Content Analysis of a Facebook Group as a Form of Mentoring for EFL Teachers

Cinkara, Emrah; Arslan, Fadime Yalcin

doi:10.5539/elt.v10n3p40

Cited by 20 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Although the main focus of this review was on K-12 teachers, three articles (5%) included students, in addition to teachers, in their samples (Forkosh-Baruch et al, 2015;Thibaut, 2015;Vazquez-Cano, 2012). Additionally, three studies (5%) identified unique social media posts rather than individual people (Cinkara & Arslan, 2017;Greenhalgh & Koehler, 2017;Kelly & Antonio, 2016).…”

Section: Research Subjects and Sample Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

A Decade of Research on K–12 Teaching and Teacher Learning with Social Media: Insights on the State of the Field

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Galvin

Brandon

et al. 2020

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background and Context The increasingly widespread use of social media to expand one's social connections is a relatively new but important phenomenon that has implications for teaching, learning, and teachers’ professional knowledge and development in the 21st century. Educational research in this area is expanding, but further investigation is necessary to better determine how to best support teachers in their professional development, collaboration, and classroom teaching. Prior literature reviews have focused extensively on higher education settings or particular platforms or platform types (e.g., Facebook, microblogging). This article provides needed insights into K–12 settings and encompasses work from a variety of social media types. We describe a systematic review of more than a decade of educational research from various countries to present the state of the field in K–12 teachers’ use of social media for teaching and professional learning across various platforms. Research Questions To define social media's potentially beneficial roles in teaching and learning, we must first take an in-depth look at teachers’ current social media practices. Toward this end, we approached our review with the following research question: How are social media perceived and used by K–12 teachers for their teaching or professional learning, and with what impacts on teachers’ practices? Research Design Guided by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) established standards for rigor and quality in systematic literature reviews, this article reviews empirical research to examine how social media are perceived and used by K–12 teachers with what impacts on teachers’ practices. Findings We find that social media features offer several benefits for helping teachers fulfill their goals for classroom teaching, including enhancing student engagement, community connections, and teacher–student interactions, but these affordances come with challenges that must be navigated. The literature also suggests that social media features provide benefits for teachers’ professional learning within both formal professional development programs and informal learning networks. Conclusions Implications of this literature review for future research and the design of educational practices are discussed in the final section. Among our conclusions are calls for more data triangulation between teachers’ and students’ learning and experiences on social media, more attention to teachers’ observational behaviors on social media, and further exploration of how social media facilitates interplay between teachers’ formal and informal learning.

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Section: Research Subjects and Sample Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

A Decade of Research on K–12 Teaching and Teacher Learning with Social Media: Insights on the State of the Field

Greenhow

Galvin

Brandon

et al. 2020

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The connectedness afforded by social media can play a critical role in teachers’ success and persistence in the field; numerous teacher surveys have reported that combating isolation is a prominent reason for educators’ social media use (e.g., Carpenter & Krutka, 2014; Hur & Brush, 2009; Trust et al, 2016). Social media can be a place to collaborate and network (Rosell-Aguilar, 2018), find mentors and more experienced peers (Cinkara & Arslan, 2017; Trust et al, 2016), and establish personal friendships (Noble, McQuillan, Littenberg-Tobias, 2016). In one study, teachers described going to Twitter for encouragement after bad days and to get personalized feedback on their lesson ideas (Noble et al, 2016); Twitter was a safe space where they could trust other educators to provide instructional and emotional support.…”

Section: Social Media and Teachers’ Professional Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Should Be the Role of Social Media in Education?

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Galvin

Willet

2019

Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences

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Social media provide new opportunities for when, how, where, and with whom people learn—venue unimaginable 15 years ago. Today’s students and educators have adopted social media for various purposes both within education and outside of it. This review of the published research on social media in education focuses on the affordances for student learning, teacher professional development, educational research practices, and communication of scholarship. The article concludes with implications for education policy.

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“…Parallel to the proliferation of research studies focusing on social media in the last decade, scholars in Turkey developed a growing interest in scrutinizing the role and importance of Facebook for teacher education and professional development in the local context. Current themes include Facebook as an instructional environment and communication channel with language users (Börekçi & Aydın, 2019;Delen, 2017;Ekoç, 2014;Özdemir, 2017), its effectiveness in pre-service teacher education courses (Demiraslan Çevik, Çelik & Haşlaman, 2014;Küçük & Şahin, 2013;Öztürk, 2015), and pre-and in-service teachers' beliefs, usage habits, activities and development (Atmaca, 2014;Balçıkanlı, 2015;Biçen, Özdamlı & Uzunboylu, 2014;Cinkara & Yalçın Arslan, 2017;Sumuer, Esfer & Yıldırım, S., 2014). Nevertheless, even a quick overview of the studies conducted in the local context presents an incomplete and fragmented picture of the role, value, and impact of Facebook groups for professional development, especially in the field of ELT teacher education (with the exception of Deniz (2016) and Yıldırım, 2019)).…”

Section: Facebook As An Informal Professional Development Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Blurring Boundaries: Facebook Groups as Digital Teachers’ Lounges for ELT Professionals

Selvi¹

2021

Anadolu Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi

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Recent years have witnessed a rapid and widespread proliferation of information technologies and internet-based applications and platforms, commonly referred to as social media, which powerfully infused into almost every aspect of our lives, including teaching, teacher education and professional development. Departing from this premise, the current study provided a systematic analysis of Facebook groups serving as networks of professional development for ELT professionals in Turkey. The two-level analysis adopted lurking as a data collection strategy and thematic content analysis as an analytical lens. The macro analysis generated a corpus of these groups (n=55) and investigated how they positioned themselves by analyzing their group size, titles, descriptions and group cover photos. The micro analysis focused on two of the most influential groups and shed light on the actual activities in the form of posts occurring in these groups in June 2020 (n=189, n=1,063, respectively, and a total of n=1,252). The two-level analysis indicated that these groups could be defined as utilitarian (predominantly requesting information and/or providing supplementary docs, instructional videos, revision tests) and socially-oriented (social exchanges with like-minded colleagues). Thus, it could be argued that these groups serve primarily as professionally-focused spaces of socialization, like a digital teachers' lounge where teachers (coming from the same area of specialty) interact with each other, socialize but also discuss work, give or ask for help on a range of professional, administrative, logistical and administrative matters.

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Content Analysis of a Facebook Group as a Form of Mentoring for EFL Teachers

Cited by 20 publications

References 19 publications

A Decade of Research on K–12 Teaching and Teacher Learning with Social Media: Insights on the State of the Field

A Decade of Research on K–12 Teaching and Teacher Learning with Social Media: Insights on the State of the Field

What Should Be the Role of Social Media in Education?

Blurring Boundaries: Facebook Groups as Digital Teachers’ Lounges for ELT Professionals

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