Using an online social media space to engage parents in student learning in the early-years - Enablers and impediments

Oct 15, 2026

Unprecedented changes to family life have left many parents unable to participate effectively in school-based learning. This study explores enablers and impediments when using social media within an inquiry curriculum to promote parent engagement in an Australian early-years school. Collaborative inquiry methods collected data from two early-years teachers, students, and parents via surveys, a full-day meeting, online weekly meetings, interviews, and the Seesaw platform. Rogoff’s sociocultural planes and the agency|structure dialectic frame the analysis.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Literature Review

Using an online social media space to engage parents in student learning in the early-years: Enablers and impediments Linda-Dianne Willis [l.willis@uq.edu.au](l.willis@uq.edu.au) The University of Queensland Beryl Exley [b.exley@griffith.edu.au](b.exley@griffith.edu.au) Griffith University Abstract Unprecedented changes to family life in the new millennium have left many parents feeling unable to effectively participate in their child’s school-based learning. This article presents research which explored enablers and impediments when using social media as part of an inquiry curriculum to promote parent engagement in student learning in one Australian school. Using collaborative inquiry research, various data were collected from two early-years teachers, their students, and the students’ parents using surveys, a full-day meeting, online weekly meetings, interviews, and the social media digital platform of Seesaw . Rogoff’s three interrelated planes of sociocultural analysis – personal, interpersonal, and community – were used to examine participant interactions and their effects. The agency|structure dialectic provided a conceptual lens to further explain how the social media apparatus of Seesaw enabled learning and teaching. The findings showed that access to forms of language needed to contribute to online social media spaces drew attention to the importance of teachers having atthe ready a substantive knowledge of inquiry. Implications for future research are discussed. Keywords agency|structure dialectic; digital technologies; early-years; inquiry curriculum ; parentschool engagement L.D. Willis & B.Exley Digital Education Review-Number 33, June 2018-[http://greav.ub.edu/der/](http://greav.ub.edu/der/) 87 I. Introduction There has been overwhelming research evidence for more than the past half century that not only student learning and wellbeing but also school improvement are positively linked to parent 1 engagement (see Epstein, 1995; Fan & Chen, 2001; González & Jackson, 2013; Henderson & Berla, 1995; Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2005; Jeynes, 2005, 2011; Lightfoot, 1978, 2003 ; Pushor, 2001; Willis, 2013) . Continual, complex, and rapid societal change in the digital age has also positively impacted the lives of parents, altering the possibilities of how, when, and if parents, schools, and teachers connect about student learning. The widespread use of digital technologies as teaching tools in schools attests to their benefits for teaching and student learning. The adoption of new technologies for communicating quickly, conveniently, and variously with parents (e.g., through email, text messaging [SMS], and online social media platforms such as Facebook), also signals their potential for strengthening connections across settings such as home and school. Yet, despite the promised advantages of digital technologies for enhanced home-school relations, some parents have experienced a decrease in confidence for participating in their children’s learning at home (Peters, Seeds, Goldstein, & Coleman, 2007) . The purpose of this article is to probe how using social media both enabled and impeded parent engagement in student learning. The article presents research in which two early-years teachers, their students, and the students’parents from one Australian school participated in inquiry curriculum using the social media digital platform, Seesaw. The article describes what is meant by parent-school engagement ; reviews the relevant literature ; and outlines the research methodology and methods . This research outline includes the use of Rogoff’s (1995) three interrelated planes of sociocultural analysis to examine participant interactions and the agency|structure dialectic (Sewell, 1992) to further conceptualise the findings . The enablers and impediments of using Seesaw to facilitate parent engagement in inquiry curriculum are explored and discussed under the headings of Rogoff’s three planes of analysis

FAQs

What is the article’s goal regarding social media and parent engagement?

To examine how using social media enables and impedes parent engagement in students’ learning through an inquiry curriculum.

How was the research conducted?

Collaborative inquiry research gathered data from two early-years teachers, students, and parents using surveys, meetings, interviews, and the Seesaw social media platform.

Which analytical frameworks are used to interpret interactions?

Rogoff’s three interrelated planes of sociocultural analysis (personal, interpersonal, and community) and the agency|structure dialectic are used to analyze participant interactions and their effects.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by mieayamfan