An exploration of a rural Arkansas K-12 educational leader's and community's social media use
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Meeting name
Sponsors
Date
Journal Title
Format
Thesis
Subject
Abstract
This exploratory qualitative case study was designed to examine a rural Arkansas K-12 educational leader's and community's communication using social media. Hoffman and Novak's (1996) model of marketing communications in a hypermedia computer-mediated environment served as the conceptual framework for analyzing the leader's social media use from the perspectives of students, parents, and faculty/staff members. The rural K-12 school was located in the northwest region of Arkansas. The study's participants included an educational leader nationally recognized for her use of technology and her students, parents, and faculty/staff members. Through information-gathering questionnaires, interviews, focus group sessions, observations, and document gathering, data were collected and triangulated. Three themes emerged through data analysis. The themes included: recognition of and appreciation for Mrs. Johnson's authentic proficient professional social media use on sites such as Twitter; the power of connectedness both in her relationships with students and with others around the nation through social media; and the positive impact of Mrs. Johnson's professional social media use on the school and its stakeholders, including the faculty/staff, students, and its reputation. These themes furnish an understanding of the phenomenon of a rural K-12 educational leader's professional social media use as perceived by faculty/staff, students, and parents. This study's findings indicated that a rural K-12 educational leader's students, parents, and faculty/staff positively perceive the leader's professional social media use as a sign of leadership in technology use, a model of responsible social media use, a fount of resources and ideas to be shared, and as a source of school pride and culture. Professional social media use may also function as an instantaneously accessible personal learning network for educational leaders, supplying them with peer-connections, concepts, and information free from geographical limitations. While students, parents, and faculty/staff members may be novice users of technology or social media, they believe that the educational leader's professional social media use benefits the students and the school.
Table of Contents
PubMed ID
Degree
Ed. D.
Thesis Department
Rights
OpenAccess.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.