**6. Discussion**

In this section, how parental conceptualization of 'emergency remote teaching' underpins home-school communication, and the resulting roles adopted by parents during remote teaching is discussed. Connections between parents' understandings of 'emergency remote teaching' and their engagement with institutional processes are made. Reference is made to resourcing, structural expectations on them and their capacity to navigate them, and links are made with existent literature.

#### **6.1 Individual sense-making**

Parental sense-making of home-schooling tended to focus on what they hoped for – interaction in real time with specific and personalized instruction for their children – in contrast with the reality. The reality encountered tended to be remote digital delivery through written instruction and/or some video resources. Parents found themselves in the position of facilitator of learning, which took place online for the most part, which echoes other work undertaken in the COVID-19 climate [4, 5]. While some parents felt that their children could complete more work than in school (parent 39-mainstream secondary), others' feelings are summarized clearly by parent 96 (other), who said of their son's experiences, 'He needs a teacher.' Time to support their children and (lack of) access to devices/internet were recurring themes in parents' sense-making of emergency remote teaching, which again chimes with other work on parents' and learner's experiences during COVID-19 [4, 5]. As noted elsewhere, personal sense-making (of parents in this case) underpins their interactions with other individuals [13, 14]. Parental views and experiences of 'emergency remote teaching' influenced interactions substantially due to the gap in expectations versus reality of their experiences.

#### **6.2 Interaction and exchanges**

Parental conceptualization of 'emergency remote teaching' showed that some parents felt that interaction – ideally in real time – was a crucial element of teaching. This chimes with work undertaken elsewhere that found many students had difficulties accessing asynchronous learning [2, 36]. Lack of consistency in provision was noted in other studies on COVID-19 instruction [37]. Parents in this study reported different levels of satisfaction and confidence in their children's teachers' ability to deliver lessons. There was also considerable variation in how work was delivered across and within institutions. Some teachers were better able to adapt than others, which had been noted by parents. This suggests

that even within individual schools, variation in implementation of 'emergency remote learning' policy is substantial, leading to notable differences in what is on paper versus the reality of remote lesson delivery. This echoes work relating to both school [36] and higher education [1, 6], where provision was developed in the first instance by educators independently according to their strengths, with institutional policies following later.

While parental advocacy has been discussed elsewhere [28], here parental roles have been developed from advocacy for their children towards 'parents-asteachers.' Where young people had SpLD, parental knowledge of technology was not always secure; they felt that schools were not providing sufficient support and training, which echoes work on higher-education by Gould [2]. However, parents' own tacit knowledge of technology was implicitly relied on, due to structural expectations placed on them during COVID-19 related lockdowns. How work was set also impacted parental roles; remote work which needed printing; if access to specific websites/resources was necessary; work being too difficult for children and so on meant that parents often adjusted work in place of teachers. Other studies also highlight the demands placed on parents, and their construction as parents-as-teachers by both pragmatic, personal actions and through systemic expectations [4, 5, 8].

In this study, access to devices was unproblematic, with a substantial majority of families having sufficient devices for their children. This is in contrast with other work [5, 36]. Nevertheless, systemic processes and expectations had a substantial influence on parents' sense-making of what 'remote teaching' should be. We can see that parents' sense-making of teaching depends on systemic decisions on provision strategies (particularly for those with dyslexia and specific learning difficulties [22] who are without formalized, statutory provision [3]) as well as their own resources and tacit knowledge.

#### **6.3 Institutional issues**

Families' difficulties in accessing devices echo in the work by Misirli and Ergulec [4] and Kaiper-Marquez et al. [5], where access to technology was vital for accessing work, and the 'expected' know-how associated with that technology was not always realistic for families. Given that statutory provision implementation required only 'best endeavors' [3], it is unsurprising that work was often unsuitably differentiated for learners without statutory provision; a substantial proportion of those learners have SpLD [18] and find accessing learning problematic even when they are in school under 'normal' circumstances [28]. Parents felt the 'reading burden' of the curriculum was substantial, reporting that where their children had no access to multisensory learning and/or reader-technology, their ability to engage well with remote learning was limited. Structures that already disadvantaged those with SpLD have been replaced (through 'emergency remote teaching') by structural expectations, such that learners with SpLD are substantially disadvantaged and their curricular access is limited where those expectations are not met – either by parents or their schools.

As asserted by Bourdieu [14], education is a site of production and re-production of practices and social relations. Consciously or otherwise, all but one parent in this study acted to propagate systems in place. They all tried to follow the curriculum delivered by professionals and so doing, acted to propagate oppressive systems which impeded their children's ability to access the curriculum. Only one parent felt able to act agentically and remove systemic, curricular burdens from themselves and their child. This shows the power of parental hopes for their children to 'fit

in' with social systems (SEN provision), even when those systems act to oppress children due to their SpLD.
