Learning, Teaching and Social Media: A generational approach

Social media is now ever-present and increasingly important in many areas of our daily lives, which means that a critical awareness of social media, and a re-interrogation of what professionalism means in relation to it, is fast becoming a requirement for all future generations. Learning, Teaching and Social Media critically analyses social media across education, from primary and secondary schools to university, in order to assess how students, educators and policymakers are engaging with it.

This book takes a generational approach to social media unlike any other work and assesses interactions with it, from pupils on Kidblog and teens on Facebook, to educators on TeacherTube. As digital literacies must now cope with the inevitability of social media, the book asks what role education does and should play. Bringing together current literature from education, learning and media technologies, McWhirter also draws on audience and communication studies, psychology and arts and humanities at a time when many different disciplines are trying to understand what social media means to our society. Perhaps most importantly, the book will empirically test some of the current educational thinking on social media in the field, by presenting and analysing interviews undertaken with academics, teachers and educators.

By considering what various stakeholders are doing with social media, Learning, Teaching and Social Media will contribute to recommendations for policy that shape a future with digital literacies high on the agenda. As such, it will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduates working in the field of education and technology, alongside critical digital media scholars who occupy a range of disciplines across the humanities.