Title: School leadership and the knowledge of teacher-student interaction on Facebook: a study of a lower secondary school in Norway

Authors: Ann Elisabeth Gunnulfsen

Addresses: Department of Teachers Education and School Research, University of Oslo, Niels Henrik Abels Hus, Moltke Moes vei 35, 0851 Oslo, Norway

Abstract: The use of various social media sites is one of the most common activities of today's adolescents. A content analysis of printouts of teacher-student dialogue from a 10th grade Facebook group throughout a school year suggests that teacher and school leaders' personal involvement in social media is of importance in a 'new era' of learning contexts. By lending perspectives from distributed leadership theories, the article investigates how teachers and students in a Norwegian lower secondary school jointly participate in Facebook interaction. It is important for school leaders to be present in the forceful and ephemeral nature of the social network sites students' use at any given time. The findings show that teachers and school leaders may profit from gaining knowledge about Facebook and equivalent sites for the benefit of leading instruction and managing schools. The implications for teachers and school leaders are thus discussed in this paper.

Keywords: social media use; Facebook; distributed leadership; educational leadership; leading learning; school leaders; teacher-student interaction; case study; secondary schools; secondary education; Norway; personal involvement; school management; joint participation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSMILE.2016.077596

International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments, 2016 Vol.4 No.2, pp.169 - 186

Received: 17 Jul 2015
Accepted: 27 Mar 2016
Published online: 06 Jul 2016 *

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