Session Information
15 SES 02 A, Research on partnerships in education
Paper Session
Contribution
Consistent and transparent communication is essential in education for parental engagement, partnership, and trust in schools. Modern educational communication is vastly digitalized, which makes it fast, clear, and efficient, but it often lacks context, may be too general, or does not correspond with parental needs, leading to mistrust. Though trust is considered a foundation for parent-school partnerships, it remains underexplored in academic research, often being treated as a peripheral factor rather than a central subject of study.
Parent-school trust is considered as a result of parental engagement and partnership in education, when educational institutions and their representatives are competent and professional, act in the legal framework, and share with parents common educational goals (Bormann et al., 2021). Some researchers underline, that trust is situational and results from consistent, understandable and caring behavior of teachers, school principals and other educators (Hoy & Tschannen-Moran, 1999). Though parent-teacher trust may depend on social and cultural background (Ross et al., 2018), it is affected by the quality of communication and availability of educational information (Neuenschwander, 2020) and also by the communication channels and instruments (Hamm & Mousseau, 2023).
Digital communication can prevent inequality and improve access to the high-quality education (Bosch et al., 2017), increase availability of educational opportunities (Kraft, 2017). Many parents even prefer digital communication to the face-to-face contact (Bordalba & Bochaca, 2019), as it is prompt and efficient, gives opportunities to be heard (Bosch et al., 2017), and participate as real partners in education (Kuusimäki et al., 2019). Digital tools and resources vary depending on the purpose of communication or information-seeking (Hutchison et al., 2020), availability and promotion of certain instruments (González et al., 2022), and familiarity with them (Laho, 2019) and include e-mail and messengers (Bosch et al., 2017), scool formal and informal web-sites and school social media (Bosch et al., 2017), education resources, and special tools and mobile applications (Yavich & Davidovitch, 2021).
But with the opportunities come the drawbacks. To ensure parental trust to schools and education, digital tools and resources must be familiar to parents and user-friendly (González et al., 2022). If the resources or applications are not abligatory to use, and parents face technical problems, they are more likely to qiut using these resources or even cut off regular communication with school (González et al., 2022; Laho, 2019). If parents are obliged to use certain resources, and face technical and other problems, it may have greater negative impact on the parental trust.
Thus studying parental experience with different digital education resources and instruments is vital for understanding how parental trust to schools is build. Our work surveys how the digital resources as a part of parent-school communication, affect parental trust.
Method
The quantative research sample consisted of 16,535 parents (15409 female, 944 male) with school-attending children studying in primary and secondary schools of the Moscow city. The research questionnaire compiled by the authors included 88 questions about familiarity, usage and satisfaction with digital resources and tools; parental perception and trust to the school; personal data. The questionaire also included screens of surveyed web-resources. The data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling.
Expected Outcomes
We found several factors that contributed to the parental trust to the school: the level of parental familiarity with digital resources; average frequency of resources usage; technical problems during usage of these resources; satisfaction with these resources; difficulties or conflicts with school. The parental satisfaction with using digital resources positevly mediated trust to the school, when parents were familiar with these resources, did not face technical problems and were satisfied with them, and had no conflicts with school. Conflicts or problems in school negatively affected both satisfaction with digital resources and parental trust to the school and education system in the whole. The results show that digital resources help parents engage with the school system, when they provide needed educational information in account with parents’ and students’ needs. The positive experience in using digital resources promotes parental engagement in education and acts as a mediator, mitigating previous negative experiences in parent-school relationship.
References
Bordalba, M. M., & Bochaca, J. G. (2019). Digital media for family-school communication? Parents’ and teachers’ beliefs. Computers and Education, 132, 44–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.COMPEDU.2019.01.006 Bormann, I., Killus, D., Niedlich, S., & Würbel, I. (2021). Home–School Interaction: A Vignette Study of Parents’ Views on Situations Relevant to Trust. European Education, 53(3–4), 137–151. https://doi.org/10.1080/10564934.2022.2081084 Bosch, S., Bosch, N., Cline, K., Hochhalter, S., & Rieland, A. (2017). The Effects of Parent-Teacher Communication using Digital Tools in Early Elementary and Middle School Classrooms. Masters of Arts in Education Action Research Papers Education, 12–2017. González, S. C., Belduma, K. T., & Jumbo, F. T. (2022). Las TICs, la enseñanza y la alfabetización digital de la familia. Transformación, 18(1), 94–113. https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/949dc2e7-78ce-3158-b6c5-07d47d2ba111/ Hamm, J. E., & Mousseau, A. D. S. (2023). Predicting Parent Trust Based on Professionals’ Communication Skills. Education Sciences, 13(4). https://doi.org/10.3390/EDUCSCI13040350 Hoy, W. K., & Tschannen-Moran, M. (1999). Five Faces of Trust: An Empirical Confirmation in Urban Elementary Schools. Https://Doi.Org/10.1177/105268469900900301, 9(3), 184–208. https://doi.org/10.1177/105268469900900301 Hutchison, K., Paatsch, L., & Cloonan, A. (2020). Reshaping home–school connections in the digital age: Challenges for teachers and parents. Https://Doi.Org/10.1177/2042753019899527, 17(2), 167–182. https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753019899527 Kraft, M. A. (2017). Engaging parents through better communication systems. Educational Leadership, 75(1), 58–62. Kuusimäki, A. M., Uusitalo-Malmivaara, L., & Tirri, K. (2019). Parents’ and Teachers’ Views on Digital Communication in Finland. Education Research International. https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/8236786 Laho, N. S. (2019). Enhancing School-Home Communication Through Learning Management System Adoption: Parent and Teacher Perceptions and Practices. School Community Journal, 29(1), 117–142. http://www.schoolcommunitynetwork.org/SCJ.aspx Neuenschwander, M. P. (2020). Information and Trust in Parent-Teacher Cooperation –Connections with Educational Inequality. Central European Journal of Educational Research, 2(3), 19–28. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.37441/CEJER/2020/2/3/8526 Ross, L. L., Marchand, A. D., Cox, V. O., & Rowley, S. J. (2018). Racial identity as a context for African American parents’ school trust and involvement and the impact on student preparation and persistence. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 55, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.CEDPSYCH.2018.07.003 Yavich, R., & Davidovitch, N. (2021). The Effect of Assimilating Learning Management Systems on Parent Involvement in Education. World Journal of Education, 11(3), 60–72. https://doi.org/10.5430/wje.v11n3p60
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