Motivating parents through class websites.

Abstract

Research shows that the effectiveness of two-way family-school communications positively relates to the amount and quality of parental involvement, which in turn is associated with better student performance. Frustrated with the inconvenience or one-directionality of traditional forms of family-school communications, more teachers are designing and using class websites both for instruction and to establish two-way communications with families. The author recently completed a study that revealed that a teacher's intuition alone cannot always make those websites motivating to parents; motivational theories may shed a better light on the motivational mechanisms of teachers' websites. The purpose of this paper is to fill gaps in the literature by extending the self-determination theory of motivation to the above domains, and to advise teachers about the kinds of website content and functionality that have the capacity to motivate parents.

Introduction

When the prototype of the Internet was first created in the late 1960s, no one could imagine that someday the use of the Internet would be so widespread. The Information Superhighway, with its capacity to support reciprocal communication, brings many advantages not only to commerce, but also to education (Selwyn, 1999). In fact, some Internet experts estimate that of all the information posted on the Internet, 20% serves the purposes of education (cited in Chandler, 1998). Nowadays, the Internet is widely used by school and university instructors to supplement traditional face-to-face instruction, or for Internet-based instructions.

Moreover, the Internet supports two-way communications between families and schools. This communication starts at the classroom level and involves teachers and parents exchanging information through e-mails and other forms of electronic communications, such as chat rooms, electronic boards, discussion groups, et cetera. (Bauch, 2000). School or class websites that use these forms of electronic communication may inform parents and students about instruction, student performance and extra-curricular activities, as well as about teachers' instructional philosophies or the school history and its traditions (Carr, 1998; Ivers & Barron, 1999). Websites have the potential to remove classroom boundaries by introducing parents to curricula and teachers' expectations, and by demonstrating to parents what their children learn and achieve (Flores & Karr-Kidwell, 2001). As the cost of computers and Internet connections continues to drop, an increasing number of families have access to class websites from home. The capacity of reaching out to a large number of students' parents and motivating their involvement in education is the distinctive attribute of website technology that this paper discusses. This paper raises two major questions: why should parents be motivated to be involved in their children's education? what components and content of those websites have the greater potential to be attractive to parents and motivate their parental involvement? These questions are answered from the angle of self-determination theory, whose major principles are explored below.

Why should Parents be Motivated to be Involved in their Children's Education?

Although parenthood may be very draining, it is also self-fulfilling. It goes beyond cultural expectations, the immediate or delayed satisfaction of adults' physiological needs (e.g., considering children as a future investment--as prospective caregivers for the time when parents become elderly) and the biological predisposition to protect youngsters from predators and prepare them for life as independent adults (Turner, 2000). According to Deci and Ryan's (1985) self-determination theory, parenthood can satisfy one's three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These three innate needs influence people's behavior and life satisfaction. In the domain of parenting, the need for autonomy implies that parents perceive their parenthood as a choice or as a volitional act. The need for competence assumes that parenthood marks a certain state of development and individual growth because parenthood may be viewed as a new area of skills that adults can master. Reciprocating feelings with a child and experiencing mutual belongingness may satisfy the relatedness need. Certainly, the needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness vary for different families or parents, and this affects how parents act in their parenting roles.

Self-determination theory identifies three types of behaviors or causality orientations: self-determination/autonomy orientation, control-determination/control orientation and amotivation/impersonal orientation. Self-determined or intrinsically motivated behaviors embody the needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness, while control-determined or extrinsically motivated behaviors are undertaken under pressure of the social environment or are self-controlled. While these two types of behaviors are intentional, amotivated behaviors are not intentional and are often found in individuals who do not have the necessary psychological structure to deal with life challenges. Examining different types of parental behavior shows that parenting is also affected by causality orientation.

In parenting, autonomy orientation involves feelings of competence and is based on trust and respect between a parent and a child. Autonomy-oriented parents are supportive of their children, but not to the point of limiting their children's freedom or initiative. In contrast, control-oriented parents tend to control all or most spheres of their child's life and demand that the child rigorously obey house rules. While autonomy- and control-oriented parents both feel competent and consider themselves devoted to their children, impersonally-oriented parents may feel amotivated, incompetent and helpless with their children. They are able to utilize neither autonomy nor control methods in their parenting. Thus, if self- or control-determined parents behave more or less consistently with respect to how they relate to their children, amotivated parents are often characterized by inconsistent behavior, or do not act at all, even in situations in which they obviously should.

Causality orientations also influence how parents deal with cultural expectations and the countless challenges they encounter while raising their children. Self-determination theorists have empirically shown that parents' causality orientations are influenced by their early school experiences and their own parents' causality orientations; this trend may be carried out by new generations, too (Deci & Ryan, 1985). In this regard, teachers' parental involvement strategies, such as devoting a section of the class website to parents, may be considered systematic and continuous motivation of parents, which may also affect parents' causality orientations. Therefore, teachers should set up the goal of targeting involvement of parents with all types of causality orientations, and class websites can be an effective way to accomplish this task if teachers are cognizant of the components and content they select when designing their websites.

Components and Content of Class Websites Possibly Attractive to Parents

Recently, the author completed a mixed-method study on teachers' perceptions and practices of using their class websites to support parental involvement and instruction. The study quantitatively analyzed the content and functionality of 93 class websites authored by 84 math teachers of one North Eastern county, 16 of whom have been interviewed in depth about their website, instructional, communication and parental involvement practices. The study shows that an established web presence does not guarantee that parents will visit teachers' websites and that website components and content play an essential role in targeting parents. (The final report on this project is in preparation.) Therefore, it is worthwhile to examine some website features that may help parents to satisfy their needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness and become more involved in their children's education:

1. Teacher self-introduction Information teachers share about their interests and families on their websites may help students and parents to see teachers not only as professionals, but perhaps also to relate to them as real people. Unfortunately, 71% of math teachers in the study did not provide even minimum information about themselves.

2. Curriculum description The recent educational reforms promote conceptual learning, problem-solving skills and cooperative learning, not memorization and drilling. Unfortunately, many parents are not fully aware of these reforms or hold misconceptions, and thus may be resistant to any alterations (Redding & Thomas, 2001). On their class websites, in order to keep parents informed about their children's curricula, secondary teachers can list topics that are covered in the unit, illustrate sample activities, showcase students' projects and suggest links to other websites where parents can learn about specific curricular issues.

3. Instructional activities and other links for parents When parents and their children do instructional activities together, they spend time meaningfully interacting with each other, which supports the parental need for relatedness. While it is preferable that teachers post instructional activities on their sites instead of including links to other sites where students and parents may get lost, teachers should not instruct parents about appropriate parenting strategies on their websites but instead should provide links to other websites that offer this information. Nonetheless, any information teachers post should not discount parental expertise. In fact, only 20% of the examined websites contained instructional activities and about 9% of websites provided some information specifically for parents.

4. Simplified access to resources It is worthwhile for schools' and teachers' websites to provide general information, such as monthly newsletters, brief announcements, news and downloadable forms. Ability to access the needed information on a 24/7 basis is a matter of convenience and is supportive of autonomy that is essential for any self-determined behavior.

5. Student grades When parents want to learn about how their children are doing at school, perhaps the first thing they ask the teacher is, "What are my child's grades?" Because report cards sent home usually only contain the final grades for each marking period, and neither parents nor students can affect those grades at that point, some teachers decide to post students' grades online. In the study, approximately 9% of the examined websites either listed student grades or referred to other password-protected websites where grades could be accessed. In order to protect student privacy, teachers use codes instead of students' names or use the password-protected website services of companies, such as learning Network (http://mygradebook.com). Although a vast majority of parents positively regard teachers' initiative with posting students' grades, grades carry different meanings for autonomy- and control-oriented parents. While the former group perceives grades as informational, the latter use them to tighten their control over their children and this corresponds with the increase or decrease of their intrinsic motivation for involvement in their children's education (Deci & Ryan, 1985). In order to avoid such a grade trap, teachers are advised to put greater emphasis on informative, rather than evaluative aspects of grading.

6. Homework Many teachers post homework on their websites. In fact, in the study, 73% of teachers were either posting homework assignments or had this section under construction. Although posting homework assignments usually benefits students, there again might be the potential misuse of this information by control-oriented parents who may further strengthen control over their learning and other aspects of children's lives. Certainly, this control may increase the rate of homework completion, but can also diminish student intrinsic motivation for learning. Therefore, it is suggested that in order for the students' homework and grades to appear more informational than controlling on class websites, teachers complement traditional forms of assignments and assessments with more innovative measures, such as portfolios and rubrics.

7. Student work Parents may also find it useful if math teachers post student projects on class websites. It may also be worthwhile to use portfolio assessment of student performance and display these portfolios online, so that parents are able to access them at their convenience. Portfolio assessments are more informative than evaluative, and therefore tend to not decrease intrinsic motivation (Brown, 1997). Moreover, portfolios may stimulate parents to discuss projects and other school-related issues with their children, and get a better understanding of their interests and problems at school. In the study, approximately 11% of class websites either posted samples of student work or had this section under construction.

8. Supported interactivity Among other advantages of the website technology is that it can incorporate 'interactive' features, such as "mailto" forms, web boards and guestbooks that support two-way family-school connections. For example, "mailto" forms can serve to survey parents, simplify required paperwork to become a school volunteer, and the like. Guestbooks can also be useful for supporting communication between parents, teachers and school administration because they allow anyone to raise a question, express concern, give advice, and so forth. Although interactivity can provide a personal much to a class website, in the study less than 10% of examined websites incorporated some elements of interactivity.

9. Class and school websites linked The study on website practices of math teachers revealed that 29% of class websites were neither linked to their school/district website nor their school/district linked to the teacher's website. At the same time 43% of class websites were found linked to their school/district website both ways. Perhaps, if more schools and districts had this information available, more parents might have been able to take advantage of class websites.

10. Visual attractiveness of the website While some teachers create websites that are functional but "plain" in terms of their design, other teachers are very creative with their websites: they use fonts of different colors, attractive backgrounds, colorful images, photos and animation and other "cool" features, like rollovers, Java scripts, Flash, sound and video tracks. These features can definitely capture student and parent attention on a class website. However, when these elements are overused, it affects website accessibility and navigation (Chandler, 1998). Thus, balancing the content and design of teachers' websites becomes very important in order to motivate parents to visit these websites to learn more about their child's education.

11. Website accessibility and navigation If the website is overloaded with images, animation and other visual design features, it takes too long to for the recipient to upload it. Considering that a vast majority of families have a slow dial-up Internet connection at home and many have slow moderns and older machines, it would not be reasonable to expect parents to wait several minutes to upload one page. Parents who encounter this problem may choose never to visit the website again. Another related problem is website navigation. Teachers who have multi-page websites should be concerned with consistency in navigation bars, and maybe even provide a site map or search options because website navigation may be confusing in some cases. In the study, teachers' class websites did not have many advanced design features and were, overall, easy to access and navigate.

12. Website management A website is ongoing project; although some website content is static, other content (e.g., homework assignments, grades) needs to updated periodically. Unfortunately, once the website is created, some teachers find themselves unable to keep this commitment and stop updating their websites. Even if they later continue working on the website, it will be extremely difficult for them to regain their website audience, students and parents. It has to be understood that websites require an investment of time and a long-term commitment in order to be effective. The best advice to teachers in this situation is to survey parents and students at the stage of designing class websites to find out what their expectations about a class website are (Chandler, 1998) and match them with teachers' resources.

13. Collaboration with parents and students Parents and students should be involved not only in website planning, but also in the process of website design and maintenance.

Conclusion: Implications for Practice and Research

This mostly analytical analysis of major website components and content was done with the intention to raise teachers' awareness about class websites as an instrument of targeting parents and their involvement and to promote further empirical research in this area. A number of studies should be done to test how parents utilize website technology and how it affects parental involvement. For example, it would be worthwhile to examine how causality orientations or parenting styles relate to what parents' expectations about class websites are and to how they utilize those websites. Among other directions for investigation are how teachers' causality orientations are reflected in the content and functionality of their websites, and how a class website influences different types of parental involvement: parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making and collaborating with the community (Epstein, 2001).

If district, school or classroom websites have their content and design thoughtfully planned, they are able to attract parents and engage them in communicating with the schools. Traditional approaches, as well as communications technologies, all have their specific weaknesses and strengths that need to be considered by each school. Which of the approaches, or whether their integrated model leads to accomplishing this goal is less important. As new telecommunication technologies emerge, perhaps they can also support a family-school alliance.

References

Bauch, J. P. (2000, April). Electronic parent involvement? New developments with phones, e-mail, and the Internet to link schools and homes. The paper prepared for the 10th Annual International Roundtable on School, Family and Community Partnerships. New Orleans, LA.

Brown, B. L. (1997). Portfolio assessment: Missing link in student evaluation. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 414447).

Carr, N. (1998). Spinning schools onto the web. Techniques, 73(6), 30-32.

Chandler, E. A. (1998). Class web sites: A design model for instructors. Dissertation. University of Nevada, Reno.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum Press.

Epstein, J. L. (2001). School and family partnerships: Preparing educators and improving schools. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Flores, J., & Karr-Kidwell, PJ (2001). An Internet website to enhance communication with school personnel and parents. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 449789).

Ivers, K. S., & Barron, A. E. (1999). The presence and purpose of elementary school web pages. Informational Technology in Childhood Education, 9, 181-191.

Redding, S., & Thomas, L. G. (Eds.) (2001). The Community of the School. Lincoln, IL: Academic Development Institute.

Selwyn, N. (1999). Schooling the information society? The place of information superhighway in education. Information, Communication & Society, 2(2), 156-173.

Turner, J. (2000). The child in Y2K: Reflections on parenting. Montessori Life, 12(1), 12-13.

Ellen Lunts, University of Rochester, NY

Ellen Lunts is a Ph.D. candidate in Teaching and Curriculum. Her research interests include secondary math education, educational technology and parental involvement.