A Decade of Research on K–12 Teaching With Social Media: Insights on the State of the Field

• In Event: The Redefinition of Teacher Professionalism, Knowledge, and Practice in the 21st Century

Abstract

The increasingly widespread use of social media to expand and deepen one’s social connections is a relatively new but potentially important phenomenon that has implications for teaching, learning and teachers’ professional knowledge and development in the 21st century. This paper provides a systematic review of a decade of educational research from around the world to present the state-of-the-field and provide a launching off point for the session’s additional four papers. This paper reviews empirical research to examine how social media are perceived and used by K-12 teachers with what impacts on students’ learning, teachers’ knowledge and pedagogy, or teachers’ professional learning and development. In addition, we review the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of this body of work to set a course for future research foci, methodological techniques, and theory-building. Following established standards for quality and validity in systematic literature reviews (Boote & Beile, 2005; Machi & McEvoy, 2016; Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff, Altman, & The PRISMA Group, 2009), we outline several categories to which the reviewer must attend in conducting a quality literature review: coverage (having criteria for inclusion and exclusion); synthesis (summary, analysis, and synthesis of selected literature); and significance (discussion of the implications of the existing research). A first criterion for inclusion was that an article had been published between 2007-2017. A second criterion was that the article had been published in peer-reviewed journals dedicated mostly or entirely to the topic (i.e., educational technology journals) or in high quality general education journals (e.g., Review of Education Research). The scan was then expanded, using Scopus, ERIC, Education Full Text and Web of Science databases to identify additional peer-reviewed articles. After identifying over 2,300 empirical articles, two raters screened these articles based on our inclusion and exclusion criteria. This work builds and extends earlier reviews of the research literature that have focused only on one social media (e.g., social network sites or Twitter) and found the majority of empirical studies have concerned college students and not K-12 teachers or their students (Manca & Ranieri, 2013). To establish the quality of selected articles, empirical articles needed to demonstrate: (1) clear statement of research questions; (2) claims and interpretations grounded in evidence and theory; and (3) systematic documentation of procedures (Freeman, deMarrais, Preissle, Roulston & St Pierre, 2007). Our scan of selected journals and database queries yielded a total of 83 empirical peer-reviewed journal articles deemed appropriate for review. Five themes were evident in the reviewed studies; the studies focused on: students’ informal learning outside of school; students’ formal learning in schools and classrooms; teachers’ perceptions and pedagogical practices; and informal and formal teacher professional development. Implications for the design of future research and teacher education initiatives will be discussed in the final paper.

Authors

• Christine M. Greenhow, Michigan State University

• Diana Brandon, Charleston Southern University