What is up? Parental Whatsapp discussion groups in diverse educational settings in Israel

We explore and characterize the use of WhatsApp group instant messaging as part of the social media trend in the context of parental engagement and participation in public schooling. We reveal how this platform is utilized within public school parental interactions, emphasizing the possible benefits as well as obstacles for such technologies in promoting parental engagement in diverse settings in Israel. Given the abundance of literature dealing with parental involvement in education in various cultural and socio-economic contexts, we propose a fresh outlook regarding one specific kind of such involvement through a social media platform, offering a novel methodology and proposing a new avenue of study for additional research in other contexts.