School Parents’ Online Groups: A Study on Active Participants’ Characteristics

Using widely known social media, such as viber, what’s app or messenger, Greek school parents, whose children are in the same classroom, form groups, through which, they attempt to set up a communication channel. The initial funding function of these groups seems to be the circulation of school information, but gradually they seem to turn to a community of interest (Lesser, Fontaine, Slusher, 2000), as participants brought together “interact extensively with one another on a specific topic” (Lesser, Fontaine, Slusher, 2000:87), which is school everyday life. The present study investigates parents’ communication habits and implication to school parents’ online groups (S.P.O.G.) and tries to describe the profile of parents participating actively to those groups.

A quantitative research was conducted using an original online questionnaire, which more than 200 parents of students in public and private schools fulfilled. Data were analyzed using SPSS program.

Results indicate that almost all participating mothers, mainly of primary school students, participate to minimum one SPOG. On the other hand a very few fathers declared participating to a SPOG and also few of them appear to know the exact content or purpose of a SPOG. The great majority of primary school students’ mothers affirm exchanging or reading messages on SPOG on a daily basis, while mothers of high school students visit SPOG less often. Also, parents having one child demonstrate a more active presence to SPOG, comparing to parents of more than two children. Finally, mothers of children at first classes of primary school consider SPOG a necessary tool facilitating their children schooling, while mothers of older students affirm that communication through SPOG can also create misunderstandings and complicate family-school relationships or relationships among school parents.