The benefits and pitfalls of social media for teachers’ agency and wellbeing

Abstract

The authors investigated the benefits and pitfalls of social media use for schoolteachers. The benefits included opportunities for teacher agency, a resource for teacher wellbeing, and an efficacious communications and marketing tool for schools. However, along with these benefits were associated pitfalls including challenges to esteem and threats to authenticity in the profession. This study employs hermeneutic phenomenology, investigating teachers’ lived experiences in the world of social media, and generates theory around how teachers make meaning in social media contexts. A key finding of this study is teachers’ desires to be in a professional community outside their employment system. Teachers actively exert agency and professional identity on social media platforms to help and support each other. In this way, social media is shaped by teacher agency and used as a tool for social good.