Teachers’ Perceptions Regarding School Parents’ Online Groups

Abstract

The present study investigates Greek teachers’ perceptions regarding primary school and kindergarten parents’ online groups. More specifically, we aimed to obtain teachers’ perceptions regarding the online self-organization of students’ parents and the impact of online parental communication and information exchange to their teaching and school relationships. A quantitative study was conducted, using online questionnaires, with the participation of 246 primary school and kindergarten teachers in public and private sector. Our results indicate that teachers are skeptical and suspicious about parental online groups’ function. They believe that information circulated among parents is, most of the times, either fake or distorted and they do not hesitate to state that it helps nobody. Male teachers are better informed than female ones about the content of parental discussions and declare that they have been more often preoccupied with dealing with tensions occurring in online parental groups. Furthermore, private school teachers declare that parents frequently exchange information and gossip concerning teachers’ behavior and teaching, while public school teachers argue that sharing of this kind of information is rare within online parental groups. Moreover, teachers affirm that parental discussions in online groups over-expose school life, reinforce parents’ interventionism and contribute to parents’ hyper-information concerning school matters.

Keywords

• online parenting
• primary school teachers’ perceptions
• school parents’ online groups
• teacher-parent relationships
• parental involvement
• social media