University of Twente Student Theses
Social media interaction between teachers and pupils: Exploring opportunities and challenges in elementary school contexts.
Schouwstra, M. (2016) Social media interaction between teachers and pupils: Exploring opportunities and challenges in elementary school contexts.
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| Abstract: | Teachers in elementary school environments are becoming more responsible for their pupils’ behaviour on social media. Current literature addresses issues around teachers communicating with students on social media in educational contexts, whereas elementary school contexts remain understudied. Therefore, expectations and experiences of both teachers and pupils participating with each other on social media have been qualitatively studied to explore opportunities and challenges in an elementary school context. During six weeks, six teachers participated on WhatsApp and Instagram with their pupils, while keeping a diary and taking part in a final interview. A selection of pupils of each class participated in focus groups before and after the study. All qualitative data has been processed according to the principles of Grounded Theory. Our findings suggest teachers and pupils could benefit from both social and functional opportunities, while use of social media as a learning platform seems less obvious. The following challenges had most impact on the experienced opportunities: merging private and professional contexts, keeping up activity levels, interferences of the teacher, use of alternative groups by pupils and access issues. Teachers should try get children involved in order to overcome these barriers and consider training to evaluate their mediated communication with pupils. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 05 communication studies, 81 education, teaching |
| Programme: | Communication Studies MSc (60713) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/69019 |
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