A social media charter would fix teacher-to-teacher conduct

As role models, educators should be held to account for their sometimes bullying behaviour online, writes Tom Rogers
16th November 2018, 6:31pm

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A social media charter would fix teacher-to-teacher conduct

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/social-media-charter-would-fix-teacher-teacher-conduct
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EduTwitter has been incredible for me. I’ve learnt so much. But there is a dark side to it. In the three years I’ve been on the network, I’ve seen teachers hurl abuse at each other; I’ve seen teachers communicate regularly with little etiquette or politeness; and I’ve even seen what some might deem to be bullying.

I wonder whether we need a new social media charter for teacher-to-teacher interactions on social media.

Last year, during the general election, one successful head lambasted another teacher on Twitter because of a blog he’d written supporting the Conservatives. The tweet in question went like this: “ -- quite simply what a ****, an out of touch attention seeking plank. You are the 1st person ever banned from my school.” When challenged, an apology wasn’t forthcoming.

Natasha Devon, the former mental health adviser to the government, openly regrets a tweet she aimed at another teacher, in which she labelled him a “bellend”.

“It wasn’t the most mature thing to do and I should have found a way to better express myself,” she said of the incident.

Speaking on the Rebel Education Podcast this week, she talked of her own battles online and said that she felt that because of her controversial opinions, she had been targeted. “Mostly middle-aged men trawled through everything I posted and responded to it, spread lies and really bullied me,” she said. “If we saw it among students, we would intervene and step in with some restorative justice.”

David Keyte, a primary school teacher speaking on the same podcast, recounted a recent experience, similar to ones I’ve experienced, that could easily be deemed bullying.

“I’ve been fairly active on Twitter in the last six months. In the last few months, I’ve noticed more and more negativity,” he said. “People were picking apart my comments perhaps more spitefully or critically than before. A trend started to develop and I noticed the same small group of people were doing it over and over again.

“People started to sarcastically mock what I was doing. I posted a book I wanted to give away and asked people to like or follow my account to win. I found on the back of this a lot of sarcastic comments like ‘If X amount of people follow me, I’ll paint a room in my house’.”

#ReclaimEduTwitter

Keyte’s experience inspired teachers to set up their own #ReclaimEduTwitter hashtag in response.

“My daily challenge is to see how many tweets I have to scroll through before I find something small-minded, abrasive or petty related to education, Today, I managed eight tweets,” says Alex Ford, a former head of history and now PGCE tutor. “Until this kind of crap dies away, there seems little point in engaging with education discussion via this medium.”

I do think it’s important to distinguish between healthy, robust challenge and veiled or open abuse, continuous sniping or attacks. We don’t want to scare people away from rigorous debate. One of the things about social media is that the meaning can be lost without the other cues that would immediately signpost the nature of a response in “normal” interactions - facial expression, tone and so on.

As a blogger and someone who tweets regularly, I fully expect to receive a range of responses to my work. However, sometimes criticism has strayed into the personal, with random teachers I’ve never met making implications about my professional ability and choices.

Within a few weeks of my account appearing in 2015, and sharing my first blog and resource, I was “put in someone’s file” for the uselessness of said resource - it knocked my confidence to share further.

A few months ago, an anonymous account appeared (and soon vanished) that sent out numerous abusive tweets in my direction. This, coincidentally, occurred at the same time that I was defending myself against a few teachers online in separate threads. These are just some examples of the “dark side” of teachers on social media.

Do teachers need much more training and awareness on their use of social media? In my view, absolutely. The photograph on Facebook that you thought was private, but isn’t; the tweet you put out two years ago, before you were a teacher, that you forgot to delete; the email exchange you had with a student before considering how they got your email and whether it was a secure place to talk.

Above all else, what I have noticed is the surprising lack of respect with which many teachers talk to teach other online, and how the tendency to try to intellectually and professionally outdo each other sometimes trumps any consideration of professional conduct or collegiality.

As social networks such as Twitter grow, the lives, likes, politics and opinions of teachers become more “available” than they’ve ever been. I do wonder whether the teacher standards now need to include something specific on teacher-to-teacher social media engagements.

We are all role models, whether we like it or not, and common professional standards might be required on teacher-to-teacher interaction in a public space. Surely what is said from behind a keyboard is as impactful as what is said face to face, if not more so.

On networks that allow anybody and everybody to view content, it’s surely important that we get it right for the sake of children, parents and our colleagues, who might read our exchanges. Anyone can make a mistake in person or online with what they say or do, but there’s a difference between one or two genuine mistakes and patterns of online interactions that stray away from the polite, courteous etiquette we would expect from students.

Teacher life is changing, our standards need to change with it.

Tom Rogers is a teacher who runs rogershistory.com and tweets @RogersHistory

For more columns by Tom, view his back catalogue

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