Distance Learning During the First Lockdown: Impact on the Family and Its Effect on Students' Engagement

This contribute investigates how Emergency Remote Education (ERE) impacted families during the spring 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, and in particular, the extent to which the impact of ERE on families, measured in terms of space and equipment sharing, moderates the effect of student and family characteristics on students' engagement. The study derived from the administration of an online survey to 19,527 families with children attending schools, from nursery to upper secondary grade. The total number of student records collected amounted to 31,805, since parents had to provide data for each school-age child in the family. The survey contains 58 questions, divided into three sections, with the first two sections designed to get a reading at family level and the third section to gather data for each school-age child in the family. After verifying the validity of the engagement construct through confirmatory factor analysis, two structural equation models were used to analyze the students' engagement. The main findings reveal how the impact of the ERE on the families has had a significant role in predicting students' level of engagement observed by parents with respect to different predictor variables. Finally, we argue that it is necessary to follow a holistic approach to observe the challenges imposed by the switch of the process of deferring teaching from presence to distance, imposed by the pandemic emergency on families. In fact, a holistic approach can promote student engagement and prevent the onset of cognitive-behavioral and affective problems linked to disengagement in ERE.