Have Teachers’ Perceptions of Parental Engagement Changed Following COVID-19? Evidence from a Mixed-Methods Longitudinal Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a useful paper which makes a valuable contribution to the field.  There is an interesting discussion of the method of coding which will be useful more widely.

The paper is well written and argued.

My one concern is around the anonymity of the school in question - the number of pupils reported is quite large; this, in conjunction with the name of the University (redacted for this review but to be adde before publication) might make the school identifiable -I would suggest that the number of pupils be redacted and just suggest that this is a 'very large primary school' - the same should be considered in relation to the ethnic minorities in the school - highlight the mix of students but perhaps not the exact proportions.

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript and many thanks for raising the important point related to ensuring the school cannot be identified. We have removed the reference to 600 pupils and changed the exact percentage of ethnic minorities to ‘around half’.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for this highly relevant and impactful paper. The issue of parental engagement is critical in providing opportunities for all children to be able to access the best education possible and reach their potential. This is particularly salient in the post Covid-19 era where is it anticipated that without intervention the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their wealthier peers could take a decade to pre-pandemic levels. 

Introduction: A strong critical reflection of the current literature on parental engagement, drawing on international contribution when referring to Covid-19.

Method: Strong justification for case study design and valuable reflection about responding to the constraints faced by teachers. I particularly enjoyed the thorough explanation of the qualitative analysis process. 

Results: Results show the benefit of a mixed methods design, identifying the consistencies and contractions within the data. 

 

Discussion: Clear and thorough discussion, addressing the complexities of perceptions around parental engagement. I found the prevalence of a deficit approach to parents, particularly interesting and would be interested to further understand the prejudices and stereotypes that inform this perspective in future research.  

 

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript and provide feedback. We are pleased that you found the paper interesting and that you felt each section was strong without requiring amendments.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper. It is a timely study with the potential to be published. However, I have indicated some points that should be considered to strengthen the paper.

Introduction - The introduction presents a vague roadmap of what the reader should expect from the paper. From reading the title and the abstract, I’m under the impression that the focus of the article is “teachers’ perceptions of parental engagement,” such focus is unclear as the intro says a lot about “parental’s perspective supportive their children’s learning from home” but not much about “the teachers’ perceptions of parental engagement”. It reads like the question in the title, “Have teachers’ perceptions of parental engagement changed following COVID-19?” has been ignored. I would suggest a rewrite of the intro, making it clearer what the paper's focus is and offering a roadmap clearly highlighting the paper's main points.

Literature review - Overall, most of the paper references are from pre-pandemic. Since many studies about the topic have been published between 2020-2022 and are not acknowledged by the author, I would suggest updating some of the references to more recent ones, which could substantially strengthen the paper. For instance, in Line 59: “Despite the weight of evidence supporting a move away from school-centric definitions of parental engagement, " one reference (dated 2010) supports the claim.

As a reader, I found the literature review is quite problematic and outdated. I would suggest a re-write looking at what more recent research has said about the topic. The literature could also be expanded as it seems to provide only Western European perspectives or study samples. That limits the perception of how the authors look at the topic worldwide, which can be detrimental to the paper as we have so much literature on parental home learning engagement during school lockdowns.

The authors also need to define what they may do by “home-learning” in the study's parameters.

Discussion - The discussion section (p. 653) should be reviewed after the update on the literature review as it stands now, recent studies may present a different perspective on the topic that the authors may have neglected and compromise the overall credibility of the paper.

 

 

The introduction paragraph and the literature review should be re-rewritten to address some content issues. However, regarding the quality of the English language, I'd suggest final proofreading.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf