Effect of Faculty's Use of Twitter as a Professional Development Resource in Preservice Teacher Internship

• In Event: 65.079 - Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: 65.079-13 - Using Digital Tools to Enhance Teacher Education

Abstract

Educators have increasingly turned to Twitter as a means for building and sustaining professional learning communities. This paper reports the results of a study of 82 undergraduate preservice teachers and their selective use of Twitter as a form of informal mentoring and professional development during internship. Interns had the option of following a faculty-mediated Twitter account and subsequently reported their willingness to continue using Twitter after graduation. Data were analyzed for trends in social media acceptance. It can be concluded that pre-service interns who followed a faculty-mediated Twitter account were more likely to continue using Twitter to share resources and to learn about new classroom strategies and new technologies.

Author

• Michael S Mills, University of Central Arkansas