Teachers' Use of Apps and Platforms: Examining Practices, Concepts, and Data Privacy Awareness

• In Event: Platform Pedagogies: Examining the Public Good in Learning, Schooling, and Educating Across Emerging Platforms

Abstract

Objectives and Theoretical Framework
Research in education is beginning to examine the effects of living in a posthuman, cognitive capitalist world in which policy decisions are made with increasing reliance on AI-generated data about student and teacher performance (Lawn, 2013; Means, 2018; Peters & Bulut, 2011). One visible but under-examined phenomenon in this area is the use of apps and platforms by teachers in k-12 classrooms. Teachers can monitor classroom behavior, collect information about student progress, and share information with parents with apps like Class Dojo and ParentSquare, as well as via platforms like Blackboard. Emerging research examines the efficacy of apps for behavior management, particularly in special education contexts (cf. Krach, McCreery, & Rimel, 2017) and is beginning to question the extent to which social-emotional foci of some apps are being used in new accountability systems (Williamson, 2017). What we do not yet know is how teachers are engaging with apps in practice, and what theories they hold about app use.

Methods and Data Sources
I have asked three kinds of questions: 1) Practice: What do teachers use apps and platforms for? How are their practices reshaping behavior management and/or home-school communications? 2) Conceptual: What are teachers’ conceptions of apps themselves? What is their understanding of where apps come from, and why have they chosen the apps they use? 3) Data: To what extent do teachers think about the data their practices are generating? Do they understand who owns the data, and what rights they, their students, and their students’ parents have vis a vis data ownership, sharing, and privacy? Data include over 30 long form, semi-structured interviews with k-12 teachers using a snowball sampling procedure (Weiss, 1994). Taking a grounded theory approach to initial and subsequent analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1999), I engaged in a process of simultaneous data collection and analysis, pursuing emergent themes and, eventually, inductively constructing categories (Charmaz & Belgrave, 2013) of practice, teacher awareness, and teacher data use.

Results and significance
Findings suggest three main themes, the first of which is utility: teacher participants focused on the ways they used apps to enhance their existing practices, from behavior management to sending out flyers and information to parents. They learned about apps from a range of sources and judged the utility of each by how well an app streamlined their work. The second theme is data privacy awareness: teachers did have concerns about privacy and data ownership, but those were mitigated by districts’ vetting of apps. The third theme is teachers’ framings of access: they tended to see parents who used the apps as good at parent participation, and, conversely, those who did not use apps as uninterested or uninvolved with their child’s schooling. Findings will direct future research with school districts on teacher professional development and on parent education; they thus speak directly to the conference theme of the possibilities for public good when researchers collaborate with organizational stakeholders.

Authors

• Jessica Zacher Pandya, California State University, Dominguez Hills

• Eris Gallego, Anaheim Elementary School District

• Victoria Choi

• Emely Lopez, California State University - Long Beach