Chapter 5: English Language Arts Teachers’ Experiences Using Social Media for Instruction

Social media has provided innovative ways for teachers to engage students in the learning process but has created a challenge for teachers to incorporate these applications in a manner that is both meaningful to the learning objectives and acceptable to their administration. Research on the implementation of social media within English language arts (ELA) classrooms is limited, leaving ELA teachers and school administrators without a full scope of the educational potential or best practices when using social media for instruction. Accordingly, this study explored the experiences of secondary ELA teachers using social media as an instructional tool. The study employed in-depth interviews of nine teachers chosen through a purposeful sampling of ELA teachers within the United States. The results indicated that social media networks provided teachers with an engaging approach to connect content and instruction to students’ lives, and that challenges were viewed as opportunities to teach digital literacy within the ELA content.