Parents’ Acceptance of Educational Technology: Lessons From Around the World

Abstract

One of the long-term lessons from the school closures due to the global pandemic COVID 19, is that technology and parental engagement are the best levers to access education so as to bridge the achievement gap between socially disadvantaged children and their peers. However, using technology is not as simple as bringing equipment into the school and home and initiating its usage; these are just the first steps into a more complex and ambitious achievement of using technology as a catalyst for a shift toward new learning models in remote and hybrid settings. A theoretical framework based on the theory of acceptance and use of technology and social cognitive learning theory was used to analyse data from a survey completed by 4,600 parents from 19 countries during the national lockdowns in 2020. Regression models and thematic analysis of open-ended responses were employed to identify factors that contribute to parental acceptance and use of technology in support of their children’s learning. Our results show that parents are more engaged in children’s learning when well-structured technological tools are provided or suggested by schools, and when parents are socially influenced by the opinions of other parents, teachers, children, the general public, relatives, etc. Conversely, they are less engaged when they perceive the technological tools to be challenging and beyond their knowledge or skills. The study’s findings have practical implications for governments and school leaders, who need to be aware of the factors likely to determine the use of technology at home and take action to meet parents’ needs when using technology to support learning.

Exploring the perception of parents on children’s screentime: a systematic review and meta-synthesis of qualitative studies

“…Our findings showed the growing parental acceptance of ST by their children. These findings are supported by Osorio-Saez, Eryilmaz, and Sandoval-Hernandez 55 who reported that with the ubiquitous availability of screen devices and growing interactive educational content offered by digital platforms, parents willingly provided their children with computers or tablets hoping it would encourage children's learning to acquire "essential skills" around technology use. 54 The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) proposes that an individual's intention to use technology subsequently is determined by performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and enabling conditions.…”

“… 56 Therefore, UTAUT explains that parental acceptance of ST for their children could be due to the perceived ease of use, social desirability, and influence that technology may have on their children’s learning and development. 55 Especially in the digital era, being technologically equipped is found to be important for academic and future job success, 55 which could further explain why parents in this review could have found ST as an imperative educational tool and hence were less likely to restrict ST on their children. Parents in this review were also found to use ST as a shared family activity to enhance parent-child relationships.…”

Factors Influencing Students’ Continuous Intentions for Using Micro-Lectures in the Post-COVID-19 Period: A Modification of the UTAUT-2 Approach

“…Before the pandemic, the development of this learning medium was not widely used as a supplement to improve students' understanding of new theories [24,25]. However, teachers were increasingly using micro-lectures in learning activities after the emergence of COVID-19, although video conferencing and other media had weaknesses within the country, such as a lack of virtual facilities or expensive internet prices [26][27][28]. This proves that micro-lectures are likely to essentially increase the usefulness of their effects and uses due to the pandemic situation, which forced the transformation of the learning approaches [29].…”

Parents’ and children's paradoxical perceptions of online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…Until recently, most studies on parents' and children's perceptions of online learning have been conducted separately using an ethical point of view. Existing research focuses primarily on online learning from the perspective of parents (Abuhammad, 2020;Agarwal and Kaushik 2020;Bast 2021;Bhagat, Wu, and Chang 2019;Lau & Lee, 2021;Muthuprasad et al, 2021;Ngurah & Laksana, 2020;Osorio-Saez et al, 2021;Zhang, 2021). Due to a dearth of research on online learning from both parents' and children's perspectives (Cui et al, 2021).…”