Seesawing (dis)connections: Digital parent involvement in a culturally diverse school community

Abstract

As digitisation of home-school connectivity continues apace, nuanced understandings of the digital capabilities of parents are essential. Yet, there has been considerable homogeneity in the representations of parents, and deficit understandings of digital parental involvement with schools, especially in schools serving diverse and disadvantaged communities. The study reported here addressed these limitations of the extant research by asking how families in a case study school oriented to digital technology, how cultural and linguistic resources impacted home-school connections, and how a learning management system impacted digital inclusion in a diverse school community. Parent interviews were facilitated by interpreters, enabling participation of a culturally and linguistically diverse parent cohort.  Parents’ and teachers’ diverse perspectives were analysed. Informed by Actor Network theory, connections between humans and humans, and between humans and hon-human actors (digital and material), were mapped onto a network diagram. Findings show considerable digital engagement and aspiration on the part of parents, which was frustrated by English-only communications from teachers despite Seesaw’s multilingual affordances. We report teachers’ disappointment with low parental uptake of the digital learning management system, and the deficit thinking which led them to assume a lack of digital skills or knowledge. We suggest that such deficit thinking should be challenged by a critical approach which might involve teacher-parent dialogue. Although a learning management system is a technological actor, that actor must be understood within the full context of school-home connectivity, in which schools serve communities and have a responsibility for cultural and linguistic inclusion.