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The challenge to professionals of using social media: teachers in England negotiating personal-professional identities

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Abstract

Social media are a group of technologies such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn which offer people chances to interact with one another in new ways. Teachers, like other members of society, do not all use social media. Some avoid, some experiment with and others embrace social media enthusiastically. As a means of communication available to everyone in modern society, social media is challenging teachers, as other professionals in society, to decide whether to engage with these tools and, if so, on what basis – as an individual (personally), or as a teacher (professionally). Although teachers are guided by schools and codes of practice, teachers as individuals are left to decide whether and how to explore social media for either their own or their students' learning. This paper analyses evidence from interviews with 12 teachers from England about their use of social media as to the challenges they experience in relation to using the media as professional teachers.. Teachers are in society’s spotlight in terms of examples of inappropriate use of social media but also under peer pressure to connect. This paper explores their agency in responding. The paper focuses on how teachers deal with tensions between their personal and professional use of social media. These tensions are not always perceived as negative and some teachers' accounts revealed a unity in their identities when using social media. The paper reflects on the implications of such teachers' identities in relation to the future of social media use in education.

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Notes

  1. Primary schools teach children aged 4–11 years of age.

  2. Secondary schools teach children aged 11–16 (or 18) years of age.

  3. These units take children referred out of mainstream education.

  4. Teachers working across schools, usually self-employed.

  5. These are usually called sixth-form colleges or just colleges and take children from 16 to 18 years beyond the age of compulsory education.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Alison Fox

  2. School of Medicine, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Terese Bird

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  1. Alison Fox
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Correspondence to Alison Fox.

Appendix 1: Interview schedule

Appendix 1: Interview schedule

  1. 1.

    Agree interviewee happy to be audio recorded and that the network map about to be produced can be used for analysis. Remind interviewee that participation is voluntary and data can be withdrawn before analysis.A transcript will be generated of the portion of the interview to be used as data and will be returned to the participant for any comments/amendments. Ask for a preferred pseudonym to be used and confirm that the school will only be mentioned by type and region.

  2. 2.

    On the piece of paper provided ask interviewee to represent with whom and how they communicate with others as part of their professional life ie. anyone (could be individuals, groups or organisations) with whom they learn, discuss, share ideas about teaching, learning and being a teaching professional. As they are drawing ask them to talk through their thinking, referring to the emerging map in a way which will help us connect the audio with the document where relevant.

  3. 3.

    Start by asking them to represent with whom they collect but explain that we are also interested in knowing the modes of communication, ie. whether face-to-face, phone, or various other virtual methods of communication. Ask them to identify which parts of their network connect via social media such as Twitter, Facebook (FB), LinkedIn etc.

  4. 4.

    When this is mainly complete ask the following questions:

    1. a)

      Explain how you think about the use of social media personally and professionally?

    2. b)

      Identify what have been the influences on how you connect using social media, ideally with examples that are relevant to your professional use of these media.

    3. c)

      Reflect on how your use of social media has changed, in particular as it affects your professional life.

    4. d)

      How would you summarise the role of social media in your professional learning, compared to other learning opportunities?

    5. e)

      Would you classify yourself as a social media enthusiast/sceptic/conscious luddite or other category of user for professional learning?

Prompts:

If users of FB/Twitter check approx. Numbers of friends/follows/followers.

If they have begun to categorise their map, suggest that they add a key.

Ensure that any new sources/modes of communication offered during the questions are added to the map.

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Fox, A., Bird, T. The challenge to professionals of using social media: teachers in England negotiating personal-professional identities. Educ Inf Technol 22, 647–675 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-015-9442-0

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