Teachers' experiences of parental involvement in a digital era

The aim of this study is to explore teachers’ experiences of parental involvement in a digital era and its impact on their work environment. The research question guiding the study is: How do teachers describe their use of digital technologies in communication with parents and in relation to different boundary strategies? Data were generated through 17 in-depth interviews with teachers. The theoretical foundation informing the study is Rosa’s theory of social acceleration (Rosa, 2003). A central point is that digitization and the growing reliance on digital technologies in daily activities are significant game-changers for education and for educational research (Säljö, 2018). Digitization has significantly altered the communicational landscape, making interaction and information distribution more complex (Jewitt, 2011). This aligns with Rosa’s argument that technological acceleration leads to social change acceleration, which in turn impacts the “pace of life” (Rosa, 2003, p. 12). Consequently, this also affects parent’s communication with teachers, parental involvement and how teachers handle parental contacts (Alieva, 2021; Hedlin & Frank, 2022; Krumsvik et al., 2016). Preliminary results highlight teachers’ nuanced descriptions of handling parents’ communication and involvement in a digital era, addressing both challenges and opportunities in relation to their work environment. The challenges seem to be related to the impact of digital technologies on the boundary between work and leisure time – for some teachers, it has become blurred. Meanwhile, other teachers’ use digital technologies to uphold a strict boundary between work and leisure time. Furthermore, there is a noted difference in how parents use digital technologies. A significant issue is that some parents lack “BankID” a simple electronic form of identification required to log in to digital platforms. As a result, these parents are limited in their ability to be involved in their children’s education because they cannot access all the available information.