Promoting Home-to-School Connections in the Digital Age

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted education across all levels and resulted in many students completing their academic studies remotely in their home settings. Many K-12 schools have also restructured their educational approaches to be more inclusive of technology (e.g., Google Chromebooks) to allow for swift campus closures and to close the digital divides found across their districts. Although an increased number of children were completing their learning digitally in the 2020-2021 academic school year, homeschooling is not a novel phenomenon. Pre-pandemic there were approximately three percent of children who were homeschooled (Shaw, 2020). However, as a result of the impact and health concerns associated with COVID-19, the number of children completing their education via homeschooling or remotely has skyrocketed and substantially increased (Eggleston & Fields, 2021; Prothero & Samuels, 2020; Shaw, 2020; Wamsley, 2021; Weiss & García, 2020). The Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) defined digital learning as “any instructional practice that effectively uses technology to strengthen a student's learning experience and encompasses a wide spectrum of tools and practices ” (p. 1969). As conveyed by the Every Student Succeeds Act, digital instruction includes:

Children who are completing their education digitally or remotely during global pandemics still need to feel connected to their schools. Furthermore, families with students enrolled in brick and mortar schools want opportunities to communicate with their child’s teachers. Particularly, home and school connections are considered a key attribute to students’ academic success. Although these connections are essential and vital to students’ educational growth, researchers have found that family engagement and connections to teachers are a major challenge (Cucchiara, 2018; Daniel et al., 2016; Hutchison et al., 2020; Jacques & Villegas, 2018; Kuusimäki et al., 2019). As a result, schools should aim to develop strong relationships with families in order to improve communication channels and to determine how to implement effective practices for supporting students’ learning. Strengthening support between schools and families is vital for the development of positive attitudes for remote learning and the development of dispositions that maximize academic growth (Darling-Hammond & Cook-Harvery, 2018; Kaufman, n.d.; OECP, 2020). Essentially, schools and caregivers can effectively use technological tools that provide varied levels of support for student progress and knowledge acquisition (Bergman & Chan, 2017; Gauvreau & Sandall, 2017; Gillen & Kucirkova, 2018; Minero, 2017; Office of Educational Technology, n.d.; Smythe-Leistico & Page, 2018). These technological tools bolster cooperation between teachers and families with remote and brick and mortar students.