Comparison of Parent and Teacher Perceptions of Essential Website Features and Elementary Teacher Website Use: Implications for Teacher Communication Practice

Abstract

Within the United States, there has been a call for timely, effective, and targeted communication between home and school environments to increase student achievement and engage parents (Project Tomorrow, 2011a). Although teachers can use websites as a means of communication to connect with parents online (Dunn, 2011; Janicki & Chandler-Olcott, 2012), current teacher practice in this area remains unclear. This study employed feature analysis to compare elementary teacher websites from a national report examining technology-using teachers (Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2012) to the website features desired by elementary teachers and parents in the U.S. (Unal, 2008). The results indicate that only eight of 19 essential website features desired by both parents and teachers were commonly present, a possible reflection of the various ways that elementary teachers disseminate information online. Based on the information teachers need to communicate, four separate categories are proposed to assist elementary teachers in selecting appropriate communication channels.