Collaborating on Facebook: Teachers Exchanging Experiences Through Social Networking Sites

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Abstract

This study explores the use of Facebook for educational purposes, as a collaborative online space for enabling communication among teachers from different schools. The article describes how a group of 43 teachers on Facebook, from various schools in the southeast region of Brazil used a group on Facebook as a collaborative space for communicating among each other. On the group, these teachers shared experiences about the use of digital technologies in their secondary education classes. This study is based on Cultural Historical Activity Theory, considering the group on Facebook as a tool for mediating communication . The objective of this study is to explore why and how teachers collaborated with each other on Facebook, and to study how communication among them evolved in the process. We examined the posts on that group from 2012 to 2014, and two questionnaires responded online by the teachers in June 2012 and in December 2013. Our findings suggest that teachers tend to critically collaborate in smaller groups and that further online communication evolved outside the group of teachers, with the creation of smaller groups on Facebook inside their schools.

General Information

Keywords: Online communication, Collaboration, Secondary education, Facebook, Teachers online

Journal rubric: Empirical Research

Article type: scientific article

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17759/chp.2016120318

For citation: da Cunha F.R. Júnior, van Oers B., Kontopodis M. Collaborating on Facebook: Teachers Exchanging Experiences Through Social Networking Sites. Kul'turno-istoricheskaya psikhologiya = Cultural-Historical Psychology, 2016. Vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 290–309. DOI: 10.17759/chp.2016120318.

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Information About the Authors

Fernando R. da Cunha Júnior, PhD candidate, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, e-mail: f.rezendedacunhajunior@vu.nl

Bert van Oers, Professor of Cultural-Historical Theory of Education, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, e-mail: bert.van.oers@vu.nl

Michalis Kontopodis, Senior Lecturer in Education Studies, University of Roehampton, Paulo Freire Institute UK, Great Britain, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3948-2265, e-mail: M.Kontopodis@leeds.ac.uk

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