RAPID: Working and Teaching from Home in New York State amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

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As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools in New York State have been closed since mid-March and many workers are also working from home. This creates unique stressors for parents who are struggling to oversee their children’s education while doing their normal jobs from home or working as an essential worker. Most of these parents have no previous experience with this form of homeschooling and many are working with their children to complete online schooling content. Also, many parents have limited experience working from home. This project will interview parents about their experiences with work and this form of homeschooling in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Key research questions include: Who is overseeing children’s at-home work? Are there gendered patterns to overseeing children’s schoolwork and how do they present themselves? Do parents and children have adequate technology at home to both work and do schoolwork at home in the context of online educational plans? How do parents balance their work and school arrangements? How do parents organize their day around children’s schoolwork and work? What stressors do parents face in this new arrangement? Do parents have adequate support from schools and teachers to provide for implementing their children’s at-home learning? Findings from the project will inform both educational and business leaders regarding the challenges that are involved in teleworking and this form of homeschooling simultaneously, thus enabling better response to the current pandemic as well as better preparedness for future events that may require this combination activities at home. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed both working and educational arrangements for many families in the United States. This project will conduct qualitative phone interviews of parents in and around Syracuse, New York, who are teaching their K-12 children at home while also working. Fifty or more parents will be identified through snowball sampling and the use of a parenting Facebook page that has wide use throughout the Syracuse area. Using the Facebook site will help to obtain a more diverse sample than snowball sampling alone could produce. Interviews will be conducted using open-ended questions including follow-up questions as necessary. Interviews will be recorded and transcribed. The project will use the online qualitative software Dedoose and flexible coding techniques to code the interviews, followed by analytic coding. The project will also identify the central stories in the data. Findings from the project will inform sociological theories regarding work and family arrangements, especially within the context of household combinations of teleworking and homeschooling.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.