Parent Chats as Part of the Digital Educational Environment

Modern education increasingly includes a digital component. However, in addition to the obvious digital platforms and resources, there is an extensive communicative near-educational environment. Parent chats are an interesting phenomenon of the digital age, reflecting the greater involvement of parents in their children's schooling. Based on a netnographic analysis of more than 200 screens of parental polylogues in various messengers, conclusions were drawn about the high conflict potential of chats. Chat participants are sometimes teachers, but in this case, instead of a multi-polar discussion, the chat becomes bipartite teacher-parents one. Schoolchildren themselves participate in chats indirectly, often acting as sources of information about what is happening at school. The most common topics covered in the screenshots are homework and organizational issues, many of which came to the fore during the communication about distance learning during the start of the pandemic. Features of the style and form of communication of individual chat participants can also cause irritation. Chats can potentially be a relay of existing problems and a source of school change, however, in fact, parents can rarely effectively agree on even minor organizational issues.

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