Information technology's impact on school-parents and parents-student interrelations: a case study

This paper explores the impact of a school management information system on the interrelations between parents and school and parents and their student children in terms of the children's learning, behavior and attendance (LBA), during one academic year, in a vocational high school, located in a mainstream socio-economic neighborhood. Parents' LBA interrelations with the principal, homeroom teachers, grade level coordinators, and the school as an institution as well as with their children changed noticeably. The involvement of parents in general, but of parents with children having LBA problems in particular, in school LBA issues became more intensive, more frequent and more focused. The paper's results add the information technology dimension to parents involvement in school research, a dimension neglected so far. Implications for the principal's work are discussed. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.