Teachers' Advice Seeking in the r/Teachers Subreddit

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 72
  In Roundtable Session: Emerging Trends and Tools for Preservice Teacher Preparations

Abstract

Reddit is a social media platform that allows users to share, vote on, and discuss content. In order to understand how educators have taken advantage of Reddit’s affordances, this paper explores the nature of posts to a subReddit focused on teachers, r/Teachers. The top 25 posts to r/Teachers were scraped during a twenty day period. Analysis of post content suggested that preservice and inservice teachers who posted to r/Teachers most frequently engaged in seeking advice related to technical and/or emotional aspects of teaching. Some posts addressed matters that may have been perceived as too sensitive to discuss with local colleagues. These findings have implication for teacher development and support in an era of ubiquitous social media.

Authors

• Jeffrey Paul Carpenter, Elon University

• Samantha Childers, Elon University

• Connor J McDade, Alamance-Burlington School System