Twitter in Youth Civic Education

Virtual Paper ID: 56489
  1. aaa
    Amy Chapman
    Teachers College, Columbia University
  2. aaa
    Christine Greenhow
    Michigan State University

Abstract: Although the use of Twitter has been studied in higher education settings, research on its use in K-12 settings is nascent. Further, the use of social media in education is currently undertheorized. Finally, although research on civic education generally has experienced a renaissance in the last decade, there has been little research on the use of social media in civic education. As a step toward addressing this gap in the research base, this brief paper presents a phenomenological case study which explored the experiences of five high school social studies teachers who used the social networking site, Twitter, with students to teach civics. The study documents how participating teachers used Twitter to amplify student voice and foster student agency. These findings contribute to a theoretical understanding of the use of social media in K-12 education and to the use of social media in civic education. In addition, this research has implications for teacher education, especially for similar teachers and teacher educators who seek to understand how to meaningfully integrate social media into K-12 and civics classrooms.

Topics

Conference attendees are able to comment on papers, view the full text and slides, and attend live presentations. If you are an attendee, please login to get full access.
x