Can Technology Drive Parental Engagement?

There is a raft of benefits, with positive effects on students’ behaviour, motivation, attendance and achievement. What’s more, a parent’s engagement with their first child’s learning also brings benefits for siblings.

Creating a digital connection

Technology is the perfect medium for parents to become more involved in their child’s education. In many ways, creating a digital connection with all parents and carers (the hard-to-reach group included) can be easier than trying to encourage face-to-face interaction.

During the pandemic, parents had to take on a much more active role in supporting learning at home. It wasn’t easy. Nor was it for educators, who had to adapt with lightning speed to delivering lessons, activities and resources online. However, a valuable lesson they learned in technology terms over this time is that ‘less is more’ and becoming familiar with just a couple of EdTech tools and then using them to their full capability is much more productive than using multiple solutions for different activities.

Simple is best

The notion of accessibility extends to parents supporting learning at home, too, whether during the pandemic or simply to assist with homework. Either way, access to online resources needs to be easy or learning won’t happen. Teachers understand this well and some are continuing the activities they started during lockdowns; sharing resources and video exemplars directly from their school website or uploading videos of stories and activities to YouTube for parents and children to watch together.

Technology also delivers flexibility, meaning that the learning resources supplied by the class teacher can be used and accessed at different times. It’s perfect for homework assignments and allows the parents and children to better engage with activities perhaps during the evening or at the weekend when there is less pressure and more time to explore them together. In addition, having these as prompts to talk about what is being learned is so valuable for parents. It allows them to engage with and support their child as they learn – and involves them to a greater degree than if their child were learning solely at school.