**4. Methodology**

#### **4.1 Research aims**

This research explores the experiences of parents/carers of young people with dyslexia arising from schools' rapid switch to 'emergency remote teaching.' This was undertaken via an online survey, with closed, Likert scale and open-ended questions. This report focuses on responses to open-ended questions but occasionally draws upon closed questions to provide context for participants' responses. The questionnaire explored use of technology and other strategies implemented during initial COVID-19 lockdowns. This chapter investigates parents'/carers' experiences of 'emergency remote teaching' during 2020.

#### **4.2 Data construction and participants**

All work was undertaken in line with BERA ethical guidelines [41] and in full consideration of the Teachers' Standards for England [42], due to the researcher's part-time position in a mainstream secondary school. Data was constructed between April and June 2020 via an online survey. In line with Bryman [10], this small-scale survey took the form of a structured interview and a self-completion questionnaire. Some elements were ranked responses, some used a Likert Scale, and others were closed questions, which is similar to a self-completion questionnaire. In addition to these questions, there were items on this survey where participants could provide open-ended responses in a text box. This was done to gain understanding of frequencies of response as well as reasons for those responses.

The survey was built using MS Forms and was disseminated through the researchers' personal network, as well as via social media, specifically through the researcher's Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn platforms throughout this time. The researcher's own network was approached personally with an overview of the research purposes via WhatsApp. The survey form was also accessible via the researcher's business website. The call for participants was presented alongside a small introduction on social media and was open to all. The initial page of the survey then gave full information on the project's purpose and aims. This survey was part of a larger project where parents, teachers and other educators, and students were asked about their experiences of accessing education during the initial wave of COVID-19 lockdowns [43]. The survey garnered 123 responses. A total of 47 parents/carers responded to the survey, of which five responses were not usable: the parents/carers did not have children with SEN. This exclusion criterion was built into the survey design: parents were asked whether they had children with SEN and where they did not, they were thanked for their time and the survey ceased. The overall response rate for the survey was relatively low, given that there were 155,825 children with documented SpLD within English education in 2019–2020 [18]. However, there are various factors, which may account for this. It is unclear how many young people have formal diagnoses of SpLD; there may be other young people whose needs are not formally identified or are such that they are not on school SEN registers as noted by the British Dyslexia Association [44]. While there is substantial data available relating to young people in England such as the National Pupil Database [45], there is no capacity built into it; this allows researchers to

#### *Between Home and School: Exploring Parents' Experiences of Educating in a Pandemic DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101408*

contact students, their parents/carers or teachers individually. Subsequently, researchers are dependent on professional networks, personal contacts and paid-for survey promotion tools to connect with the target population. Even within targeted sampling, there are often high non-response rates [10]. As such, where parents/carers are in a time-poor, high-stress situation often with relatively poor access to the internet, it is unsurprising that the response rate was not as high as might be hoped. That said, this study does not attempt to capture large-scale, reproducible and generalizable data. Rather this survey aims to take a snapshot of people's experiences of supporting their children through learning during COVID-19 lockdowns to gain understanding of what barriers and facilitators to learning they experienced.

**Table 1** shows school-types attended by participants' children. Participating parents, teachers/educators and students were assigned a participant number according to the timestamp on their response to the survey. As such, parents here are numbered in the order they participated in the wider survey rather than parents having a separate identification number system from other respondents.

All data was cleaned and identifying features removed for analysis. Files containing participants' personal details are encrypted and password protected. Information is also stored on password protected hardware and is process/stored in line with the Data Protection Act 2018 [46]. The Researcher and their organization are also registered with the Information Commissioner's Office [47].

#### **4.3 Data processing and analysis**

Data was saved to MS Excel files on exportation from the survey in MS Forms, and was password protected. Categorical and ranked responses were explored using MS Excel and graphing functions in MS Forms to provide some context for findings. This aims to help improve transferability of conclusions by adding to the thick description sought in qualitative research [48]. Qualitative responses to open-ended questions were then manually exported from the Excel data files and pasted into word documents for each participant. These word documents were saved under each participant's identifier number and later imported in to QDA Data Miner Lite [49] for analysis.

A framework for analysis based in Jenkins' and Bourdieu's work was in place for data analysis. However, very little research had been undertaken into COVID-19 and 'emergency remote teaching' at the start of this project. As such, initial open coding was undertaken using a grounded theory approach [50]. On initial reading of documentation, core categories were identified. These related to parents' experiences of remote learning versus expectations, roles and technology. Following initial reading, a further reading of each parent's responses was undertaken and the coding framework was refined further until data saturation was reached [50]. For data-triangulation, initial findings from analysis were shared, in the form of a report, with


**Table 1.** *Participant overview.* participants who had provided email addresses. They were offered the opportunity to comment on findings and address any inconsistencies. There was no feedback that suggested findings were erroneous; several participants did write positively in response to the report. The potential for further triangulation and deeper understanding of data was also built into the project design. The survey sought participants for further interviews as a further phase of the project where outcomes from the survey would inform real-time interviews with participants. These interviews were undertaken in Summer 2021 and analysis is ongoing at the time of writing.

The Jenkins-Bourdieu framework then underpinned data analysis using corecategories to address research questions. This was done through the exploration of coding intersections in QDA Data Miner Lite. The researcher explored codeintersections which related to each of the three levels of interaction separately by exporting them to MS Word files and reading them. Nine code-intersections were produced: 3 for each 'levels of interaction' [13]. The coding-intersection outputs were then read by the researcher and coded by hand with specific consideration of the research objectives. Each output was read at least 3 times and coding was undertaken until data saturation was reached. The grounded theory approach, followed by the Jenkins-Bourdieu coding process highlighted the need for a more sophisticated model, capable of addressing the complex dynamics of field–field interactions, and their effects on individual actors and inter-actor dialog. Fields' interdependent natures also needed 'space' to be adequately addressed. Foundations for this model are laid in sections 5 and 6. The model is discussed in Section 7.
