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Key Findings in Tweet me, message me, like me: using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice

I found this article from the readings to be very interesting. I love to examine all the ways professional learning communities can form, especially via social media platforms. Having the ability to learn from and engage with educators across the world, rather than just the bubble of your in-person community, is a huge game changer. I have examined the major takeaways of this study below.

1. Prior Engagement Leverage: using platforms like Twitter and Facebook served as a catalyst for teacher engagement. These are platforms that many already used and had an interest in, and it is easier to engage with a platform you already know how to use or use on a daily basis. This kept interest levels high. 

2. Facilitator Role: facilitators were vital to ensuring discussion was based in pedagogy and that discussion was effective and meaningful. Good facilitators ensured that social media did not become a burden to the process of the CoP. 

3. Development of CoP: Social media served as a space for a wider variety of people to meet, engage, inquire, and collaborate with peers that they may have not met otherwise. 

4. Support of Long-Term Pedagogical Change: Teachers were able to sustain and evolve their practice over time as they could constantly refer back to the online community despite the passage of time. 

Overall, this article showed me that online communities of practice offer a flexible and engaging space for collaboration and refining educational practice. I have seen this in some groups I am in on Facebook, like Florida Teachers Unite and ELA Teacher Support. People can turn to these groups with questions and share resources and best practice ideas at no cost and with ease. 

Comments

  1. nickinickelzJune 29, 2025 at 9:59 AM

    I enjoyed your summary! It's so true that teachers are more likely to participate when using platforms they’re already familiar with. Being in teacher Facebook groups myself, I agree that these spaces make it easy to revisit ideas and sustain growth over time.

    ReplyDelete

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