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Using Twitter for Civic Education in K-12 Classrooms

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Abstract

This paper is a report of a qualitative case study of two teachers who use the social media platform Twitter with their students to teach civic knowledge and skills. Although the use of Twitter in higher education has been studied, few studies have been done to understand the use of Twitter in K-12 education (Greenhow et al., 2020). This article adds to that literature on Twitter in K-12 education by examining the ways in which one elementary school teacher and one high school teacher use Twitter in their classrooms to prepare their students for lifelong civic engagement. This study showed the elementary teacher used Twitter to teach her students how to interact with others on social media, while the high school teacher used Twitter to increase student engagement and civic participation. For both, Twitter provided a space where each teacher and their students could learn and practice the knowledge and skills necessary to participate in civic life across the lifespan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 W. 120th Street, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    Amy L. Chapman

  2. Northeastern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program, 1290 Burns Rd., Elko, NV, 89801, USA

    Holly Marich

Authors
  1. Amy L. Chapman
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  2. Holly Marich
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Correspondence to Amy L. Chapman.

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Ethical Standards

Approval for this study was obtained from the Institutional Review Board at Michigan State University (IRB protocol number STUDY00001055).

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Informed consent was obtained from both individual participants included in this study. No identifying information about these participants is included in this article.

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Appendix

Appendix

Interview Protocol.

Grand Tour Question

Thinking about your experience of teaching civics and of using Twitter to teach civics, can you describe what that has been like?

Context

• What grade levels and subjects do you teach?

• How long have you been teaching?

• How long have you been teaching at your current school?

• Can you describe your experience using technology with students?

Objectives for students

• What are the most important aspects of civics that you want your students to learn?

• What examples of being a good or active citizen do you include in your teaching?

• In thinking about using Twitter to teach civics, what do you hope that your students get out of that experience?

• What do you hope students will be able to do because they are using Twitter?

• How do you think using Twitter as part of civics education benefits students?

• When you teach civics, what do you hope that your students are learning?

• When you teach civics, what do you hope your students do with what they learn?

• Do you think your students understand citizenship differently after using Twitter?

Using Twitter

• What gave you the initial idea of using Twitter to teach civics?

• How did you move from the idea of using Twitter to thinking through to actually using Twitter in your classroom?

• Can you describe how you use Twitter with your students?

• How do you introduce Twitter to your class?

• Has using Twitter with students worked out the way you thought it would?

• Have there been any challenges or barriers to using Twitter with your students?

How Twitter uses compares between 7 and 17-year-old.

• Does it seem to you that your students are interested in civics? What makes you think so/not?

• Are there ways in which students are able to interact with civics content or civics practices in ways they would not have had you not used Twitter? Please describe.

• Why do you think using Twitter might be effective specifically for teaching civics?

• Did you find that anything about your teaching changed when using Twitter?

• Did you find that anything about your way of interacting with students changed when using Twitter?

• Did you find that anything about the way in which students interacted with each other changed when using Twitter?

Final prompts to push past saturation

• What surprised you during the time when your students were using Twitter for class?

• If you were to talk to other civics teachers about using Twitter with students, what would you most want them to be aware of?

• What about teaching civics with Twitter have we not talked about yet?

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Chapman, A.L., Marich, H. Using Twitter for Civic Education in K-12 Classrooms. TechTrends 65, 51–61 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-020-00542-z

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