Possible school-parent partnerships : a case study on Hong Kong primary school parents’ major digital parenting concerns

Abstract

Trend of information technology in education is inevitably implemented to schools in face of the increasing demand of 21st century skills to be equipped for the school children these days, whereas more children possess their own digital devices for learning and leisure. Parents today are facing tremendous difficult parenting situation ever when they come to the issues of their children using digital devices at home. Some schools in Hong Kong start to adopt Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) in the past five years, it implies there are more schoolchildren personally own their digital devices like notebook computers and tablet computers and hence more parents are facing the problems of digital parenting – parenting related to children’s use of digital device. Hong Kong as a Chinese community, parents are being influenced by Confucianism and hence place high expectation on the schools. Many of them even expect the school to devise policies or certain intervention in help with parents’ stress on digital parenting. This paper is a case study of a local school which have recently started BYOD and in the midway of promoting digital literacy, through qualitative and quantitative research tools parents’ current digital parenting situation, their main concerns and expectation to school is identify and evaluated; which is followed by certain possible School-Parent Partnership Interventions based on the current situation of the school and parents’ major concerns of digital parenting being investigated. This research found that there are close interrelationships among digital gap, Confucianism, and parents’ major digital parenting concerns and hence their expectation from school. The relationships of these elements can help schools in devising their school policies, curriculum design and parents’ education.