On December 2, 2023, ICI Professor Chen Shuangye was invited to deliver a keynote speech entitled "Chinese parental digital involvement in online learning: Perspectives of digital labor and digital divide".at the 10th annual meeting of the largest overseas Chinese education research association -CERA.

Professor Chen Shuangye

Deputy Director of Department of Education of ECNU

Chief Editor of ECNU Review of Education

Professor Chen Shuangye pointed out in the report that in addition to the obvious technological promotion effect of educational digital transformation, special attention needs to be paid to the non-explicit social consequences that may have on the educational ecology. Based on a series of empirical research and theoretical work, she conducted an in-depth analysis of parents’ “digital labor” in online learning and the potential “digital divide” in the process.

Professor Chen Shuangye pointed out that online learning is not an intelligent program that runs automatically. Take online learning at home as an example. Although online learning is regarded as an important way to break the limitations of time and space and ensure the normal operation of school education, it also greatly expanded the scope of the original education work and generates a large amount of scattered additional labor and changed the existing division of labor between home and school. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the digital labor that parents exert in online learning, and to sort out the impact that information technology may have on home-school partnership, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the changes in parents' involvement in the digital era.

Empirical data shows that parents’ digital labor revolves around two roles: “parent” and “surrogate teacher”—the former is mainly responsible for supportive and managerial work including technical support, notification and communication, and homework submission, while the latter is mainly responsible for teaching work including course supervision and guidance, learning content and time arrangement, home-school communication, etc. To a large extent, these digital labors place higher demands on parents’ time, energy, digital literacy, subject knowledge, and teaching skills than traditional ones. Parents of different socioeconomic levels often have significant differences in their performance and emotional feelings when performing digital labor. This may further bring about the digital divide problem.

At the end of the report, Professor Chen Shuangye emphasized the importance of reflecting on the two sides of information technology. She pointed out that the challenges to home-school partnership in the digital age are not only technical, but also affected by other social factors such as different socioeconomic backgrounds and uneven distribution of educational resources.

Professor Jin Tinghe, President of CERA, said that Professor Chen Shuangye’s report not only proposed a new concept of parents’ digital labor, but also provided a new perspective for education policymakers and practitioners to think about current and future challenges in dealing with digital education.