Abstract

Objectives

The study offers a socio-legal typology of how parents and teachers facilitate or hinder the protection of elementary school children in the online world. It expands the literature about children in the online world as it applies conceptual frameworks grounded in socio-legal theories and children’s rights and contributes to the relatively scant scholarship addressing elementary school children. The study triangulates data from children, parents, and teachers and thus provides a robust perspective of adults’ role in protecting children’s online rights. This perspective is particularly important with regard to young children, whose social world is typically confined to their school.

Literature Review

Conceptual Framework: Rights Consciousness and Rights Mobilization

The term rights consciousness describes the capacity to name injuries and difficulties as a violation of rights (Merry, 2003; Morrill et al., 2010). It is the first step in the legal mobilisation process, which refers to the ways people use the legal system to solve their problems (Fleury-Steiner & Nielsen, 2006). Felstiner, Abel, and Sarat (1980) conceptualized three steps in this process: naming obstacles as rights’ violations, blaming the offender for the victim’s condition, and claiming rights. Various studies have indicated that rights consciousness and mobilisation of rights are intertwined with knowledge about rights (McCann, 2006; Merry, 2003) and previous experiences of rights (Morrill et al., 2010; Nielsen, 2015).

Adults have a crucial role in inculcating children’s rights consciousness. They can provide knowledge about rights, adopt practices enabling the experience of rights, and ensure emotional support facilitating the naming of rights (Author 2, 2021a, 2021b). Adults may also facilitate or hinder children’s rights mobilization process.

Educators’ Involvement in Students’ Online Behaviour

Most studies on educators’ involvement in their students’ online behaviour have focused on educators’ knowledge about students’ online behaviour and about the policies and practices that may facilitate addressing online injury. These studies have shown that educators lack knowledge about students’ online behaviour and, despite their concerns about online injury, they lack sufficient tools to address this problem or are unaware of the available tools (Cassidy, Brown, & Jackson., 2012; Young, Tully, & Ramirez, 2017). Only few studies have examined educators’ responses to online injuries incurred by their students. DeSmet et al. (2015) identified four clusters of educators who address cases of cyberbullying. The referrers seek help from professionals; the disengaged donot view cyberbullying as a problem; the concerned provide support, initiate conversations, and share their concerns with parents; and the use all means use all existing methods to address cyberbullying. Stauffer et al. (2012) found that teachers do not routinely report to parents about online violence despite their belief that parental involvement is the best preventive strategy.

Parents’ Involvement in Their Children Online World

Studies have shown parents to be unfamiliar with their children’s online lives and routinely underestimate their children’s exposure to online risks (Cassidy et al., 2012; [Goldstein, 2015). Studies have also shown that parental involvement plays a significant role in protecting their children online (Elsaesser et al., 2017(. An increasing number of parents use technological techniques to control and monitor their children’s online use with or without their children’s approval (Boyd, 2014; Wright, 2016). Some parents also applied non-technological limits, such as restricting children’s online hours (Valcke et al. 2010). Another parental approach involves collaborative strategies such as shared online use and dialogue (Boyd, 2014; Elsaesser et al., 2017; Wright, 2016).

Methods The research employed a qualitative research methodology and relied on data collected from children, parents, and teachers. It was conducted in four Jewish secular schools characterized by low and high SES. Two of the schools – A and B – represent high SES, and the other two – C and D – represent low SES. Twenty individual semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with 75 children, aged 8 to 12, recruited from third to sixth-grade classes (17–20 children from each school, totaling 34 boys and 41 girls). Eighteen interviews were conducted in focus groups, comprised of about four children each, and two other interviews were conducted individually during the local Covid-19 lockdowns. Seventeen of the children’s interviews took place at their respective schools, and three were conducted via Zoom when schools were closed due to Covid-19. We asked the children general questions regarding their life in the online world and specific questions focusing on various types of online rights infringements. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 homeroom teachers of 3rd-6th graders (five teachers from each school) and 15 parents of 3rd-6th graders (3-4 parents from each school). All the interviews were conducted individually. The teachers were interviewed in person within their respective schools. Nine parents were interviewed in person at their homes, and six were interviewed via Zoom during the local Covid-19 lockdowns. We asked the teachers and parents general questions regarding their involvement in children’s online world, specifically whether and how they address online rights infringements. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. We also collected and analysed documents, such as school codes, classroom codes, and teaching materials. The research procedures were approved by the Ministry of Education (approval no. 10674) and by the IRB of our university (approval no. 452/18). The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed by Dedoose software. The initial coding of the interviews sought to identify patterns of adult responses to online rights infringements. To ensure reliability, each author reviewed the transcripts independently and suggested categories. The conclusions were similar, and disagreements were resolved in a joint discussion. The data analysis revealed a distinction between restricting rights, mobilizing rights, fostering rights consciousness, and waiving rights. During the second round of categorization, we refined the categories and added subcategories.

Conclusions The findings identified four patterns of adult practices: restricting children’s rights, mobilizing children’s rights in cases of rights infringements, fostering children’s rights consciousness, and waiving children’s rights. Using this rights terminology is important for several reasons. First, it labels practices that should be applied with caution, as they restrict children’s online rights and thus should be embedded in principles of proportionality. Second, adopting the rights terminology highlights the moral justifications for mobilizing online rights and fostering children’s rights consciousness concerning the online world. Third, using the rights terminology to analyze adults’ roles highlights that adults’ ignorance of online injuries results in waiving children’s rights. Such ignorance keeps injuries unaddressed. Fourth, our socio-legal analysis of different patterns of adult behaviors in fulfilling children’s rights facilitates characterizing practices whose implications differ, although they can be concurrent. For example, inspecting the children’s mobile phones and conducting a dialogue with the child during the inspection constrains children’s rights but also fosters their rights consciousness. Parents and teachers have different roles in protecting young children’s online rights, and in many aspects, their roles are complementary. Whereas parents are better positioned to obtain information about online rights infringements, teachers are better positioned to rectify the injury through inducing conversations between the children involved in online conflicts. Adults’ crucial role in protecting young children in the online world was also evident in the participant children’s perceptions of practices that protected their online rights. They praised teachers who routinely discussed online behavior in the classroom, perceived such discussions as a manifestation of caring, and noted their effectiveness. Yet, children were critical of ineffective and under-enforced restrictions as well as limits imposed by teachers regarding opening WhatsApp groups that are unrelated to school. Children also fiercely criticized adults who do not address online injuries, preferring to waive their rights.

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