Teachnology: Drop-Out Prevention By Increasing Parents' Involvement through Text Messaging

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

High drop-out rate, along with low student achievement, is the most serious problem that the Philippine Education is facing (Department of Education Enhanced Dorp Handbook, 2013). One of the most important keys to keep students in school is to have a better communication between parents and the school. Learners with parents who are engaged in their lives by monitoring and regulating their activities, talking with them about their problems and being more involved in the school -are less likely to drop out. In consideration of the above, an action research is pursued by the present study which aimed at devising a teacher - initiated intervention.

The researcher dwelt on the idea of imploring the perks of modern technology to increase parent involvement and thus eventually prevent students from dropping out. Information Communication Technologies (ICT) provides a great potential in such pursuit. This study investigated how technology can improve the educational conditions on what the author call as "TEACHNOLOGY”.

METHODS

Dialectic Action Research Spiral was used in this study where the researcher spirals back into the process repeatedly to achieve an action plan which will fit appropriately with the issue being addressed. Mean and simple frequency and percentage count were used to meaningfully interpret the data. Two - tailed t-test was employed statistically describe the effectiveness of the intervention program. Differences in percentage were determined using the computation provided by Burt Gertsman (2016).

RESULTS

Results showed that there was a significant difference in the number of absences before (M=18.4, SD = 3.95) and after (M=11.3, SD= 3.30) the intervention; t(6) = 9.23, p=0.00. This difference is equivalent to 38.6 percent. These results suggest that increasing parents’ involvement through text messaging will prevent the student from dropping out.

DISCUSSIONS

The results showed satisfactory response to the intervention. Changes in the first two months were highly noticeable. It was however in the last remaining months that absences dramatically declined in four to five fold times. This study supports the studies of Robinson, Lee, Dearing and Rogers (2017) and Rogers & Feller (2017). It is indeed essential that we involve parents in the pursuit of educational success. We shall adopt with the change of times and be able to grapple the perks of modern technology and work with it for our advantage thus streamlining along with technology ------TEACHNOLOGY.