Using Social Media as a Platform of Communication Between School Administration and the Local Communities to Promote Inclusive Education for Children with Special Needs

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the level of using social media as a platform of communication between school administration and the local communities in Saudi Arabia schools from the parents' perspectives. The descriptive method was used as a methodology to achieve the study objectives. The study involved 265 parents of students from different academic stages and different cities in Saudi Arabia to take part in an online questionnaire of ten items, which was sent to the participants online. The results showed that the best practices of school administration in electronic communication included creating WhatsApp groups with parents for informal communication and employing Twitter and Instagram accounts as a media interface for the school. These results reveal that male parents think more slightly that school administration uses social media to communicate with the local community. The findings also indicated that the age of the parents did not affect their views because the school uses similar platforms and parents are familiar with using the social media websites regardless of their age.