Teachers are using Twitter as a site for resistance against policies and practices they see as demoralizing or unethical. The researchers conducted a pilot study analyzing over 1,900 tweets from 26 teacher Twitter accounts over an 8 day period. They developed a codebook to analyze the content and purpose of tweets. Early findings show teachers tweeting about teaching practice and engaging in discussions about education issues and policies. Teachers appear to be practicing "principled resistance" by taking political stances and making moral claims about issues like standardized testing and class sizes. The researchers will continue analyzing data from a larger sample of 500 teacher Twitter accounts to further explore how teachers are using the platform.

1. Tweeting To Transgress
Teachers’ Tweets as Practices of Resistance
AERA Annual Meeting 2015
Jessica Hochman, Pratt Institute | @jessicahochman
Doris Santoro, Bowdoin College | @DorisASantoro

2. Research Questions
How are teachers using Twitter as a site for
resistance*?
How are teachers making moral claims on
Twitter? What is the content of these claims?

3. Teachers practice *principled resistance to:
● take a political stance,
● stake a moral claim,
● push against the demoralizing effects of
policy, and
● shape their pedagogy.

5. Why Twitter?
Who are your
activist allies?
They’re all on
Twitter.

6. Methodology: Pilot Study
● Mixed methods (quant, qual & theoretical)
● Identified 100 teacher accounts
● Collected their feeds for 8 days using ScraperWiki*
● Read 26 Twitter feeds (1971 unique tweets) to develop
code book

7. What are teachers doing on Twitter?
General: tweet demonstrates which
affordance(s)?
● Curating: Tweeter is not providing any original
content. User is re-tweeting or sharing content
from another source.
● Commentary: Any comment on a policy, current
event, another person’s blog, etc.
● Record of Action: Tweet reporting on action that
already occurred in real life (as opposed to
online).
● Humor: Funny posts about teaching, education
policy or teachers, generally geared toward a
teacher audience. (H Tweets are always coded
as something else as well since they need to be
contextualized as educational humor).
● Platitude: Easy answer to a problem; an
inspirational quote or image that is empowering in
a surface way.
Content: what is this tweet about?
● Educational Policy
● Politics
● Structural
● Professional Development:
● Teaching Practice
Purpose: what is the aim of this Tweet?
● Action/Organizing
● Community
● Moral Claim
● Self-promotion
● Using their Voice
● Advocating for Students

8. @amberlough How do we like our stakes? High & well done! Get it?? Ahahahahaha. Oh, how I crack us up :))
HUMOR EDPOLICY
RT @TchrNORPAC: ICYMI: meet @zephyrteachout; looking for a few good edu activists @cherylhughes11 @shuflinoff
@mtview518 @llagxena @PDTAuni… COMMUNITY GOVERNANCE
@JustLetMe_teach I'm tired of my special needs students feeling like failures. MORAL STUDENTS STRUCTURAL
Difficult teaching our students to have a voice, when we as teachers tend not to use ourselves #teachersmatter
MORAL VOICE
RT @KarenLewisCTU: We were taught that teaching to the test is unethical. Now our jobs require unethical behaviors. Any
wonder why we resis… MORAL TEACHING PRACTICE
@mychaelobowen @lacetothetop @BadassTeachersA Cut scores are a political tool when assessments are used in a high-
stakes manner. MORAL EDPOLICY
@JHSTL wish those pushing CC would also advocate for what we know improves outcomes:smaller class size, well rounded
educ, support personnel
EDPOLICY STRUCTURAL MORAL

9. Early Findings
● Teachers are tweeting about teaching.
● Teachers are having a dialogue about
teaching on Twitter.
● Teachers are practicing principled
resistance.
● Fluidity between teachers’ professional
practices and their moral concerns.

13. Next Steps
● Explore the clustering of codes within and
across accounts
● Scrape data from our list of 500 teachers
● Code and analyze new data

14. Thanks!
Jessica Hochman | @jessicahochman
Doris Santoro | @DorisASantoro