Preservice teachers’ practices of social media pedagogy

The paper aims to gain better understandings of preservice teachers’ social media integrations with various pedagogic strategies towards constructivist orientation for teaching practicum. A qualitative study of a group of preservice teachers integrating the social media for teaching in early childhood, primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong was conducted. A framework of pedagogy was integrated in the literature for exploration of preservice teachers’ teaching practices. The results reveal that YouTube social media was regarded as preservice teachers’ (1) common practices as part of initial pedagogic development; (2) social media integrations of various pedagogic strategies mainly towards didactic-oriented teaching instead of constructive-oriented one; and (3) preparedness in constructivist-oriented teaching with the YouTube social media integrations is needed. Implications for teacher educators and schools are discussed. Copyright © 2016 The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology.