Feasibility of preschool’s parent–teacher communication using a mobile app: an action research in a remote fishing village

ABSTRACT

Successful early childhood education requires close collaboration between parents and preschool teachers. The purpose of the study was to implement a mobile application to foster parent–teacher communication (PTC) in a remote preschool. Being the teacher of the preschool, I conducted a four-cycle action research to crystallize problems, introduce the mobile app, improve my implementation, and create this report. Twenty-two parents during Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 participated in the study. A parental survey, a think-aloud protocol with three tasks, and interviews served as evidence of implementation and ideas for future improvement. This action research contributes to leveraging practitioner research approaches to improve technology-assisted PTC in the remote preschool settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Parent–teacher communication
• mobile devices
• remote preschools
• action research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology [grant number MOST 109-2327-B-010 -005-]. The funding agency had no involvement in this research. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on this work.

Notes on contributors

Ken-Zen Chen

Ken-Zen Chen is an assistant professor of online learning at the Institute of Education, National Yang-Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan.

Yi-Hsuan Lin

Yi-Hsuan Lin is a preschool teacher at Lao-Mei Elementary School, New Taipei City, Taiwan.