#OklaEd as an Illustrative Example of the Power and Fragility of Networked Teacher Activism

• In Event: Teacher-Led Networked Educational Organizing in the United States: Invited Session

Abstract

While scholarship on organic, teacher-led uses of Twitter has illustrated benefits concerning communication, professional development, and in- and out-of-class learning (Author, 2014; Visser, Evering, & Barrett, 2014), there is less scholarship detailing teachers’ activism efforts via the medium. Teachers have a long history of advocating for students, the profession, and social causes. However, as social protest changes within the networked public spheres afforded by social media (Tufekci, 2017), it is worth understanding how and why teachers can be change agents for a more just profession and world. As Tufekci illustrated in her recent book on social protest in publicly networked spheres, social media is powerful particularly in its ability to mediate action and mobilize dissidents quickly, but modern movements are also fragile because they can lack the tactical maneuverability and doggedness to withstand the social, cultural, and legislative challenges. The #OklaEd network offers a powerful and illustrative example of this phenomenon.
The #OklaEd hashtag began to be used by Oklahoma educators on Twitter in January of 2013 and then after a session at EdCampOKC the next month, a Sunday night #OklaEd chat was born. #OklaEd has generated one of the most active state educational Twitter hashtags (SETHs; Rosenberg, Greenhalgh, Koehler, Hamilton, & Akcaoglu, 2016), and per our research, tweets on the hashtag have increased particularly in election years like 2014 and 2016 (2013, N= 21215; 2014, N= 42918; 2015, N=70287; 2016, N=75896). Teachers in Oklahoma face dire conditions with deep cuts to K-12 and higher educational funding (Maiden & Ballard, 2017), a loss of teaching positions, a growth of emergency certified teachers, and a demoralizing culture of accountability reform (Author, 2017). While the #OklaEd hashtag on Twitter has offered one space for educators to discuss both their craft and challenges posed by the state, numerous Facebook conversations, both within groups (e.g., Oklahoma Parents and Educators for Public Education, #OklaEd) and on personal feeds, have generated discussion and political action. A vibrant community of influential bloggers (e.g., okeducationtruths.wordpress.com, viewfromtheedge.net, bluecerealeducation.com, fourthgenerationteacher.blogspot.com), have regularly challenged narratives within the state. Oklahoma’s 2016 Teacher of the Year, Shawn Sheehan, was one of more than 30 teachers in the “Teachers Caucus” who ran for office to effect change within the field (Eger, 2016).
However, while the #OklaEd community has illustrated some electoral and narrative power, they have succumbed to defeats that leave Oklahoma public education reeling. Considering Tufekci’s (2017) insistence on the importance for movements to maintain tactical maneuverability and doggedness, #OklaEd activists might consider how they can better signal their capacity for change that will be more successful long term. Otherwise, state teachers and students will continue to face significant challenges and some teachers, like Shawn Sheehan and many others (Gibbs, 2017), may justifiably choose to leave for better pay and working conditions elsewhere. In this paper, we detail the historical and contemporary state of activism within the #OklaEd ecology, analyze such efforts through Tufekci’s signal-capacity theory, and consider implications for teacher activism in the 21st century.

Authors

• Daniel G Krutka, University of North Texas

• Scott Haselwood, Oklahoma State University

• Tutaleni I. Asino, Oklahoma State University