Communication between Parents and Teachers of Special Education Students: A Small Exploratory Study of Reddit Posts

Abstract

Communication between teachers and parents is an important research topic in the field of special education. Although this type of communication is fraught with challenges such as conflict and lack of trust, there are also some success factors such as collaborative two-way communication and the use of appropriate technologies to facilitate communication. In this paper, we set out to explore this topic in more depth, by examining the experiences of parents and teachers of special-needs students when it comes to communication. A small exploratory qualitative study of social media posts from Reddit is performed. The aim is to shed light on the experiences of parents and teachers. The findings show that both parts of this dyadic relationship have mixed experiences, but the general sentiment is skewed towards the negative. These findings are discussed in relation to the literature on parent-teacher communication.

1. Introduction

Communication between teachers and parents of special education students has attracted the interest of researchers in the field of education for several decades (e.g., Azad et al. 2016; Bursuck et al. 1999; Dawson and McHugh 1987; Dubis and Bernadowski 2015; Leenders et al. 2019). In general, research in the field shows that parent-teacher communication is fraught with challenges. There are many barriers to effective parent-teacher communication, such as lack of trust, conflicts, and a low degree of parental involvement (Goss 2019; Hornby and Lafaele 2011; Šukys et al. 2015).

However, it is less clear to what extent these ‘best practices’ are used in special education, particularly in the US. Therefore, the objective of this qualitative study is to explore the experiences of parents and teachers of special needs students when it comes to communication. Communication between parents and teachers is particularly important to study due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. The field of education has experienced unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 situation (Bocoş and Marin 2022; Galkienė et al. 2022). For special education, the challenges are even greater, since this type of education is more focused on individualized learning and physical and visual support, elements of the learning environment that are hard to replicate in the digital world (Aloizou et al. 2021; Francis et al. 2022). Therefore, it is likely that the shift to remote learning has impacted parent-teacher communications and the experiences of both parts of this dyadic relationship.

This study has a modest aim. It seeks to examine how parents and teachers of special education students talk about their experiences in anonymous and public discussion forums. A small exploratory qualitative study of Reddit social media posts is carried out with the aim of shedding light on the experiences of parents and teachers.

This paper has been divided into the following parts: Section 2 of this paper provides a brief narrative review of the literature on parent-teacher communication. This is followed by a presentation of the methodology in Section 3. Section 4 presents the findings of the small exploratory study, which will be discussed in light of the literature in Section 5. Section 6 concludes the paper by highlighting contributions, limitations, and areas for future research.

2. Related Work

This section provides a brief review of the literature on parent-teacher communication with a focus on the context of special education. We follow what can best be described as a narrative literature review approach (Ferrari 2015). As pointed out by Ferrari (2015), using a narrative review approach can be useful to examine general debates in the literature and to evaluate the state of research in a particular area.

The literature review section in this article covers four broad areas: The first area examines communication practices, followed by a discussion of the role of parental participation. Then comes a brief review of how technology can be used to facilitate communication, and finally an identification of some communication success factors that stand out based on the recommendations in previous studies.

2.1. Communication Practices

A section of the literature on parent-teacher communication looks at communication practices. A review of relevant studies indicates a wide range of issues related to communication, trust, and conflict in these relationships. In an early study, Dawson and McHugh (1987), two IELA (special education) teachers, reported on the general difficulties associated with communicating with parents of children with emotional and behavioral challenges. They provided a set of ideas and recommendations based on their experiences. Lake and Billingsley (2000) conducted an analysis of key factors contributing to escalating or deescalating parent-school conflict in special education. The study looked at this issue from different perspectives (parents, administrators, mediators). The study was based on data from telephone interviews and interviews and a grounded theory approach was used to analyze the data. Based on the analysis, the authors identified eight categories of factors that escalate parent-school conflict.

Stoner and Angell (2014) looked at the role of trust in the relationship between teachers and parents of children with disabilities. The authors used a qualitative approach to understand the perspectives of 16 mothers. The mothers were interviewed about the role of communication in developing and maintaining trust. Based on the interview data, the authors identified that mothers used two main communication strategies (dialogic and problem-focused) and that the way the teacher responded affected the level of trust in the relationship. The authors highlight that trust is something that is built incrementally over time but can be destroyed very quickly. Therefore, they propose several strategies that special education teachers can use in communication with parents to increase the likelihood of building trusting relationships.

Woods et al. (2018) examined how stakeholders in special education perceive communication practices. The authors followed a qualitative approach, in which they conducted 17 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders from special education. Some of the most important findings include: educators in younger grades are more proactive with home contact; frequency of parent communication is related to increased parental satisfaction with schools; it is often educators in younger grades who are tasked with identifying special needs children; and school administrators are still struggling with the general perception of general and special education as separate systems.

Leenders et al. (2019) focus on the fostering of strong parent-teacher relationships in primary education and argue that two-way communication can be a key success factor. The study examines the subjects that are discussed at parent-teacher conferences and how they communicate regarding these topics. Leenders et al. (2019) followed a qualitative research approach and gathered data using semi-structured in-depth interviews with 55 teachers from different types of primary schools (e.g., 14 teachers from four special education schools, 21 teachers from seven at-risk schools, and 20 teachers from seven mainstream schools) in the Netherlands.

The findings of Leenders et al. (2019) indicate that two-way communication is used most in at-risk schools, where teachers tend to take a more sensitive and encouraging approach. Second, it is generally a challenge for teachers to properly involve parents. A third main finding is that the attitude of teachers is best in difficult situations where they tend to use a more collaborative approach in communication and problem-solving. In these situations, teachers tend to move away from their expert roles and instead work alongside parents.

2.2. Parental Involvement

Several studies in this area examine the role of parental involvement in the schoolwork of their special needs children. For example, Šukys et al. (2015) studied parental participation in the education of special-needs children. The authors studied a total of 170 parents of Lithuanian children. Data were collected through a survey in which parents were asked about their perceptions of parental involvement in their child’s schoolwork and about involvement, the participation of teachers with parents. The findings suggest that about two thirds were able to identify their children’s learning problems, approximately half were involved in their education at home, and only about a third perceived themselves as equal partners in parent-teacher communication. In general, educational status appears to matter and parents with higher levels of education tend to be more involved.

In another related study, Goss (2019) examined barriers to parental involvement in their children’s schools. There is literature on parent involvement that has identified common barriers related to language, economics, educational status, etc. The authors used a qualitative approach, using data mostly from interviews, but also documents and a YouTube video. The findings suggest that parents of children of color and children with special needs face the greatest barriers to participation. Some of the barriers are structural. For example, schools can be ‘suspicious’ about parents who try to get involved and may be reluctant to share information. The authors provide some recommendations for how schools can foster a better climate that could improve parent involvement and parent-school collaboration.

2.3. The Use of Technology

Another factor that is often discussed in the literature on parent-teacher communication is the role of technology in improving parental participation and communication. The idea that technology can improve communication has been around for a long time. Several studies highlight that parent-teacher communication can be facilitated by parental participation in schoolwork or the use of technological tools (e.g., email, phone calls, IEP meetings, or Zoom). However, the types of technologies used have changed from telephone and voicemail messages used in the pre-Internet era (e.g., Bittle 1975; Chapman and Heward 1982) to the use of email, learning management systems, and recently smartphones and videoconferencing tools such as Zoom (Alanezi 2021; Levinthal et al. 2021; Thompson 2008; Thompson et al. 2015).

Dubis and Bernadowski (2015) focus on the use of email as a way to communicate with parents of special needs children in Saudi Arabia. They argue that parental involvement is under-researched particularly in a Middle East context. Due to cultural and social norms, there has traditionally been much less home-school involvement in this part of the world than in the West. The authors set out to explore how technological tools, such as email, can improve parent-teacher communication. Dubis and Bernadowski (2015) used a survey research approach and sent a questionnaire to 104 parents of preschool or primary school children with special needs and 157 special education teachers in Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire measured the perceptions related to the use of email and consisted of 17 items for parents and 11 items for teachers (five-point Likert scales).

The general finding of the study by Dubis and Bernadowski (2015) is that there is generally a positive attitude toward using email to improve involvement and participation in the parent-teacher relationship. They found that 78% of parents and 77% of the teachers had a positive attitude towards the use of email. The authors note that there has been little use of email and other technological tools in parent-teacher communication in Saudi Arabia compared to Western countries. Since there is a positive attitude towards email among survey respondents, there is a potential for greater use of this technological tool to improve parent-teacher communication. Although the authors do not explicitly discuss limitations in the article, there are potential issues related to the reliance on self-reported data. Furthermore, the survey is cross-sectional and only provides a snapshot at one time point.

2.4. Communication Success Factors

Bursuck et al. (1999) conducted a national survey of special education teachers about parent-teacher communication in relation to homework for students with special needs. Respondents were asked to rank order recommendations on how communication could be improved. Special education teachers indicate five main areas for improvement: (1) parents should take a more active role in monitoring and communicating with their students, (2) schools should allocate more time for teachers to communicate with parents and provide ways for students to do homework after school, (3) teachers should utilize more technological innovations to assist in homework and monitor progress, (4) students should take more responsibility for completing their homework, and (5) better information sharing with general educators about the needs of special education students in order that appropriate accommodations can be made.

Chu (2014) carried out a qualitative study aimed at shedding light on the perspectives of parents and teachers of Chinese American students with disabilities regarding home-school communication. The author recruited four informants (2 parents and 2 teachers) and obtained data from various sources, such as observations, interviews, and documents. Based on qualitative data analysis, the author identified several themes such as expectation mismatches, communication barriers, collaboration, building, and effective communication. Several obstacles to positive parent-teacher interactions were also discussed. On the basis of these findings, there are several implications for improved communication. These include keeping parents informed about their child’s learning process, preparing teachers for working with families with diverse backgrounds, participating in a reciprocal dialogue with families, and increasing intercultural communication competence.

2.5. Summary and Evaluation

This brief narrative review has identified that there may be differences in terms of preferred communication methods depending on the type of stakeholder (Woods et al. 2018) and the cultural and geographical context (Dubis and Bernadowski 2015). However, the best practice in the field appears to be collaborative, two-way communication that involves and engages parents of children with special education (Leenders et al. 2019). Parent-teacher communication can also be facilitated by the use of appropriate technological tools (Bursuck et al. 1999; Dubis and Bernadowski 2015).

3. Methods and Data

This study can be characterized as highly exploratory. In this study, textual data from the social media platform Reddit (www.reddit.com, accessed on 15 October 2021) were used as a data source. Reddit has been widely used in academic research in recent years to shed light on a wide variety of topics (Amaya et al. 2021; Medvedev et al. 2019; Proferes et al. 2021). Among the social media platforms, Reddit is a social community network that stands out as a particularly useful source of data considering the study’s aims to shed light on communication between parents and teachers of special education students. As Staudt Willet and Carpenter (2020) stated, there are ‘numerous teaching-related subreddits that host thousands of threaded conversations.’ More than 90% of Reddit users are in the 18–49 age group (Barthel et al. 2016), which is important in this study; the objective is to explore how parents with school-age children communicate with teachers.

Additionally, Reddit posts and comments are always available, which is not the case for other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. According to Cen (2020, p. 9), ‘Reddit has maximized content availability for researchers, as it has no character limit and little privacy settings for its threads.’ Therefore, there should be few or no ethical issues related to using anonymous and publicly available Reddit posts and discussions as a data source in this study.

The data collection process started by identifying subreddits relevant to the topic of the article (e.g., r/parents, /ParentTeacherGroups, r/education, r/teachers, r/teaching). The relevant discussion threads were then searched using search terms such as ‘parent-teacher communication’, ‘communication preference between parent-teacher’, and ‘special education communication’. The relevant discussion posts were then saved, and the discussion posts were manually coded and analyzed.

4. Findings

This section presents the findings of the qualitative content analysis. In the presentation of the findings, a distinction is made between posts on social media from the perspectives of teachers and parents, respectively.

4.1. Teachers’ Perspectives

This section provides an overview of teachers’ experiences with communication in the parent-teacher relationship. In general, the sentiment of these teachers is negative. For example, one Reddit user (TeacherThrowaway5454 2021) complains of being the only one making an effort in the parent-teacher relationship.

I often think I should make an effort to call home more, but then I get mad that I am the only one making any sort of communication efforts in this relationship and refuse. Every time I take attendance, that is communication home. Every time I input a grade, that is a communication home.

Similarly, the Reddit user sunshinecygnet (2021) is using emails as a way to communicate with parents:

“Why didn’t you communicate that my child was failing?” I did. I stated very clearly in my syllabus, which you signed, that I would be emailing updates. I emailed you every other week. I sent out additional emails communicating to all parents to check ParentVue. I emailed you directly that your child was failing. I also communicated every single time I updated the gradebook, which was every Friday like clockwork. You checked not a single one of those things and checked the box saying you understood that I would communicate via email and that your email in the system was correct, even though it wasn’t. So frustrating.

As can be seen from the quote, the teacher is frustrated that some parents are seemingly not “accepting” emails as an adequate form of communication.

The user Ismygrayshowing (2021) highlights the increasing work burden placed on teachers, and states that teachers are responsible for more tasks than they should be:

However, school is quickly becoming the place where teachers are being forced to be responsible for way more than we should. It’s not our burden to bear, nor should it be.

For teachers, it seems that all the new technological tools that can be used for parent-teacher communications have the function of increasing parents’ expectations with respect to the amount and forms of communication with teachers, as well as their general availability to parents. However, some teachers are also acknowledging that there are benefits associated with using, for example, email or learning management systems, since these forms of communication provide a paper trail documenting what has been said in the parent-teacher relationship, which can be highly useful in conflict situations.

4.2. Parents’ Perspectives

This section provides an overview of the parents’ experiences with communication in the parent-teacher relationship.

The user bigmommykane (2016) has a negative view of parent-teacher communication, which it is perceived to be non-existent outside of grading and report cards:

But she has never given me an ounce of feedback about my child, above and beyond two report cards.

This quote can be seen as echoing the changing expectations regarding parent-teacher communication today versus the way it was decades ago. Similarly, the user itsallthablanket (2020) has a negative view and finds that communication has been lacking during the virtual learning environment that has been dominant since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic:

I want to give our teacher some grace in this new learning environment but I am finding the communication from them to really be lacking. I expect some sort of newsletter or email periodically just to let us know what they are learning about or even just reminders when there’s homework (my 1st grader doesn’t always remember) but we’re not getting anything like that. What do you expect from your child’s teacher in a 100% virtual environment?

There are also some posters that are more positive in their view of parent-teacher communication. For example, the user ShapeOfAvocado (2020) has positive experiences with communication during the new virtual learning environment and finds that teachers have used tools such as ClassDojo and email successfully as communication tools:

My kid’s 2nd grade teacher sends messages to the whole class (parents and kids) on Class Dojo every day. I’ve emailed her a few times about issues my kid had, and she’s been responsive.

The user SteveHarveysSuit (2015) has a more neutral sentiment and notes that mainly traditional forms of communication are used, such as a ‘Friday Folder’ and weekly newsletters:

Our school has a Friday folder when all papers and returned work go home. The principal sends out an email newsletter each Friday at the end of the day as well. She may also sent out shorter messages during the week.

5. Discussion

This small exploratory qualitative study has provided some preliminary insight into how parents and teachers of special education students talk about their experiences on Reddit, an anonymous and public online discussion forum.

In this section, the results will be briefly discussed considering previous research on parent-teacher communication in the context of special education. The literature review showed that there are many barriers to effective parent-teacher communication such as trust, involvement, and conflicts (Goss 2019; Hornby and Lafaele 2011; Šukys et al. 2015). Therefore, it was expected that the experiences would vary considerably across both parts of this dyadic relationship.

In general, qualitative data show much variation in experiences with parent-teacher communication. The experiences of both parents and teachers are mixed, although they tend to skew toward negative sentiments. However, it is possible that a self-selection bias has played a role, since parents and teachers who have strong, negative experiences are more likely to post about parent-teacher communication on online discussion boards such as Reddit.

Both teachers and parents tend to be less than satisfied with the communication practices and efforts of the other party. It appears that both parents and teachers tend to shift the blame for lack of communication onto the other party.

Another finding is that teachers generally appear to be frustrated and complain that there are too many demands on their time. This finding can be viewed in context of the literature that suggests that teachers struggle with workload, work-life balance, and high levels of stress (Bubb and Earley 2004; Cooper and Travers 2012; Holmes 2005). Some teachers feel that parents are expecting too much and that they are too passive and not involved enough in their children’s schoolwork. Parents, on the other hand, tend to complain about lack of communication. They seem to have very high expectations of their teachers, which can be related to increasing parental expectations of student achievement (Rubie-Davies et al. 2010).

In general, communication does not seem to resemble collaborative two-way communication, which is highlighted as a ‘best practice’ in the field (Leenders et al. 2019). Again, it is possible that parents and teachers who have fruitful collaborative relationships are less inclined to post about them on social media than those who are dissatisfied. Therefore, the data from these forums may not be representative of typical communication patterns in parent-teacher relationships.

6. Conclusions

6.1. Concluding Comments and Implications

In this paper, we have looked at the topic of parent-teacher communication, which continues to be a key issue in the educational field in the digital and pandemic era. After a narrative review of extant literature on this topic, we set out to explore how parents and teachers of special educational students talk about their experiences in anonymous and public discussion forums. To achieve this aim, we carried out a small exploratory study of Reddit social media posts.

This study offers some practical implications and reflections. As noted at the outset, the field of education experienced unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 situation (Galkienė et al. 2022). For special education, these challenges are exacerbated since many elements of the learning environment are hard to replicate in an online environment (Aloizou et al. 2021; Galkienė et al. 2022). The shift to a virtual environment makes finding good communication channels between parents and teachers even more important than it was in prepandemic times. Based on the findings, it seems as if that there are many complex challenges that must be solved.

From the teachers’ points of view, it seems that much could be gained by increasing knowledge and experience when it comes to the types of communication tools that are effective and well received by parents and could enable more fruitful bidirectional communication. For parents, it is important that they also reality-check their expectations when it comes to teacher workloads and their ability to offer individualized communication about their special needs children. It is also important to increase the awareness among parents of the challenges and added stress placed on special education teachers during the pandemic (Cormier et al. 2022).

6.2. Limitations and Future Work

Like any piece of research, this study has limitations which should be considered carefully.

One limitation is related to our approach to reviewing the literature. As mentioned, the review approach can best be characterized as narrative (and not systematic), and therefore there is potential for biases and omissions (Ferrari 2015).

It is also important to emphasize that this study has a modest empirical aim. As noted in the methods section, the approach can be characterized as highly exploratory. For example, it is easy to point to limitations of our methodology, such as the small sample size.

One issue related to gathering data from Reddit about parent-teacher communications is that Reddit users differ from non-users along demographic and socio-economic variables (Barthel et al. 2016). In the context of education, it is likely that parents who have access to computers and smartphones, sufficient time/resources, are more likely to communicate and engage on social media platforms. In contrast, parents from underprivileged communities are likely to be underrepresented in the data from Reddit.

There were also some practical challenges related to analyzing social media posts. Sometimes, it can be challenging to identify whether parents and teachers were discussing special education students or general education students. A possible reason for the ambiguity could be the use of either informal language, slang, or both, on social media networks (Zappavigna 2012). It is possible that the coding and interpretations made in this study would have been more reliable if more than one person had been involved in coding and interpreting the data (Armstrong et al. 1997).

The limitations of the study also provide some ideas for future research on the topic. Generally, using social media data from online communities (e.g., social media posts) appears to be a fruitful way to easily collect large amounts of data about education-related topics. Reddit seems to be a particularly useful source. While Reddit has been widely applied in many research fields (Amaya et al. 2021; Medvedev et al. 2019; Proferes et al. 2021), it has received little attention from educational researchers (Carpenter et al. 2018; Staudt Willet and Carpenter 2020, 2021). Reddit is a source of “big data” that can be analyzed using advanced statistical techniques (Felt 2016).

There are possibilities to perform different types of analyses of education-related Reddit data, such as text mining and sentiment analyses (Hodges et al. 2022). It is possible that such studies could provide new insights into teachers’ and parents’ experiences and help identify more general patterns and trends.