Examining a technology-focused language teacher community on Facebook during a crisis situation
Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education
; 8(1):1.0, 2023.
Article
in English
| ProQuest Central | ID: covidwho-2231297
ABSTRACT
Due to the chaos and confusion caused by the sudden transition from face-to-face teaching to online and remote teaching in early 2020, numerous language teachers had no choice but to rely on online communities on social networking sites. The current study therefore examined how some language teachers were utilising online communities on Facebook during the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing a mixed-methods approach, data were mainly collected through (1) an eight-month observation of a technology-focused language teacher community on Facebook to identify different types of posts generated by its members before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (n = 340);(2) a questionnaire to understand the community members' backgrounds and experiences of being in the community (n = 51);(3) semi-structured interviews with some of the questionnaire participants (n = 13);and (4) a post-interview questionnaire (n = 12) to get a better understanding of their responses. A content analysis of online posts and community members' responses suggest that language teacher communities on Facebook were supporting teachers during the stressful periods of the pandemic professionally and emotionally. The main findings are discussed in terms of the benefits and drawbacks of using online language teacher communities for professional purposes. The overall goal of the study is to offer much-needed answers on how pre-existing communities can be used to assist language teachers in times of a crisis.
Linguistics; Language teacher learning; Online language teacher communities; Facebook; Social networking sites (SNSs); Teaching; Language; Social media; Computer assisted language learning; Pandemics; Social networks; Questionnaires; Language teachers; Virtual communities; Community; Content analysis; Coronaviruses; Teachers; COVID-19
Full text:
Available
Collection:
Databases of international organizations
Database:
ProQuest Central
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Qualitative research
Language:
English
Journal:
Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education
Year:
2023
Document Type:
Article
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