Beyond behavior management: Exploring the role of ClassDojo in parent-teacher relationships

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 1:45 pm - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring parents' perpsectives on school-technology engagement

Abstract

ClassDojo is one of the most widely used educational apps in the U.S. Its newer communication features—direct messaging, social media-style posts, and instant translation—raise questions about the app’s potential to build relationships between school and home. Using interviews with teachers and parents, this paper explores how ClassDojo’s features are perceived as supporting involvement, engagement, and building relationships. Guided by media richness theory and family engagement frameworks, our findings show that ClassDojo’s communication features can potentially enable rich, personalized, and equitable connections between families and schools. These insights contribute to literature on sociotechnical change in schools and highlight how apps like ClassDojo may be leveraged to build relational trust, foster meaningful relationships and offer more equitable dialogue across languages.

Authors

• Vincent Cho, Boston College

• Sofia Duenas, University of Notre Dame

• Sergio David Barragán, Boston College