ERIC Number: EJ1283287
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Nov
Pages: 28
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0195-6744
EISSN: N/A
Teachers Turning to Teachers: Teacherpreneurial Behaviors in Social Media
Torphy, Kaitlin; Hu, Sihua; Liu, Yuqing; Chen, Zixi
American Journal of Education, v127 n1 p49-76 Nov 2020
There is growing evidence that educators engage in social media and virtual social networks across formal and informal settings to direct the trajectory of their curriculum. Interactions within and across virtual spaces provide opportunities to flatten hierarchical structures as teachers may directly or indirectly engage with educational decision making and reform implementation (e.g., Supovitz et al. 2015). This article examines an educational phenomenon, the emergence of a teacherpreneurial guild--that is, a teacher collective promoting professional practices, norms, and entrepreneurial activity--creating and defining knowledge underlying educational practices and classroom behaviors. Using a sample of Midwestern elementary teachers, this work identifies patterns of online educational resource access over 4 years across 135,000 pins shared within Pinterest, a social media platform. Results indicate teachers most often turn to one another for resources and professional materials. This may have implications for trust developed within teacherpreneurial guilds and teachers' ability to exert agency within their profession.
Descriptors: Elementary School Teachers, Entrepreneurship, Communities of Practice, Social Media, Social Networks, Educational Practices, Access to Information, Instructional Materials, Teacher Empowerment
University of Chicago Press. Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005, Chicago, IL 60637. Tel: 877-705-1878; Tel: 773-753-3347; Fax: 877-705-1879; Fax: 773-753-0811; e-mail: subscriptions@press.uchicago.edu; Web site: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/aje/about
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A