Parental e-nvolvement: a phenomenological research on electronic parental involvement

Abstract

This phenomenological study explored parental e-nvolvement (or electronic parental involvement), defined as parental efforts to plan, engage in, support, monitor and/or assess the learning experiences of their children either at home or at school predominantly using technological devices and media. Data were gathered from 23 volunteering parents through semi-structured interviews. The findings suggested that most parents use or have their children use a variety of technologies with tablets, computers, (smart)phones, and internet taking the lead. Participating parents used technology to have their children study, make practice on or repeat what they have learned at school, to help them prepare research projects, homework or presentations, and to communicate with teachers, schools and other parents. The pros of parental e-nvolvement mainly included enabling parents to supervise their children in terms of academic, personal or social well-being; increasing technology literacy; enabling easy and quick access to information sources; enhancing learner autonomy and academic achievement. Cons included mainly the risk of exposure to inconvenient websites/content; technology addiction; and making the child antisocial. Finally, different strategies to parents use to prevent their children from the harms and risks during parental e-nvolvement were presented and discussed.