Social media and education: reconceptualizing the boundaries of formal and informal learning

Abstract

It is argued that social media has the potential to bridge formal and informal learning through participatory digital cultures. Exemplars of sophisticated use by young people support this claim, although the majority of young people adopt the role of consumers rather than full participants. Scholars have suggested the potential of social media for integrating formal and informal learning, yet this work is commonly under-theorized. We propose a model theorizing social media as a space for learning with varying attributes of formality and informality. Through two contrasting case studies, we apply our model together with social constructivism and connectivism as theoretical lenses through which to tease out the complexities of learning in various settings. We conclude that our model could reveal new understandings of social media in education, and outline future research directions.

Keywords:

• social media
• informal learning
• formal learning
• digital cultures
• teaching

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The iTEC project was supported by the European Commission under [Grant Agreement No: 257566]. The Hot Dish project was supported by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Dr Christine Greenhow is an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology and Educational Technology in Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education at the College of Education, Michigan State University.

Dr Cathy Lewin is a Professorial Research Fellow and Co-Director of the Centre for Research in the Technology, Innovation and Play for Learning (TIPL) research group at Manchester Metropolitan University.