Parental Attitudes Towards Online Learning - Data from Four Countries

Covid-19 has prompted all educational institutions around the world to move from traditional to virtual classrooms. This study aims to explore parents’ attitudes, expectations and views with regard to using the Internet as a learning environment. The subjects of this international study are the parents of primary school students with and without special educational needs (SEN), grades 1 to 4. The parents were interviewed over a one-month period: Bulgaria: 141, among whom 16 parents of children with SEN; Greece: 392 participants including 65 parents of children with SEN; 21 out of the 136 participants in Cyprus have children with SEN and in Libya - 2 out of 102 participants have children with SEN. Using a quantitative approach, parents’ attitudes towards the adaptation and enhancement of children’s knowledge in an online learning environment, the accessibility of online platforms, the use of these platforms and the satisfaction with online classes were researched and analysed using SPSS software. The answer to the most important question in the survey, whether children learn better online than face-to-face, parents in all four countries answered negatively. The results for Bulgaria, Cyprus and Greece showed that about 90% answered “No” with the highest percentage of negative answers among the Greek group. This figure was lowest among parents in Libya with the highest proportion of respondents responding “I don’t know”.