Abstract:

The number of students of foreign origin in compulsory schools across Iceland is increasing year by year, along with growing diversity in their backgrounds, cultures, and languages. Now around 18% of the habitants are of foreign origin, when the total population in the country is less than 400.000 habitants in total. These societal changes happen at the same time as Icelandic compulsory schools develop their use of different technologies in their collaboration with student families. The aim of this study is to examine if and how the technological development in schools is affecting immigrant students and their families in building relationships with the teachers in the schools.

The research project Language Policies and Practices of Diverse Immigrant Families in Iceland and Their Implications for Education (LPP) has as a main goal to examine the language policies and practices of diverse immigrant families and the relationship of these factors to school activities. This study of the digital wall is part of the LPP-project.

In the LPP-project, more than 100 interviews were conducted with 16 different families in four municipalities, including both parents and their children aged 10–16. Their background was very diverse, they came from all continents, spoke several languages, some were fugitives while other had chosen Iceland to bring up their children in a peaceful, highly developed country. Teachers of these children were also interviewed and school leaders in preschools and compulsory schools the students attended.

In this study the focus is on examining the use of technological solutions used in the schools and how the immigrant parents experienced this usage. Schools provide all parents with information about daily practice with e-mails, school platforms used to mediate student study progress and grades, comments on student attendance, behaviour etc. The information is first and foremost in Icelandic. Is this use of technology accessible for immigrant parents and helping them to understand education and school culture in Iceland? Do technological solutions contribute to good relations and help teachers to relate to multilingual students and their families? We seek to interpret the pros and cons of the several digital solutions and discuss whether the use of technology is building bridges or raising walls between immigrants and teachers.

Findings indicate that the main channels of communication between teachers and parents are emails intended to convey information between home and school. In the schools participating in the study, digital platforms are used to manage learning and grades, and parents experience varying degrees of difficulty in navigating these systems. Additionally, translation tools are employed to support communication. At home, families are resourceful and use various technologies to maintain connections with their country of origin and native language, as well as to communicate with relatives. We will discuss how the rapid digital development can be adapted to support immigrant families to take part in school activities rather than excluding them from schools’ societies.

Keywords:

Diversity, home-school relations, technology, languages, children