Session Information
ERG SES C 02, Social Media and Education
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper describes the support that early career teachers are accessing through private groups within social media, in particular, Facebook. It presents findings from 47 interviews and 104 surveys with early career teachers throughout Australasia in 2016, as part of a larger doctoral dissertation.
Teachers are increasingly using social network sites (SNSs) to obtain support, especially during their early years in the profession where they need to overcome significant challenges (Goodyear, Casey, & Kirk, 2014; Kelly & Antonio, 2016). The use of technology for developing supportive communities warrants further study, as “an important area of practice, and one that needs to be developed and nurtured to yield its fullest potential” (Wenger, White, & Smith, 2009, p. xii).
This research considers how early career teachers are using the social networking site of Facebook as a community of practice (CoP). This understanding of CoPs draws on the definition promulgated by Wenger (1998, 2002) and Wenger-Trayner (2001).Through a close study of a medical insurance claims processing office, Wenger (1998) outlined three key structural features of a community of practice: ‘mutual engagement’, ‘joint enterprise’ and ‘shared repertoire’. However, his more recent writing, and the Wenger-Trayner website, now use the simpler terms of “domain”, “community” and “practice” which will be used for the purpose of this study.
A social networking site, such as Facebook, can be conceived of as a digital habitat (Wenger et al. 2009)in which there is a “dynamic, mutually defining” (p. 37) relationship between the human inhabitants and the digital environment. Teachers interacting with Facebook have adapted their practices to the technology even as the technology has developed to accommodate them over the past decade. As Trust, Krutka & Carpenter, J. P. (2016) suggest, "the flexibility of PLNs allows teachers to adapt their learning experiences based on the contexts in which they work, and also offers opportunities for engagement, participation, and even community that extend beyond the walls of schools" (p. 30).
Private Facebook groups can be considered in relation to the traditional school classroom. Where traditional staffrooms involve face-to-face contact, Facebook involves primarily technology-mediated chat (textual communication). Teachers who may be isolated within their own school classroom (e.g. those in rural locations) can find in Facebook other teachers sharing a similar context and values with whom a connection can be developed (Kelly & Fogarty, 2015). For early career teachers, there is a need for connection with other teachers with whom they can share ideas, receive feedback on their teaching, and ask questions (Burke, Aubusson, Schuck, Buchanan, & Prescott, 2015; Clarà, 2015). (Burke, Aubusson, Schuck, Buchanan, & Prescott, 2015; Clarà, 2015). Almost half of the teachers in the study of Burke et al. (2015) reported isolation from more experienced teachers, and even those who were involved in co-planning activities with them sought deeper levels of collaboration, such as co-teaching and collaborative observation.
Facebook has the potential to provide the collaborative environment that far too many beginning teachers lack, due to their casual teachers status. This study examined the value that these teachers gained from the private Facebook groups they belonged to. Some of these groups had been set up during their pre-service years, others developed in their first year in the profession with a particular focus/domain.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Atabek, O. (2013). An exploratory study on the use of Facebook by pre-service teachers in Turkey and the USA: A mixed method design (Doctoral dissertation, Middle East Technical University Berry, B. (2015). The dynamic duo of professional learning = collaboration and technology. Phi Delta Kappan, 97(4), 51-55. doi:10.1177/0031721715619920 Burke, P. F., Aubusson, P. J., Schuck, S. R., Buchanan, J. D., & Prescott, A. E. (2015). How do early career teachers value different types of support? A scale-adjusted latent class choice model. Teaching and Teacher Education, 47, 241-253. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2015.01.005 Goodyear, V. A., Casey, A., & Kirk, D. (2014). Tweet me, message me, like me: using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice. Gruppetta, M., & Mason, T. (2013). The Universal Appeal of Facebook©. Social Media in Higher Education: Teaching in Web 2.0, 262. Huberman, M., Thompson, C. L., & Weiland, S. (1997). Perspectives on the teaching career. In International handbook of teachers and teaching (pp. 11-77). Springer Netherlands, Sport, Education, and Society, 19(7), I927-943 doi:10.1080/13573322.2013.858624 Kelly, N. (2015). What do we know about developing online communities of teachers? Australian Digital Futures Blog. University of Southern Queensland. Kelly, N., & Antonio, A. (2016). Teacher peer support in social network sites. Teacher and Teacher Education, 56, 138-149. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2016.02.007 Kelly, N., & Fogarty, R. (2015). An Integrated Approach to Attracting and Retaining Teachers in Rural and Remote Parts of Australia. Journal of Economic and Social Policy, 17(2), Article 1. Papacharissi, Z. (2009). The virtual geographies of social networks: a comparative analysis of Facebook, LinkedIn and ASmallWorld. New Media & Society, 11(1-2), 199-220. doi:10.1177/1461444808099577 Trust, T., Krutka, D. G., & Carpenter, J. P. (2016). Together we are better: Professional learning and networks for teachers. Computers and Education, 102, 15-35. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2016.06.007 Tynjälä, P. & Heikkinen, H. Z Erziehungswiss (2011). Beginning teachers’ transition from pre-service education to working life, 14: 11. doi:10.1007/s11618-011-0175-6 Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning as a Social System. Systems Thinker, 1-10. Wenger-Trayner, B. & E (2010). Communities of Practice and social learning systems: the career of a concept. In C. Blackmore (Ed.), Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice: The Open University. Wenger, E., White, N., & Smith, J. (2009). Digital Habitats: Stewarding technology for communities. Portland, Oregon: CPsquare
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.