Date of Conferral

2022

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Psychology

Advisor

Ethel Perry

Abstract

During the 2020–2021 school year, many students were forcibly shifted from traditional in-person learning to virtual emergency response learning (ERL) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During this shift, many lower-elementary school students suffered socially, emotionally, and academically due to lack of infrastructure, social isolation, and the loss of direct instruction from educators. Because of this loss, many parents had different responsibilities to their children’s social, emotional, and academic well-being. Research has not provided practical, motivational strategies used by parents to motivate their lower-elementary school children during virtual ERL during COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to examine parents’ perceptions on the strategies used to motivate their lower-elementary school students during virtual ERL due to COVID-19. Maslow’s theory of human motivation served as the theoretical foundation for this study. A basic qualitative inquiry was used to examine parents’ perceptions through developing an interview instrument to collect data from 13 participants through in-depth, one-on-one, semistructured interviews. Thematic analysis was used to code and discover themes. One overarching theme of “Routines & Consistency” and 11 themes outlined the common perceptions of the strategies parents used to motivate their lower-elementary school children during ERL due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Results may contribute to positive social change by providing parents with practical motivational strategies to use for their lower-elementary school children in the case of any virtual ERL situations in the future for reasons such as medical emergencies, pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters or home confinement for any reason.

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