The entire society is experiencing that the role of parent in child’s education is vital in different ways. The objective of this article is to highlight on the changed role of parents in the prevailing time of full online education environment. No doubt that, the child requires the parent’s guidance throughout the education life however, the nature, type and degree of guidance varies as child moves to higher class. Once, he/she joint graduation, the nature of role further changes. The assistance and support in learning required during schooling is to the great extent than that in the graduation. So those parents who can contribute the child’s learning from the self-knowledge and experience can find better progress in the learner performance. Now the parent has to play additional role of teacher in providing the appropriate learning experiences at appropriate learning event.
In the contemporary situation, the children are missing the social learning environment (teachers and friends) as the schools are preferring for online education. Many of us might have experienced that, the child has great faith and love for teacher. And now he/she is missing the social touch of the teacher and so the parents have to take the position of teacher to assist child’s learning by providing the appropriate learning environment. The parents have to do little extra for child studies than that of earlier efforts.
Some of the initiatives are discussed in the below lines. As stated earlier, the degree of parent’s participation in child’s learning will vary with growing physical age and schooling age.
a. Develop/create the conducive learning environment at home/ around home. Procure learning aids like charts, work books, audio book and digital gadgets. Please don’t forget to get small white board/chalk board. Casually create the class room like environment.
b. Obtain the knowledge and information about children’s awareness about the curriculum and schooling (online education);
c. Assess the domains of difficulty; courses, language, learning style, etc.
d. Read/Review the curriculum and read/review the text books.
e. Planned discussions on course outcomes and curriculum outcomes.
f. Get acquainted with framework of online education
g. Gather the information about the adequacy of learning experiences, feed-back from test and assignments.
h. Understand child’s learning style. Whether he/she is, auditory (one learns just be listening once), visionary (one who learns only when the learning is supported by relevant visuals) or kinesthetic (one learns after having the practical experience, either by demonstration or practically).
i. Provide adequate input on the topic and courses.
j. Collect the relevant visuals, audio, videos (related to the courses and topics) and occasionally make dramatic presentation.
k. Periodically assess learning performance.
l. Assure that learning happens.
m. Appreciate/Motivate and provide immediate knowledge of results.
n. Develop the study habit and time-management habits.
o. Identify the courses and chapters that aims at human development and development of attitude, values, moral and ethics and provide the relevant experiences. These can be taught in innovative way at home environment.
p. Promote for game and sports on regular basis.
q. Mentor the educational studies.
One quote says, "teaching is one-third content and two-third theatre". Deliver accordingly. The parent’s participation in child’s learning has added advantage of getting close view of the child’s attributes which is very useful in shaping the future of the children.