Appropriating WhatsApp for Learning: How Preschool Families Increased Their Voices in Remote Instruction

The Covid-19 pandemic forced countries worldwide to adapt face-to-face instruction to a virtual environment in early 2020. This paper examines the role of bidirectional Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in supporting remote instruction. It specifically examines how Mexican preschool families appropriated the affordances of WhatsApp, a cross-platform, freeware, instant-messaging app, to negotiate, personalize, and contribute to an educational program developed and distributed by Sesame Workshop. Our findings suggest that WhatsApp played an essential role in democratizing remote learning by empowering parents placed at the center of their children's face-to-face instruction and allowing children to make meaningful contributions to the program. Our findings also demonstrated that deploying ICTs in culturally relevant ways can strengthen families' engagement with schools and interventions. We conclude with key recommendations for deploying ICTs for remote instruction.