Parents’ competence, autonomy, and relatedness in supporting children with special educational needs in emergency remote teaching during COVID-19 lockdown

Abstract

ABSTRACT Actions to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as emergency remote teaching (ERT), affected the lives of school children, their parents, and schooling in spring 2020. Rapid changes in routines due to lockdown and ERT were challenging, especially for many children with special needs (SEN). This article focuses on parents’ perspectives regarding their basic psychological needs, i.e. competence, autonomy, and relatedness, in relation to the schooling of their children with SEN. Questionnaire data consisted of the views of 120 parents who described 179 resources and 151 challenges concerning their basic psychological needs during ERT of their children. Data were analysed following the principles of theoretical categorising. According to the results, parents experienced their pedagogical as well as intra- and interpersonal competence as resources to support the child in ERT. The greatest challenges concerned relatedness between parents and children as well as between parents, school, and other professionals. The study suggests schools and teachers to develop instructions to support teacher–parent interaction and learning of all children to cope with ongoing and future remote and face-to-face teaching for children with SEN.