The Contribution of Digital Technologies to the Involvement of Parents in School Life of Their Children: The Case of African Minorities

Using digital technologies as a means to promote parental involvement has been a practice used in projects in different countries. Parental involvement has been studied as a factor contributing to the academic achievement of learners, although some ethnic minorities face barriers to this involvement. This article presents the current state of a research, carried out in the context of a PhD. It used the digital technologies that are present at schools, as a privileged means of training parents of African minorities in the scope of the language of schooling, in order to support their involvement in the school life of their children. The authors used an action-research methodology with a variety of data collection instruments: biographical interviews, naturalistic observation, research diary and field notes. The results show that parents became more involved in their children's school activities and began to better understand their lives inside school.