Factors Influencing Non-native Parents to Use Educational e-Services: A Case Study of Preschools in A Swedish Municipality

This study investigates the factors which get non-native parents to use educational e-services in Swedish preschools. The authors focus specifically on Unikum, which is a web- and mobile-phone-based e-service for online communication between home and school.

The study indicates that creating awareness and motivation among parents regarding educational e-services such as Unikum is an important success factor that should be considered by preschool leaders if they want to increase the use of educational e-services by non-native parents.

Based on the analytical framework, the results indicate that external factors, and familiarity and age (which belong under individual factors) do not play a special role in the parents' use of Unikum, whereas the two management factors seem to have a considerable influence.

The design of the study consists of two parts: (1) a literature review and (2) an interview study.

The literature review aims to identify the factors which, according to existing research affect non-native parents' use of educational e-services in connection with their children's childcare and education. The authors also conducted a preliminary study on Unikum, which contributed to the structure of an analytical framework that was used in the study together with the literature review.

The analytical framework consisted of the following factors that may influence non-native parents' use of educational e-services: (1) Internal factors: individual, technical, familiarity-related, cultural and social, (2) External factors: accessibility of information technology, (3) Management: awareness and motivation.

In the second part of the study, four preschools helped establish contact to parents, and this resulted in seven parent interviews. The preschool leaders were also interviewed. Moreover, the authors interviewed seven parents who were studying Swedish for immigrants. This means that a total of 14 non-native parents took part in the study. The parents were interviewed face-to-face or over the phone using a questionnaire with both structured and semi-structured elements. Questions were asked about the parents' access to IT, their use of the internet and use of Unikum.

Thangavel, G., Rostami, E., & Islam, M. S. (2017). Factors Influencing Non-native Parents to Use Educational e-Services: A Case Study of Preschools in A Swedish Municipality. International Journal of E-Services and Mobile Applications, 9(4):41-54.