Reflexive Skills in Teacher Education: A Tweet a Week

Abstract

Social media has been broadly used in the context of higher education for educational purposes due to students' familiarity with this type of communication. As one of the most interesting cases, Twitter has often been used in teacher education for many purposes. One of the most unexplored themes is using Twitter for reflexive aims, in which discussions featuring ambiguous and contradictory results about whether the characteristics of such a short format can promote reflexive writing. This study is aimed at contributing to this research gap and explores the possibilities of using Twitter for reflective aims in teacher education, considering the reflective level of students' tweets and students' perceptions after engaging on Twitter. For the evaluation of this reflection, a content analysis of tweets texts and emojis has been carried out by coding their content and developing an instrument to assess their reflective level. Additionally, perceptions of students have been collected through an online survey. This study is embedded in a design-based research process that is already in its fourth cycle. Findings show that most tweets are descriptive or analytical, and that tweets are mainly text-based. Furthermore, the data show that low-level reflective tweets may include emojis, which are mainly positive and located at the end of a tweet. The conclusions suggest that Twitter could be more useful when reflections are made during learning rather than on learning.