Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) 2.0: Pre-service Teachers' Perceptions on Developing Digital Twitter Skills during PETE training

Background and Purpose: The advent of Web 2.0 technologies such as Twitter reflect an improved capacity for global educative collaboration. Despite such potential, there has been a paucity of research determining the potential... [ view full abstract ]

Background and Purpose: The advent of Web 2.0 technologies such as Twitter reflect an improved capacity for global educative collaboration. Despite such potential, there has been a paucity of research determining the potential of social media within Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE). The aim of this paper was to fill a gap in the international literature pertaining to pre-service teachers’ (PST) perceptions of the facilitators and barriers to using Twitter during PETE training.

Methods: Pre-service teachers (n=35) enrolled at a regional Australian university were recruited to participate in the research via email invitation at the end of the first teaching semester, 2017. Online questionnaires were administered by a third party to gauge the PSTs’ perceptions of using the Twitter platform for learning within PETE. Thematic analyses were conducted to investigate the open-ended responses from the survey, underpinned by a constructivist theoretical framework for online learning in adults.

Results: It was revealed within the study that PSTs perceived a myriad of facilitators across six constructivist principles that included authentic learning, collaborative learning, facilitating learning, high quality learning, interactive learning and learner-centred learning. Despite a significant digital movement in education over the past decade and moving content online, PSTs shared concerns about introducing too much technology alongside privacy and plagiarism concerns with using such a public forum. 

Conclusions/Implications: Findings from the study will be expanded upon in the presentation according to the multiple constructivist online learning principles that can be met through Twitter. The PETE students’ concerns suggest PSTs must be critically reflective of Twitter’s appropriateness in a public forum for their own professional learning and application to students’ learning within HPE classes. The study provides guidance to PETE providers as to whether improving digital learning in the Twitter social media space is an important inclusion both now and into the future.