The challenge to professionals of using social media: teachers in England negotiating personal-professional identities

Social media are a group of technologies such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn which offer people chances to interact with one another in new ways. Teachers, like other members of society, do not all use social media. Some avoid, some experiment with and others embrace social media enthusiastically. As a means of communication available to everyone in modern society, social media is challenging teachers, as other professionals in society, to decide whether to engage with these tools and, if so, on what basis – as an individual (personally), or as a teacher (professionally). Although teachers are guided by schools and codes of practice, teachers as individuals are left to decide whether and how to explore social media for either their own or their students' learning. This paper analyses evidence from interviews with 12 teachers from England about their use of social media as to the challenges they experience in relation to using the media as professional teachers.. Teachers are in society’s spotlight in terms of examples of inappropriate use of social media but also under peer pressure to connect. This paper explores their agency in responding. The paper focuses on how teachers deal with tensions between their personal and professional use of social media. These tensions are not always perceived as negative and some teachers' accounts revealed a unity in their identities when using social media. The paper reflects on the implications of such teachers' identities in relation to the future of social media use in education

A Classification System for Teachers’ Motivational Behaviours Recommended in Self-Determination Theory Interventions.

Teachers’ behavior is a key factor that influences students’ motivation. Many theoretical models have tried to explain this influence, with one of the most thoroughly researched being self-determination theory (SDT). We used a Delphi method to create a classification of teacher behaviors consistent with SDT. This is useful because SDT-based interventions have been widely used to improve educational outcomes. However, these interventions contain many components. Reliably classifying and labeling those components is essential for implementation, reproducibility, and evidence synthesis.We used an international expert panel (N = 34) to develop this classification system. We started by identifying behaviors from existing literature, then refined labels, descriptions, and examples using the Delphi panel’s input. Next, the panel of experts iteratively rated the relevance of each behavior to SDT, the psychological need that each behavior influenced, and its likely effect on motivation. To create a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of behaviors, experts nominated overlapping behaviors that were redundant, and suggested new ones missing from the classification. After three rounds, the expert panel agreed upon 57 teacher motivational behaviors (TMBs) that were consistent with SDT. For most behaviors (77%), experts reached consensus on both the most relevant psychological need and influence on motivation. Our classification system provides a comprehensive list of TMBs and consistent terminology in how those behaviors are labeled. Researchers and practitioners designing interventions could use these behaviors to design interventions, to reproduce interventions, to assess whether these behaviors moderate intervention effects, and could focus new research on areas where experts disagreed

A Classification System for Teachers’ Motivational Behaviours Recommended in Self-Determination Theory Interventions

Teachers’ behaviour is a key factor that influences students’ motivation. Many theoretical models have tried to explain this influence, with one of the most thoroughly researched being self-determination theory (SDT). We used a Delphi method to create a classification of teacher behaviours consistent with SDT. This is useful because SDT-based interventions have been widely used to improve educational outcomes. However, these interventions contain many components. Reliably classifying and labelling those components is essential for implementation, reproducibility, and evidence synthesis. We used an international expert panel (N = 34) to develop this classification system. We started by identifying behaviours from existing literature, then refined labels, descriptions, and examples using the experts’ input. Next, these experts iteratively rated the relevance of each behaviour to SDT, the psychological need that each behaviour influenced, and its likely effect on motivation. To create a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of behaviours, experts nominated overlapping behaviours that were redundant, and suggested new ones missing from the classification. After three rounds, the expert panel agreed upon 57 teacher motivational behaviours that were consistent with SDT. For most behaviours (77%), experts reached consensus on both the most relevant psychological need and influence on motivation. Our classification system provides a comprehensive list of teacher motivational behaviours and consistent terminology in how those behaviours are labelled. Researchers and practitioners designing interventions could use these behaviours to design interventions, to reproduce interventions, to assess whether these behaviours moderate intervention effects, and could focus new research on areas where experts disagreed.   Educational impact and implications statement The things teachers do in class have an important influence on their students’ motivation, engagement, and learning. This study uses an international expert panel to identify the teacher behaviours most likely to influence motivation—specifically, teacher behaviours that increase the more healthy, autonomous motivation that comes from within students. This list of behaviours, agreed upon by the experts, could be used by teachers trying to improve their practice, policymakers trying to scale interventions, and researchers trying to assess which behaviours best predict student outcomes