Category Archives: Digital skills

A Teacher’s Presence on Social Media

In a world that is so wired in to social media, for a teacher, it could be difficult to maintain a professional front. In a way, all professionals have to keep an element of professionalism in their social media, but most of their problems can be solved through setting their accounts as private before heading in for a job interview so their prospective employer does not get to see any of the embarrassing or inappropriate content that could potentially lay therein.

For a teacher, they could be under constant pupil scrutiny online whilst remaining blissfully unaware of this fact. As soon as a child finds out the teacher’s first name, there is the potential that they could locate one of the teacher’s accounts whether it be on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media site. This puts the teacher’s career at risk due to the fact that their social life should never really cross into their professional life. Whilst reading the GTCS code relating to social media, I discovered that they frequently use the phrase “fit to teach”. The GTCS state that, “Maintaining the public’s trust in the individual teacher and in teaching as a profession sits at the heart of being fit to teach, and this can be undermined not only by behaviour occurring in a teacher’s professional life, but also within their private life, including activity online.” (GTCS Professional Guidance on the Use of Electronic Communication and Social Media). The phrase “fit to teach”, whilst seeming reasonably subjective, is held by the GTCS as an ethical standard by which all teachers must adhern to. It seems obvious that a teacher must be fit for their profession but the GTCS determine whether they are by putting a teacher in front of a panel to see whether they have let the two sides of their life cross over in an inappropriate way. In their code, the GTCS say that another thing which is central to this concept of fitness to teach is “sound judgement and due care” on the teacher’s part as to what they post online. I believe that the carefulness in the way you frame yourself in the classroom which is integral to professional conduct should automatically transfer over onto what you post online.

There are many obvious things that have resulted in disciplinary measures before according to the GTCS, for example, sending inappropriate messages to a pupil to try to establish a relationship with them and sending indecent images. However, there is certain actions that could be taken by a teacher accidentally online that can result in punishment from the GTCS, like “using inappropriate YouTube content in the educational setting”. This famously happened to a primary teacher in Dundee when they clicked on a Mr Men video on YouTube which was at the top of the search list believing that this was the preset video for that lesson. It turned out to be a more inappropriate video that showed extremely graphic images which frightened the pupils. This was supposedly an innocent mistake and it goes to show how easy it is for a teacher to slip up with access to thousands of videos on YouTube which can often have misleading thumbnails.

However, there are also many opportunities afforded to teachers by social media. Careful use of YouTube allows teachers to make their lessons more stimulating and can enhance potentially boring subject matter for young children. Social media could be used as a platform to keep parents up to date on their child’s learning in between the traditional parent’s nights. Facebook and twitter can also be used as an outlet to share educational ideas and to arrange meetings with other teachers to share lesson plans and there have been various websites set up to do this.

In conclusion, as long as social media is used carefully and responsibly by educators, I believe it can enhance primary education greatly. However, it is easy for an educator to be caught out with their social media account being public especially for those that do not fully understand the internet.