Scaffolding Preservice Teachers’ Professional use of Social Media Spaces: A Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Project

Abstract

A growing number of Higher Education Faculty (HEF) are reimagining how they create learning spaces that prepare learners for rapid, complex, and uncertain societal transitions. Some have begun to embrace online, blended, and hybrid delivery models. Others are extending the metaphorical walls of their classrooms to include social media for formal and informal experiential learning. This paper is part of a more extensive Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) mixed-method study, a proven and practical approach, conducted at a university in rural Pennsylvania, US. We briefly describe survey data that yielded Contextual Knowledge (XK) related to 215 PSTs' use of instructional technology and SM, personally or academically, in high school and college. Next, we describe how Author 1 used preliminary findings to redesign the digital instructional technology course taken by 17 education majors during their freshman or sophomore year. She revised the course to provide PSTs with a (Socio)Material space mutually shaped by social media (SM), teaching methods, and contexts. We describe how PSTs used three Performance-based Playlists to guide transition and professional engagement with teachers, principals, and professional organizations on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram. Qualitative data collected after each situated learning experience highlight how this (Socio)Material space increased PSTs' access to diverse voices and concerns, nurtured relationships, and enhanced their social awareness, responsibility, and accountability. This paper illustrates how educators can use the SoTL approach to better understand students’ XK before making curricular changes. It also illustrates how educators can use discipline-specific Performance-based Playlists to scaffold transitions, including, but not limited to, SM.