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Social media provide new opportunities for when, how, where, and with whom people learn—venue unimaginable 15 years ago. Today’s students and educators have adopted social media for various purposes both within education and outside of it. This review of the published research on social media in education focuses on the affordances for student learning, teacher professional development, educational research practices, and communication of scholarship. The article concludes with implications for education policy.

Christine Greenhow is an associate professor in Educational Psychology & Educational Technology, Michigan State University. She studies various forms of learning with social media, the design of social-mediated environments for learning and changes in scholarship practices with new media. (More information at: http://www.cgreenhow.org and @chrisgreenhow on Twitter). Benjamin Gleason is an assistant professor in the School of Education, Iowa State University. His research interests include teaching and learning through social media, focusing specifically on literacy practices, identity development, and civic engagement in social learning spaces. (More information at AbstractThis conceptual exploration revisits a key question from earlier work (Greenhow & Gleason, 2014): What is scholarship reconsidered in the age of social media? Social scholarship is a framework that expanded Boyers' (1990) conceptualization of scholarship to consider how social media affect discovery and research, teaching and learning, integration, and application. This paper critically reflects on how social scholarship continues to evolve in light of changing understandings in the field of educational technology and the role social media play in the academy. We provide recent examples of social scholarship such as altmetrics, interdisciplinary projects, crowdsourced educational technology syllabi and reconsideration of the needs of research participants. Moreover, we share concrete examples of how scholars might enact social scholarship, with what benefits and challenges, and surface new concerns regarding openness, equity, access, literacy, privacy and ethical considerations. Our paper concludes with recommendations for preparing scholars to enact social scholarship while mitigating the challenges it poses. practices, and in the institutional and societal contexts within which scholars work that warrant a closer, critical examination of this model today.

Despite social media’s ubiquity in modern life, research on some topics related to educators’ use of social media for professional purposes remains underdeveloped, such as how use may change over time. This study explores educators’ self‐directed learning through social media by comparing change and continuity in how users contribute, interact and converse in two teaching‐related subreddits, r/Teachers and r/education. More than a million Reddit contributions spanning three‐and‐a‐half years comprise the dataset: 696 660 contributions to r/Teachers from 55 148 users and 339 618 contributions to r/education from 43 711 users. Learning ecology and affinity space concepts frame multiple methods of analysis, including quantitative measures of individual contributions, content interactions and social interactions, as well as qualitative content analysis of top posts and responses. Findings are discussed in light of the literature as change and continuity in Redditors’ participation patterns in the two subreddits suggest distinct spaces for distinct purposes. This study offers a starting point for further work to understand the opportunities and challenges of self‐directed learning in open and complex social media spaces. What is already known about this topic Educators use social media to reach outside their local contexts for self‐directed learning. Teaching‐related subreddits vary in how users contribute and interact. What this paper adds Different online spaces host distinct kinds of discussion. Educators’ participation in online spaces is not static. Social media research methods should account for the possibilities of change and continuity in contributions, interactions and conversations. Implications for practice and/or policy Teaching‐related subreddits continue to grow and may offer helpful content and interactions to users; however, self‐directed learning through social media also necessitates increased digital literacy. r/Teachers appeared to be a conversational space primarily for teachers. r/education seemed to be a bulletin board space for posting about broader educational topics.

Social media use has spiked around the world during the COVID‐19 global pandemic as people reach out for news, information, social connections, and support in their daily lives. Past work on professional learning networks (PLNs) has shown that teachers also use social media to find supports for their teaching and ongoing professional development. This paper offers quantitative analysis of over a half million Twitter #Edchat tweets as well as qualitative content analysis of teachers’ question tweets ( n = 1054) and teacher interviews ( n = 4). These data and analyses provide evidence of the kinds of supports that teachers in the United States and Canada sought on social media during the rapid transition to emergency remote teaching in Spring 2020 and how these supports informed teaching practices. These results provide insights into PLN theory and teachers’ social media use during times of disruption and crisis. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic Prior to the spring 2020 pandemic, teachers turned to social media to find supports for teaching and just‐in‐time professional development (PD). #Edchat, one of the oldest and most used educational hashtags on Twitter, supports education‐related conversations, frequently self‐promotional rather than collaborative. The COVID‐19 pandemic disrupted educational systems globally and created new demands on teacher PD during transitions to emergency remote teaching and learning. What this paper adds Teachers’ professional learning networks (PLN) on social media can be flexible around contextual circumstances and users’ needs. #Edchat discourse can move beyond self‐promotion to inquiry with benefits for professional learning. Education‐related response networks on social media are useful to teachers in emergency situations (and beyond them) where just‐in‐time professional learning needs and questions surpass local PD capacity. Implications for practice and/or policy Teachers should increase capacities inquiring discourses on Twitter. Education stakeholders should increase support for teachers’ agency and advocate for broader conceptions and approaches to PD that incorporate PLNs spanning social media.