Naming and planning to overcome barriers to parent involvement in pre-service teachers' online discussions

This study analyzed the online discussion transcripts of 52 students enrolled in 13 discussion groups in an online Family, School, and Community course. The online discussion modules each focused on Epstein's six types of parent involvement. Kim (2009)'s article that outlined seven major school barriers to minority parents involvement was used as a basis for generation of 73 codes that represented major themes or ideas in his article. The researchers conducted a content analysis of the transcripts based on the codes and grouped responses by the seven major school barriers. Students showed a comprehensive understanding of salient barriers to minority parent involvement. However, some responses generally applied to all families, while other responses were specific to culture. Recommendations for improvement in future online discussion modules included asking more specific diversity-related questions and having the instructor take a more active role in eliciting and guiding students to think more deeply about diversity-related content when responding to online discussion questions.