Abstract
Parents, who have important roles in the education of the individual, have increased the stakeholder role in the emergency remote teaching (ERT) process of the COVID-19 Pandemic. In order to explore parents’ experiences, phenomenology, one of the qualitative research designs, was employed in this study. For the purpose of determining the study group, convenience sampling, which is among the purposeful sampling types, was adopted. Interview method and semi-structured interview protocol were operated to collect data. Content analysis method was executed to discover the relations between the themes, categories and codes. Data analysis revealed that the parents experienced psychological, physical and social challenges, and sudden transition caused challenges related to technology literacy. Parents reported an increase in undesirable behaviors such as screen addiction and sleep disorders in their children who had to stay home for a long time. They stated that they could not balance the role of teacher and parenting in the ERT process. Parents stated that they tried to provide a suitable learning environment at home in order to support the education of their children who lost their motivation to learn in this process, but that their children had learning deficiencies and they were worried about the decrease in their academic success. In addition, it was stated that there was an increase in communication and cooperation between children and parents who had the opportunity to spend time together. Although the communication and cooperation of the parents with the school administration weakened, it was observed that there were positive developments in the communication and cooperation with the teachers.