A Window, Mirror, and Wall: How Educators Use Twitter for Professional Learning

Abstract

Teachers and other professionals increasingly utilize Twitter as a medium for professional expression and professional learning. These types of Twitter exchanges often take place in formal chats which are moderated by professional organizations or other knowledge brokers in the field. As moderated public online forums become more common, educators may wish to understand the benefits and limitations of this type of professional learning. This paper reports on a study of educators’ discourse in two hosted Twitter chats focused on global education and analyzes the ways in which these types of chats align with research on high-quality professional learning. Results indicate that Twitter chats provide multiple components of high-quality professional learning, namely a focus on content, collaboration, and teacher agency; to a lesser extent, they may provide peer coaching and allow for conversations across a sustained duration. However, other components of meaningful professional learning are not possible in this context, as it is not job-embedded and does not provide active learning or supported opportunities to practice.

Assessing the sustainability of social studies virtual professional learning communities on social media: a quantitative study of “sense of community”

“…Research conducted by Sturm and Quaynor (2020) concur with Staudt Willet (2019) and Carpenter and Krutka (2014) to support that participation in social media-based learning communities situate members to call upon one another for support and to share resources and insight to positively impact practice with the added convenience of doing so from personal smart devices. Teachers engage on Twitter by following various accounts, liking and Virtual professional learning communities retweeting other tweets and published content, and engaging in conversations, which are commonly referred to as "chats" (Carpenter and Krutka, 2014;Krutka, 2017).…”

“…within their tweet (Gruzd et al, 2011;Howard, 2019;Langhorst, 2015;Lewis and Rush, 2013;Visser et al, 2014). Sturm and Quaynor (2020) and Staudt Willet (2019) conducted qualitative research studies that concur with Carpenter and Krutka's (2014) quantitative survey study suggesting that the learning communities on Twitter act as affinity spaces where collaborative dialogue may birth ideas, activities and other content related to teaching and learning that is engaging. This type of virtual communication and engagement among educators is becoming increasingly common given the progression of the digital age (Bedford, 2019;Carpenter and Krutka, 2014).…”

“…Since the advancement of Web 2.0, teachers now have the ability to join and contribute to virtual professional learning communities and networks online. These virtual communities and networks afford teachers the opportunity to engage in affinity spaces where "just-in-time" knowledge may be readily shared and attained to support the teaching and learning of content (Sturm and Quaynor, 2020). In fact, Yoakam (2019) found in their mixed methods study that teachers from various content areas ranging from 6-10 years of experience credited their virtual professional learning community for aiding them in reaching their professional goals.…”

“…Since the genesis of #SSChat in 2010, social studies teachers and scholars alike have used the #SSChat hashtag to actively and passively engage one another through information contribution and consumption to intentionally foster learning, collaboration and support for social studies education and content anytime and from nearly anywhere (Carpenter and Krutka, 2014;Langhorst, 2015;Trust et al, 2016;Visser et al, 2014). Moreover, research supports that teachers engaging in informal professional development communities, such as #SSChat find these learning opportunities to be more enriching and beneficial than traditional professional learning opportunities due to the self-directed nature, which allows teachers to better fulfill their individual needs via a more timely and convenient medium (Hur and Brush, 2009;Staudt Willet, 2019;Sturm and Quaynor, 2020;Visser et al, 2014).…”

Digitalization peculiarities of organizations: a case study

“…It is necessary to develop a system of institutions that would make digitalization manageable to meet the national development goals and ensure the safety of people's lives. According to these documents, their results should be: an increase in domestic costs for the development of the digital economy from 1.7% to 5.1% of the gross domestic product of the country; creation of a stable and secure information and communication infrastructure for the efficient transfer, processing, and storage of large amounts of data between organizations and households; the use of predominant domestic software by state authorities, local governments, private legal entities, and individuals (Vu, 2019;Vural, 2019;Fedulova et al, 2019;Sturm and Quaynor, 2020;Herningsih et al, 2019). The implementation of such large-scale tasks will require the training of appropriate human resources, developers and users of digital technologies.…”