Parents’ views and experiences of literacy instruction provided during the COVID-19 remote learning period

Remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity for parents of early years students to gain insights into instructional methods used to teach reading and spelling. We used this opportunity to seek parents’ perspectives about the instructional content and materials provided during periods of remote teaching in Australia. Nineteen parents were interviewed individually, and data were examined using deductive and inductive thematic analyses. Parents acknowledged teachers’ extraordinary efforts; however, some reported unexpected and concerning insights that their child appeared to be behind their peers in reading. While some parents described satisfaction with the reading instruction provided, many independently sought contemporary information about evidence-based reading instruction methods. Some reported an uncomfortable dissonance, noting that practices that they understood to align with scientific evidence were not routinely part of the pedagogical approach at their child’s school. Although our study focused on an unusual time period, our findings are illustrative of the variability present in early years classrooms with respect to reading instruction.