Contextualizing social media ecology and its pedagogical affordances: The perspective of high school teachers

Abstract

The potential of social media technology has made its use a daily habit among individuals, institutions, and communities. However, several studies on technology adoption, especially social media use in education, focus more on its impact on the student than the teacher, who is generally perceived as a key stakeholder. This study used purposive sampling to select teachers who taught grades 7–10 and had used social media in their teaching activities. In-depth interviews were carried out with participating teachers to get their opinions and perspectives about how they used social media in their teaching activities (N=11). Inductive and deductive coding were used for the latent content analysis and four categories emerged: (1) SM technology in the classroom, (2) positive perceived contextual affordances, (3) negative perceived contextual affordances, and (4) support for social media. Results of the study show that, besides the schools’ learning management systems, YouTube was the major SM app that was regularly used by participants in their lessons. Also, all participating teachers expressed their interest in teaching with social media. However, they cited some challenges as weaknesses towards social media use in teaching.