External support, such as that provided by parents, plays an important role in helping students in K-12 online education engage in their education and obtain academic success. The Academic Communities of Engagement (ACE) framework has been proposed as one way of conceptualizing the communities that support students, including the roles that parents and guardians play. Research studying parental support in online education could benefit from the structure offered from the ACE framework, but, due to the framework's novelty, it has not been widely applied in research. The first article in this thesis sought to use the ACE framework to synthesize past research on the roles parents take when they become involved in their students' online education. Results indicated that the framework has strong potential for understanding research on parental roles but that there are some roles discovered in the literature that do not fit cleanly in the framework. The second article further explored the ACE Framework's application in studying parental roles by interviewing parents in another context to understand their reported roles in supporting their students. Findings for this study further validated the usefulness of the ACE framework, but also exposed patterns in the roles not covered by the ACE framework. These patterns suggest looking at the ACE framework through a systems approach rather than an egocentric model.

Föräldrarollen, och upplevelserna av den, varierar alltid utifrån många olika faktorer. Under mitten av 1900-talet var den gällande familjenormen att mödrarna tog allt ansvar för hem och omsorg av barnen, medan fäderna stod för försörjningen. Fäderna gavs alltså bara en liten möjlighet att lära känna/knyta an till sina barn när de var små. Vilka effekter detta kan ha haft på relationen mellan fäderna och deras barn, då barnen blivit vuxna, är i stort sett ett outforskat område. Den här studien ämnar kunna belysa dessa. En kvalitativ studie genomfördes där ett antal äldre ensamstående fäder har intervjuats om deras upplevelser och erfarenheter av att vara småbarnsförälder under denna tid. Resultaten från intervjuerna, tillsammans med relevant teori, har gett oss insikt i och förståelse för hur deras situation såg ut då och hur de upplever deras dåvarande fadersroll samt deras nuvarande relationer med de nu vuxna barnen. De visade sig att alla de äldre fäderna som deltog i studien anser sig ha goda, och vad som ger intrycket av att vara kravlösa, relationer med sina nu vuxna barn. Detta trots deras vetskap om vissa försummelser av dem då de var små. Den dåvarande normen gällande familjeordning verkar inte ha haft någon negativ inverkan på just detta. / The parent role and the experiences of being a parent depends on many different factors. During the mid 20th century the standard family construction was that the mothers took on all responsibility regarding the household and caring for children while the fathers were in charge of the bread winning. The fathers were given very little opportunity to get to know/attach to their children when they were young. The effects this could have on the relationships between the fathers and their grownup children is a rather unexplored field. This study aims to elucidate this. A qualitative study was carried through where a number of elderly single fathers were interviewed concerning their experiences of being a parent to a small child during this era. The results from the interviews along with relevant theory have given us knowledge and understanding about their current situation, how they now experience the parent role they had then, as well as about the current relationships they have with their now adult children. It turned out that all the participating elderly fathers consider them selves to have good, and what gives the impression of being unconditioned, relationships with their adult children. Even though the fathers are well aware of the fact that they somehow did neglect their children when they were young. The standard family order that was the rule at the time does not seem to have had any negative effect on the relationships.