Teachers ‘liking’ their work? Exploring the realities of teacher Facebook groups

Neil Selwyn has a new paper in the British Educational Research Journal titled “Teachers ‘liking’ their work? Exploring the realities of teacher Facebook groups“. The paper was written with colleagues from Gothenburg University during Neil’s stint there as Wearn Visiting Professor. The paper focuses on the digital labor implicit in teachers’ participation in a 13,000 strong online Facebook group focused on Flipped Classroom activities. While these groups are often celebrated as a source of networked professional learning, this paper explores characteristics of the Facebook group that constituted disadvantaging, exploitative and/or disempowering forms of technological engagement. In these terms, the paper highlights tensions between what appears to ‘work’ for individual teachers in the short term and likely longer-term implications that these practices might have for diminished professionalism and expertise of teachers.