Experiences and attitudes of students and their parents toward peer relationships and collaboration during the Covid-19 epidemic

Everyone of us is a social being going through the process of personal development and growth throughout their lives and does so in interaction with the environment, which with its cultural and historical backgrounds has a significant impact on each individual's development. There have been radical changes in this environment with the advent of the coronavirus, which spread worldwide in 2020. Restrictions on movement, social distance, a ban on group gathering in public areas, the closure of the various institutions and services that people visit and use daily are just some of them. The environment and social groups are of great importance to the individual, as their influences help him meet his needs daily, and at the same time have a significant impact on the development of personality. Establishing interaction with other people enables the process of socialization, which is a lifelong process and places the individual in the social and cultural world in which he lives. Without the process of socialization, society would not exist, and the individual would not form his identity, norms, and values. The inclusion of the individual in society satisfies the need for acceptance and belonging, and on the other hand allows him to develop his social self. School, whose primary purpose is to teach students, is at the same time a space of social relations and a protective factor for children. It offers individuals the opportunity to establish social contacts with peers and teachers, who help the child meet the need for love, acceptance and belonging, which helps increase the feeling of security and a more positive self-image or imagine about ourselves. In my master’s thesis, which is based on a quantitative research approach, I used a case study of one primary school. I obtained the data through an online survey. The research was based on purposeful, non-random sampling. Pupils from 6th to 9th grade of the France Bevk Primary School in Ljubljana and their parents took part in it. The main goal of the research was to investigate the experiences and attitudes of students and their parents regarding the perception of relationships and cooperation with peers during the Covid-19 epidemic and to compare them with each other. Research has shown that during the Covid-19 epidemic, students missed their friends very often and wanted to socialize with them very often as well. At the time when the schools were closed, the students of the France Bevk Primary School most often established contacts with their classmates, with whom they were in contact several times a day or every day. To establish contact with peers, on a daily basis students used correspondence or conversation in the digital world through social networks. According to students and their parents, relationships between classmates did not change significantly during the Covid-19 epidemic, while parents report that during that exact time, they observed in their children that they communicated to classmates more often per phone and more often socialized with them at their home or outside on the street, in the yard. The impact that the mentioned social contacts with peers had on them during the Covid-19 epidemic, both students and parents see equally, namely, that contacts with peers made students happy, reduced their feeling of loneliness, brightened their days, and made them more interesting. Parents’responses showed that most of them encouraged their children to establish and maintain contact with peers during the Covid-19 epidemic, while students reported the parents encouragingthem to do so only rarely or occasionally. Parents most often answered that they encouraged their children to socialize with their peers by meeting their friends on the playground oroutdoors, calling their friends on the phone or exercising with them (walking, cycling, running, etc.). France Bevk Primary School teachers encouraged collaboration with peers and other people once a month with the help of learning content, while the assignments were designed independently several times a week, in such a way that the students had to solve them on their own. According to students and their parents, during the Covid-19 epidemic, teachers prepared interesting lessons several times a week and motivated students just as often with prepared tasks and activities and were at reach for help and conversation every day during distance learning