The Impact of the COVID-19 Lockdown on Parents and their Adolescent Children in Relation to Science Learning

With the transition to distance-learning at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, several countries required parents and their children to remain at home, under lockdown. Many parents found themselves taking on additional responsibilities regarding their children’s education. However, children do not always interpret their parents’ intentions as they intended. This study investigated this complex relationship, showing that parents’ emphases regarding science learning changed during the first COVID-19 lockdown and in parallel, the relations between these emphases and their adolescent children’s goal orientation and self-efficacy toward science learning also changed. In 2019, one year before the COVID-19 lockdown, the children’s mastery and performance orientations toward science, and their self-efficacy in science were significantly correlated with their parent’s attitudes toward science. In 2020, shortly after the end of the first COVID-19 lockdown, these relations remained significant, but in addition the parents’ emphasis on performance became a significant predictor of the children’s mastery and performance orientations, and of their self-efficacy in science. A small increase in the children’s performance orientation and self-efficacy in science was seen, and only a small decline in their mastery orientation toward science. These findings contrast with what the literature indicates is typical at this age, when there are no lockdown conditions.