Self-regulated learning and social media – a ‘natural alliance’? Evidence on students’ self-regulation of learning, social media use, and student–teacher relationship

Abstract

Research on the educational consequences of social media has led to divergent findings that are difficult to integrate and studies often examine specific courses. It remains unclear what types of social media use in classroom prevail on a broader scale and how teachers, if at all, can affect outcomes. We contribute to answering these questions by studying classroom social media use of 459 secondary school teachers in The Netherlands teaching in the humanities, the social, and the natural sciences. We test the idea that the use of social media would be ‘naturally allied’ with self-regulated learning (SRL). Results show that teachers apply social media for information sharing with students outside of the class and, more often, for teaching within the class. A bottleneck consists of the application of social media for the facilitation of SRL. Only in the performance phase of SRL, teachers facilitate SRL via social media slightly. Consequently, the limited use of social media for the facilitation of SRL does not affect student–teacher relationships. Testing the hypothesis of a natural alliance between SRL and social media use, we find evidence for the claim that teachers, who practise SRL in the classroom, are more inclined to use social media.

Keywords:

• social media
• pre-university education
• student–teacher interaction
• self-regulated learning
• multivariate statistics

Disclosure statement

The data collection of this study was supported by a grant of the Stichting Kennisnet to U. Matzat.

Notes on contributors

Uwe Matzat is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Human-Technology-Interaction Group at Eindhoven University of Technology. His research studies the impact of digital communication on (in)equality, cohesion, and modernization of society. His current research focuses on the application of social media for classroom interaction and learning.

Emmy Vrieling is an Assistant Professor at the Welten Institute (Open University in The Netherlands). Her research interests include self-regulated learning, motivation, metacognition, learning networks and teachers' professional development.