Understanding Parent’s Experiences in Home-Based Learning for Children with Special Needs: A Phenomenological Inquiry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11594/ijmaber.07.09.13Keywords:
Children and Youth with Special Needs, Coping Mechanisms, Home-Based Learning, Parental Challenges, Parental PerceptionAbstract
Home-based programs can be useful in educating and developing children and youth with special needs when specialized educational and therapeutic services are geographically distant, financially burdensome or limited. In Ilocos Sur, families may face challenges in terms of distance, transportation, connectivity and access to specialized services and parents play a major role in supporting learning at home. This qualitative phenomenological study investigated the perceptions of ten parents on home-based learning, their challenges in implementing it and coping mechanisms to address educational, emotional and caregiving demands. The researcher developed a semi-structured interview guide in English, Tagalog and Iloko and the data collected were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Seven themes emerged: (1) home-based learning as a constrained but responsive and child-centered educational alternative, (2) parental attunement and the reframing of progress toward functional development, (3) the convergence of teaching, caregiving, livelihood, and time demands, (4) material, geographic, technological, and service-related inequities, (5) learning negotiated through emotional and behavioral readiness, (6) meaning-focused resilience through acceptance, patience, faith, and recognition of small gains, and (7) distributed and adaptive coping through routines, family cooperation, play-based strategies, peer connection, and professional guidance. Parents valued the comfort, flexibility, close monitoring, individualized pace and opportunities at home for developing communication, self-care and daily living skills. These benefits, however, were coupled with role overload, fatigue, limited learning resources, poor connectivity, distant services, child refusal and uncertainty about suitable teaching strategies.
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Data Availability Statement
The data supporting the findings of this study are not publicly available due to ethical and confidentiality considerations involving the study participants. Anonymized data may be made available by the corresponding author upon reasonable request and subject to applicable ethical and institutional requirements.
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