AILA 2021 conference presentation as part of the TPLang21 symposium.

1. FREELANCE LANGUAGE TEACHERS’
TWITTER-BASED PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT:
NEW (CAREER) OPPORTUNITIES
AND PERSISTENT CHALLENGES
MARTINA EMKE
THE OPEN UNIVERSITY, UNITED KINGDOM
AILA2021 conference: TPLang21 symposium, 19th
August 2021

2. THESIS: BACKGROUND
• increase in number of part-time language teachers across educational
sectors (Beaton & Gilbert, 2013) and increase in professional development
(PD) demands (Locke, 2014)
• freelance language teachers (FLTs) have only limited access to organised,
formal professional development (Stickler & Emke, 2015); barriers: time and
money
• Twitter could be a way for FLTs to overcome PD barriers
• RQs focused on how FLTs’ Twitter-based PD works and what it produces
complimentary to other ReN TPLang21 research, which investigated organised PD

3. NON-LINEAR THINKING-DOING
RESEARCH
• post-structural, post-human research
approach; based on A Thousand Plateaus
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987)
• Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts are meant to be
used to produce new thinking and temporal
knowledge about social phenomena
• working with of the concepts of rhizome,
assemblage and becoming to produce non-
binary, non-linear thinking about FLTs’ Twitter-
based PD
• encourages experimentations and pluralistic
approaches to data collection and analysis
Source: MACKNESS, BELL & FUNES, 2016, P. 82

4. DATA COLLECTION
•Sept 2016 – Mar 2017; four-step
approach
•online narrative frame questionnaire
(n=14)
•tweet capture:
•individual tweets (6
participants/one month)
•Twitter network tweets (one month)
•Twitter networks deemed important
for professional development:
#ELTchat, #TBLTchat, #LTHEchat
•6 semi-structured online interviews
based on previously collected data
Pathways into the research landscape (Emke, 2019)

5. DATA ANALYSIS
Relational cross-reading of data
combined with situational
mappings (Emke, 2019):
• draws on Social Network
Analysis and Grounded Theory
(Clarke, 2005)
• continuous reading of research
data always in relation to data
from all other sources and in
changing order
• creation of flexible, adaptable,
rotatable situational mappings
(based on Clarke, 2005) that
depict human and non-human
elements and their relations
Example of a Situational Mapping (Emke, 2019)

6. FINDINGS
• Tweets and twitter hashtags are not neutral
objects; they can be regarded as assemblages of
human and non-human elements.
• Tweet and hashtag assemblages move
rhizomatically on and beyond Twitter.
• They produce Deleuzo-Guattarian becoming
which pertains to humans and non-humans:
• New teaching materials are produced
• New professional practices are produced
• Entangled, hybrid professional subjectivities
are produced, e.g. teacher-entrepreneur.
• However: becoming is not stable; it changes
dynamically and continuously.
Source: Emke, 2019

7. NEW OPPORTUNITIES – PERSISTENT
CHALLENGES
• New professional practices (e.g. moderating or organising Twitter
chats, blogging) and new subjectivities (e.g. teacher-entrepreneur)
could help FLTs find new or different employment and possibly lead
to new career opportunities.
However:
• professional situation is still marked by uncertainty, instability and
precariousness
• Twitter’s algorithmic workings help produce inequalities (‘Twitter
teacher stars’)
• Twitter-based PD could increase teachers‘ self-exploitation (see e.g.

8. THANK YOU!
… And if you would like to discuss this topic further,
please contact me on
Martina.Emke@open.ac.uk
or @MartinaEmke on Twitter

9. REFERENCES
Beaton, F., & Gilbert, A. (Eds.) (2013). Developing effective part-time teachers in higher
education: New approaches to professional development. Abingdon: Routledge.
Clarke, A. E. (2005) Situational analysis : grunded theory after the postmodern turn.
Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (B.
Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published
in 1980).
Emke, M. (2019). Freelance Language Teachers' Professional Development On...And
With...And Through Twitter. EdD thesis. The Open University. Retrieved from
http://oro.open.ac.uk/60076/
Locke, W. (2014). Shifting academic careers: implications for enhancing professionalism in
teaching and support learning. Higher Education Academy: York, UK. Retrieved from
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10021237/
Mackness, J., Bell, F., & Funes, M. (2016). The rhizome: A problematic metaphor for teaching
and learning in a MOOC. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 32(1), 78-91.
https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.2486
Scolere, L., Pruchniewska, U. , & Duffy, B. E. (2018). Constructing the Platform-Specific Self-
Brand: The Labor of Social MediaPromotion. Social Media + Society, 4(3), 1-11.