PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES TOWARDS TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION FOR OUT-OF-SCHOOL TIME LEARNING

Abstract

This paper is an assessment of parental responsibilities in relation to supporting integration of technology in the context of out-of-school time (OST) learning. The assessment involved 78 parents from Arusha, Dar es Salaam and Mwanza regions in Tanzania. The aim was to discover the practices among parents in supporting their children to use educational technology in the home context. Criterion sampling applied and 11 best schools were picked from 11 divisions based on the 2015 NECTA Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) results. It is shown that parents have the potential to support the use of educational technology among children through procurement of educational technology, guiding material on the use of educational technology and giving instructions on the use of educational technology. Parents can also guide pupils on best to write summaries of key concepts, and also give questions on learned concepts. Moreover, parents are also potential for identifying useful programmes for use with educational technology thereby making children use technology for educational pursuits and avoid technology abuse and thus enhance their academic performance. The findings suggest the need for the schools to cooperate with parents and communities with a view to fostering the parental roles in the utilization of educational technology for OST learning. Further studies on how to improve the parental support towards the educational technology use by OST learners is inevitable in this digital world.