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The parenting actor-network of Latino immigrants in the United States

Abstract:

The field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has shown a growing interest in how technology might support parenting. An area that remains underexplored is the design of technology to support parents from nondominant groups in positively impacting their children’s education. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), our paper takes a sociotechnical view of low-income Latino Spanish-speaking immigrants in the U.S.—a large nondominant group—attempting to form alliances with other actors such as teachers, the broader community, and technology to exchange information that might enrich their children’s education. The use of ANT allowed us to advance work on parenting in HCI by providing a deeper understanding of the reasons—including attributes embedded in technology—impacting the quality of information channels in the parental engagement network of a nondominant group. Further, our ANT analysis illuminates a discussion of challenges and opportunities for technology to intervene in the network in ways that align with all actors’ needs and harness their potentialities.