Exploring How and Why Educators Use Instagram
Abstract: This paper reports on an in-progress study of educators’ professional uses of Instagram. We created an online survey that we disseminated via various social media channels during late fall of 2018. Preliminary analyses of the responses from 841 educators suggest the respondents paired their professional use of Instagram with professional activities on one or more other social media. The respondents were intensive users of Instagram, and most commonly posted professional advice and examples of instructional methods. The most common purpose for their use was perusing content shared by other educators. We discuss implications of our eventual findings for the work of educators and teacher educators in a digital age, and the future of research on educators’ professional uses of social media.