provide adequate learning to their children. This research intends to explore and define this matter further.

Methodology
The online survey was conducted in March 2021 and the participants were selected by random sampling. Participants in this study are parents who have children in primary education and primary school teachers. Participants were informed of the study's goal, that participation was completely voluntary, and that they could opt out at any moment. The questionnaire development was organised based on researchers' knowledge and literature review (Borup, 2016;Aliyyah et al., 2020). The first section focused on respondents' demographic characteristics; gender, age, community, and role. In the second section, respondents were asked on close ended questions (5-Likert scales: Strongly agree to strongly disagree). The data analysis was done quantitatively and descriptively, and then the results were presented in tables and figures. There are nine items for responsibilities of parents and teachers in online TL (Borup, 2016;Aliyyah et al., 2020) as shown in Table 1. Cronbach's alpha for the Factor: Responsibilities and roles was 0.778. Table 1 Responsibilities and role of parent and teacher Factor: Responsibilities and roles.

R1
Parents need to spend more time helping their children learn during Covid-19.

R2
Teacher should allow parents to provide teaching-related activities during online class.

R3
Parents are ready to face their children's learning at home during Covid-19.

R4
Parents could control the learning situation of children at home.

R5
Parents could provide online learning devices such as computers, mobile phones and others for each child.

R6
Parents do have much time to help their children homework even they are busy working in the office or home.

R7
Parents do have the expertise in motivating their children to study hard.

R8
Teachers need to give a few assignments and focus on important learning only, during Covid-19.

R9
Teachers should provide more feedback on work done.
The items were divided based on the role of parent and teacher. Item R1, R3, R4, R5, R6 and R7 are categorised as parent's responsibilities towards their children on online TL. While, R2, R8 and R9 are items categorised as teacher's responsibility towards their students.

Results and Discussions
The findings from the views of teachers and parents are presented in this section, discussed by their responsibilities. Questionnaires were completed by 60 respondents and contained a majority of female (66%), compared to male (34%) respondents. Table 2 shows the respondents characteristics; gender, age, community and roles.  Based on the findings in Table 3, item R1 (Parents need to spend more time helping their children learn during  shows that 50% of parents agreed (highest percentage) with the statement and 12.5% have neutral views. While 70% of teachers strongly agreed (highest percentage) with the statement. Item R2 (Teacher should allow parents to provide teaching-related activities during online class) shows that 33.3% of parents agreed (highest percentage) with the statement and there are 16.7% disagreed and 4.2% strongly disagreed. There were 60% of teachers agreed (highest percentage) with the statement. Item R3 (Parents are ready to face their children's learning at home during  shows that 38% of parents agreed (highest percentage) with the statement however there were 37% disagreed. While 70% of teachers gave a neutral (highest percentage) view on the statement.
Item R4 (Parents could control the learning situation of children at home) shows that 37.5% of parents admitted to agree (highest percentage) with the statement even though 8.3% disagreed. A total of 60% of teachers disagreed with the statement. Item R5 (Parents could provide online learning devices such as computers, mobile phones and others for each child) shows that 62.5% of parents agreed with the statement (highest percentage). While 60% of teachers disagreed with the statement. Item R6 (Parents do have much time to help their children homework even they are busy working in the office or home) shows that 58.3% of parents disagreed and 12.5% strongly disagreed with the statement. Also 60% of teachers strongly disagreed (highest percentage) with the statement even though there were 10% of them strongly agreed.
Item R7 (Parents do have the expertise in motivating their children to study hard) shows that 34.6% of parents agreed (highest percentage) with the statement and still 29.2% disagreed and 4.2% strongly disagreed. While 60% of teachers gave a neutral view on the statement. Item R8 (Teachers need to give a few assignments and focus on important learning only, during  shows that 45.8% of parents agreed (highest percentage) with the statement even though 12.5% disagreed. While 70% teachers agreed (highest percentage) with the statement. Item R9 (Teachers should provide more feedback on work done) shows that 62.5% of parents agreed with the statement. Also 60% of teachers agreed with the statement.

R7
Parent Parents give motivation. Different Teacher

Similar Teacher
Parents and teachers have similar views on the item R1, R6, R8 and R9. It is agreed that parents need to spend more time helping their children learn during Covid-19. Bansak and Starr (2021) also concluded in their study that parents need to spent time for their online class at home to lessen the drop in learning. Parents may view it as more time spent can help with their children learning discipline at home (Putri et al., 2020). Both admit that parents do have time to help their children with their homework. Supported by Bhamani et al (2020), parents should adapt quickly to the learning changes during a pandemic and take the time to assist their children. There is also a similar view on the focused assignment given by the teachers to the students. Daniel (2020) suggested that asynchronous learning to be implemented in schools during the crisis in order to deliver effective learning. Even though both agree that teachers should provide feedback on the assignments during online TL, there are challenges on the authenticity of the assignments and consumption of time for the feedbacks need to be debated (Pokhrel & Chhetri, 2021).
The remaining items show different views between parents and teachers. Teachers are more reliable to prepare the students with teaching-related activities especially during online TL (Johnson et al., 2022). Though parents are willing to share the load, there are difficulties in constructing and explaining the lesson to their children (Novianti & Garzia, 2020). Therefore, even if parents agree that they can control online learning at home, most teachers doubted about it as parents do not have professional knowledge in TL. A study in China by Dong et al (2020) shows that Chinese parents admitted that online learning have been challenging and problematic for them because they were not trained for online learning and has inadequacies in providing online learning devices. Students need motivation to engage in online learning as they struggled with lack of interaction and mismatching in learning style. However, parents struggled to motivate their children to focus on online learning as parents also struggled to juggle with other children at home (Garbe et al., 2020).

Conclusion
This study mapped the views and preferences of online teaching and learning (TL) factors based on teachers and parents. This finding is hoped to give insight on these two groups' evaluation on online TL in order to achieve the excellent outcomes in online TL for the students (for teachers) and also their children (for parents). Teachers and parents may have different/similar preferences of factors in online teaching and learning (TL). Identification of the most preference factors will help in designing suitable support to help overcome challenges faced by teachers and parents. This study offered to provide extensive literature on the study of factors in online TL during pandemic situations.