Social Media Invitations and Parents’ Psychological Motivators for Involvement

Rapid and unprecedented changes to family life in the technological era have left many parents feeling unable to effectively participate in their child’s educational journey. The current study aims at examining the relationship between parent perceptions of social media-based contextual invitations from the child, the teacher, and the school and parents' psychological motivations for involvement including role-activity construction as well as their self-efficacy to make a difference in their child’s scholastic journey in Moroccan public schools. A sample comprising 214 students’ parents (N214) of grades 1 through 12 from both urban and rural areas were invited to participate in an online survey. The survey adapted the pre-validated and revised versions of scales used by Walker et al. (2005) to apply Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s (1995, 1997) model of the parent involvement process. The results of a Spearman Rho correlation test revealed a positive correlation between parent perceptions of social media-based contextual invitations from the child, the teacher, and the school and parents' psychological motivations for involvement. This finding indicates that the use of social media networks may represent an efficacious emerging strategy to surmount some psychological setbacks to parental involvement. Furthermore, this finding extends Keyes’ (2000) seminal work, where she identified communication as the central aspect of Epstein’s typology of the parent involvement process. Results, as well as implications, are discussed herein, in addition to suggestions for practices that may enhance parent involvement in their child's scholastic experience. Keywords: Parent psychological motivations, home-school communication, social media networks, students’ achievement. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/13-12-05 Publication date: April 30 th 2022