The role of social media products in parent involvement: From the perspective of parents and teachers on communication

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Temel Eğitim Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2018

Öğrenci: TUBA MUMCU

Danışman: HASİBE ÖZLEN DEMİRCAN

Özet:

The aim of this study was to examine the use of social media products in parent-teacher communication in the early childhood education period from preschool teachers’ and pre-schoolers parents’ perspectives. More specifically, this study explored what preschool teachers and parents think about the use of social media products in communication as an aspect of parent involvement, are there any differences in their opinions, and do some demographic variables influence this issue? The views of participants were gathered through asking open-ended questions using semi-structured interview forms prepared by the researcher. Participants in the study were 14 preschool teachers and 14 pre-schoolers’ parents, half of whom were recruited from private preschools and the other half from public ones. As a result of the qualitative analysis, variety of categories were reached. These are accessibility, immediacy, simplicity, privacy & minimal exposure, being in popular use by teachers and parents, overexposure to teachers’ personal life, working as a team, writing message, calling, time saving, being free of charge and information exchange, off topic messages, parents’ high expectation, satisfaction, being practical, necessity. Findings also revealed that there are some points in which public preschool teachers and private preschool teachers shared the same and/or similar opinions for interview questions. But, there were also some points the two groups shared different opinions for the interview questions. The situation is same for pre-schoolers’ parents. Although public and private pre-schoolers’ parents had same and/or similar views for some issues, they had different views for some issues.