I’ve been looking at Teachmeets as a bit of a research interest for a couple of weeks now. I think it’s a really quite interesting space, and part of that interest comes from, I think, the different – and perhaps conflicting ways – that teachers are using movements like Teachmeets. Equally, I’m not entirely certain of the terminology here – can you call Teachmeets a social movement? If so, I think they’re a very different kind of social movement – perhaps a very modern social movement with the emphasis on distributed decision making and decentralisation – which again, makes me think of complexity pedagogy and theory.
Another complication is the increase in online Teachmeets – partly due to increased use of mobile technology and the access that it provides, but also as a mechanism for allowing teachers to contact each other during remote or home learning. The shift to online Teachmeets is actually a benefit to me – it allows me to analyse social media data about the Teachmeets in the virtual space, rather than needing to be in a physical space with other teachers. Of course, gathering tweets is only one such approach, and I need to be mindful of the fact that it is only a partial data set – and any detailed research I undertake in this space would probably be additionally supported through interviews where possible, as well.
So what are my preliminary thoughts? Well, the first thing I think is that teacher twitter is an interesting space. With a few notable exceptions – phonics, direct instruction, classroom behaviour – I think that teachers on twitter are generally quite supportive of each other. In fact, I think there’s a bit of a mutual support network of teachers liking and retweeting. Having said that, there is interaction (tbc)