A Chaperone: Using Twitter for Professional Guidance, Social Support and Personal Empowerment of Novice Teachers in Online Workshops.

This research examines the feasibility and benefits of using Twitter as a support tool to enhance social interaction among teachers in their first year of service, as they participate in an online induction workshop, and as a tool to aid the workshop’s moderator in monitoring the group and enhancing and supporting the early-service teachers’ development. The 6914 tweets that were posted during the induction workshop enabled the workshop’s moderator to constantly monitor the participants’ progress – both their lows and their highs. These tweets reveal a process of socialisation that was taking place among the participants, which led to an increased availability of personal and professional support, and thus enhanced the new teachers’ professional growth. Content analysis was conducted on the 6914 tweets that were posted during the eight months of the induction workshop. Participants answered a feedback questionnaire in the middle, and at the end of the induction workshop. Findings revealed the existence of a process of creating a “community of practice” – a process that creates professional and social support, through its members sharing their feelings and experiences directly from the field. This confirms the claim that tweets on Twitter can be a worthy substitute for face-to-face meetings. However, the questionnaire painted a different picture, in that participants’ evaluations of the Tweets were neutral, which raises questions for further research.