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Teachers #resist: teacher and school activism and the role that social media plays
Dissertation   Open access

Teachers #resist: teacher and school activism and the role that social media plays

Katelyn Alderfer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
Mar 2020
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/t05m-3d61
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Abstract

Educational sociology Social media Teachers--Political activity Education Social Movements
It has been known that schools have acted as activist spaces and that teachers have acted in an activist capacity. Despite this, teacher activists have struggled with their private activist identities while being public servants. Activists are moving towards social media spaces, the perfect venue to understand not only how teacher activists are acting in an activist capacity but also how social media plays a role in their struggle between being a private citizen and public professional. This blended netnographic study made use of interviews, qualitative surveys, and social media content analysis to determine how teacher activists define their activism and which social movements they engage as well as what this activism means in terms of their roles as both public and private citizens, and what role social media plays in these participants' activism. Through qualitative analysis I find that teacher activists constantly negotiate their role as both public educators and private activists even in online spaces. Making strategic use of both humor and what I call "tempered activism" in their activist work, they nevertheless do not self-identify as "activists." This raises questions about how activism is defined, what activities are included, and who is imagined as doing activist work in the context of contemporary social movement organizing. Findings suggest that by broadening the definition of activism to include the work teacher activists are doing on social media, research on activism and activist communities will allow for the inclusion of more diverse voices, especially on social media.

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