ORCID
https://orcid.org/0009-0003-4268-6792
Year
2024
Season
Fall
Paper Type
Doctoral Dissertation
College
College of Education and Human Services
Degree Name
Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership (EdD)
Department
Leadership, School Counseling & Sport Management
NACO controlled Corporate Body
University of North Florida. Department of Leadership, School Counseling & Sports Management
First Advisor
Dr. Meghan Parkinson
Second Advisor
Dr. Daniel Dinsmore
Third Advisor
Dr. Suzanne Ehrlich
Fourth Advisor
Dr. Angela M. Calabrese-Barton
College Dean
Dr. Steve Dittmore
Abstract
The Family Take-home STEM Toolkit Program offers families the opportunity to engage in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning by utilizing the informal environments of the home and program-dedicated social media groups. This initiative provides a frame for this research, as parental engagement in the context of this early childhood program is explored through the lens of the Ecologies of Parental Engagement (EPE). This theoretical model understands engagement as the mediation of space and capital (Barton et al., 2004) and guides this study to further explore parental perceptions concerning the social media space activated with the STEM Toolkit Program. More specifically, parents’ perception of roles, actions, values, and the perceptions of support in relation to parent-to-parent collaborations in the space of the closed Facebook groups. Additionally, it aims to identify how those collaborations between parents in the online space affect parental engagement with the TSEM Toolkit Program.
This concurrent mixed methods study recruited parents who participated in the STEM Toolkit program after program completion. Data was collected from an online questionnaire for the quantitative strand and 11 online interviews of 12 parents for the qualitative strand. Recruitment efforts involved electronic messages through the school’s communication systems (i.e., emails, LMS, posters, and letters.) and through posts in the closed Facebook groups. Data analysis for the quantitative strand involved descriptive statistics, correlations, and Latent Profile Analysis (LPA). Data for the qualitative strand was analyzed through an open-coding process (Khandkar, 2009), organizing emerging themes in a table and listing successively identified categories.
This research provided a better understanding of how to create online informal spaces to foster parental engagement and, specifically, how to leverage social media to enable those spaces. Moreover, this study offered further insight into how engagement in that kind of space can impact families’ STEM collaborations.
Suggested Citation
Bongiovanni, Valentina, "Exploring parental engagement in a family STEM program leveraging social media spaces" (2024). UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 1304.
https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/etd/1304
Included in
Adult and Continuing Education Commons, Early Childhood Education Commons, Educational Technology Commons, Other Education Commons, Science and Mathematics Education Commons
