Initial teacher training for digital family-school communication in Andalucia

Abstract

Family-school involvement has raised a significant number of scientific investigations which have defined the issue, and where low satisfaction in educational community has been noted. The appearance of Internet and communication emerging technologies, this opens up new opportunities for encourage this relationship. Nevertheless, we wonder: What is the presence of theoretical categories which improve family-school communication through digital media in training programmes and teaching guides of subjects involved? This research aims to collect information on training that Andalusian universities, as higher education institutions of teachers who are in initial teacher education, offer to promote virtual participation and interactions of families in schools. This paper presents a descriptive and correlational study with mixed research design, which is drawn from content analysis techniques about a documentary investigation of all over university study programmes (25) and all the 1203 teaching guides in preservice teacher learning in Andalusia, Ceuta and Melilla in force during 2015-16 course. Significant differences were found according to the variables (public-private centres, location in programme, course and character of the subject) for collecting the digital and communicative skills development in order to encourage the involvement of families in school centres, which is demonstrating a lack in preservice teacher education to encourage relationships with families, and the possibility to improve digital skills training for future teacher could development the communication with them, using strategies to create virtual involvement of families in school.