Role conflicts at home: a qualitative case study on college students' online learning during COVID-19 based on the social role theory

The outbreak of COVID-19 at the end of 2019 led to large-scale online learning at home among college students. Because of the overlap between being a student and other roles when they are at home, students need to play a variety of roles. With the social role theory as the theoretical framework, this qualitative case study had an in-depth investigation on seven college students' current self-role and current learning situation at home during COVID-19. The findings highlighted that college students mainly faced the following three role conflicts: the conflicts caused by difficulties in adapting to multiple roles, the conflicts caused by different role expectations on their behaviours, and the conflicts caused by insufficient role comprehension on role cognition. This study also revealed that these role conflicts would have a certain negative impact on college students' learning and living. However, college students had positive attitudes towards the role conflicts and challenges. They still worked hard to overcome role conflicts, positively took the family and social responsibilities, and tried to realise their own values when fighting against the pandemic. Implications are discussed in detail.