What kinds of social network groups do teachers find useful?

This paper presents results from a survey of teachers describing their two most useful Facebook groups (n=108 teachers). It addresses a gap in the literature, in that many studies investigate teachers within certain Facebook groups, but little is known about the types of groups that teachers-who-use-Facebook find to be most useful. Analysis of the survey results looks at the privacy, thematic focus, and regional focus of groups that teachers report to be useful. The study also addresses the question of “what kinds of peer support do teachers find within these useful Facebook groups? ” The results show that useful Facebook groups tend to be private, positioned at a state/jurisdiction/national level, and have a clear thematic focus. Results also show that within these useful Facebook groups teachers report high levels of pragmatic support, with lower levels of modelling of practice, reflection and feedback, meaningful connections, and emotional support (in that order). The paper discusses the significance of these findings with respect to issues of policy, design, and facilitation of Social Network Sites (SNSs) as well as teacher preparation for competencies to thrive within SNSs. The present paper provides an understanding of which kinds of Facebook group teachers report as being useful as well as the kinds of peer support that they are finding within these groups . The paper was motivated by contradictory findings in studies of teachers in SNSs, in relation to the kinds of peer support that they report (Kelly et al., 2021; Lantz-Andersson et al., 2018; Macià & García, 2016). On the one hand, there are claims that teachers find deep forms of peer support within Facebook groups in the form of practice being modelled, feedback about practice being provided, and support for reflecting on practice. For example, Ab Rashid (2018) found for 34 English language teachers that their involvement in a Facebook group “contribute[d] to the development of their professional lives in the sense that it enable[d] them to dialogically reflect on the teaching-related experiences encountered” (p. 114). On the other hand, there is evidence that teachers do not find this kind of deep engagement, and instead find mostly superficial support in the form of pragmatic information and shallow social connections. In a study of five large, open teacher groups within Facebook, Kelly and Antonio (2016) found that there was “scant evidence of online support for reflection on practice, feedback about practice or modelling of practice, all forms of support that the theory stresses as important for teachers” (p. 148). A key factor in these seemingly contradictory findings is that not all Facebook groups are the same because, in short, teachers do different things in different kinds of group (Kelly, 2019). The challenge that remains is to gain a deeper level of understanding of which kinds of group are useful for which kinds of peer support (Kelly et al., 2021) . As state, there is a need to “move beyond discussions of Facebook being either ‘good’ or ‘bad’; ‘empowering’ or ‘oppressive’” (Bergviken Rensfeldt et al., 2018, p. 247) to more deeply consider future possibilities for its use.