The closure of schools because of the COVID-19 pandemic created a challenge for families and teachers in supporting children’s remote schooling. This study investigates parents’ perspectives on their accommodation to the rapid change to remote schooling from the point of view of sustainable education. The study was conducted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020 via an online questionnaire for parents, to which 316 voluntary participants responded. Data were analyzed using a theory-driven content analysis. According to the results, parents were worried about the learning and wellbeing of their children as well as management of daily life and use of information and communications technology (ICT). The results show the importance of schools and teachers as well as networks in supporting family resilience during rapid changes. Families’ individual needs should be acknowledged and met in a sustainable way to support children’s learning in changing settings, including remote schooling.

This study describes how parents experience their role in enhancing the well-being of their children and what this reveals about parental agency in the context of collaborations between home and school. In Finland, schools are among the most important environments for delivering services to children. The goal of this study is to bring into focus the parental dispositions in multi-agency interactions based on their experiences and to make sense of both their successes and the barriers they face. The Finnish education system aims to develop itself according to the inclusive principles. However, the inclusive school culture is still a work in progress. The parental agency and positions in collaboration with school personnel are ambivalent, and there are several assets and barriers that affect their ability to participate fully in discussions about the well-being of their children at school. In this article, the parental positions are connected to situations where they negotiate the process of collaborative planning of support for the learning and well-being of their children in the school environment. Participants are 13 mothers and one couple, mother and father. Their experiences are analyzed qualitatively via interviews and the concept of agency, a sociological concept that refers to the mutual relation between a culture or structure and the opportunities of human agents to interact within the given contexts. The results reveal qualitative differences in the experienced parental agency. The parental agency is connected to the given opportunities, and the key role in making the agency possible in the schools is given for the teachers. Behind everyday practices, there are deeper questions about the parental positions and their value in collaboration.

This study examined science capital among Finnish adults ( N = 1572), who responded to 37 survey items assessing science capital. Factor analysis suggested four science capital dimensions: visiting science-related places, science attitudes, science-related self-efficacy, and early support for studying natural sciences. Higher education and higher parental education were linked to higher science capital across all dimensions. Older participants exhibited lower science-related self-efficacy, less early support, and more negative science attitudes than younger respondents. Age and education were stronger predictors of science-related self-efficacy and early encouragement for men than women, and mothers’ education had a weaker effect on science-related self-efficacy for men. The results show that science capital is a multidimensional construct and highlights that younger generations in Finland have had more opportunities to develop their science capital. These findings emphasize the need for early and equitable support to foster positive science attitudes and participation.

Actions to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as emergency remote teaching (ERT), affected the lives of school children, their parents, and schooling in spring 2020. Rapid changes in routines due to lockdown and ERT were challenging, especially for many children with special needs (SEN). This article focuses on parents’ perspectives regarding their basic psychological needs, i.e. competence, autonomy, and relatedness, in relation to the schooling of their children with SEN. Questionnaire data consisted of the views of 120 parents who described 179 resources and 151 challenges concerning their basic psychological needs during ERT of their children. Data were analysed following the principles of theoretical categorising. According to the results, parents experienced their pedagogical as well as intra- and interpersonal competence as resources to support the child in ERT. The greatest challenges concerned relatedness between parents and children as well as between parents, school, and other professionals. The study suggests schools and teachers to develop instructions to support teacher–parent interaction and learning of all children to cope with ongoing and future remote and face-to-face teaching for children with SEN.