Curriculum in the digital age: Intensifying the work of teachers, the remix

Abstract

This research focuses on the Teacher-to-Teacher Online Marketplace of Ideas (TOMI), the popular ecosystem of participatory online platforms for teachers seeking to share and/or curate classroom materials and curricular ideas. Teachers engage with online platforms for curricular planning through multiple, complex labor practices. In this manuscript, interview data is used to describe the process teachers engage in when using the TOMI: Identifying, Remixing and Teaching, Reflecting, and Reviewing. We then consider how these new labor practices constitute a new type of work intensification that is both richly complex and concerning due to their market orientation. We trouble these findings, considering teachers’ labor practices as examples of unpaid, casual digital labor in light of efforts to defund public education. We argue for structural shifts in public education that allow teachers more time and space for productive, creative, and fulfilling work remixing their curriculum and collaborating with colleagues in the digital space.

Keywords:

• Social media
• teachers
• labor
• education influencers
• intensification

In the 1980s, educational scholars described a “massive shift” in teachers’ work (Easthope & Easthope, 2000), characterized by intensification of workload, defined by increasing complexity, high stakes standardized accountability, professional isolation, increased class sizes and time spent teaching, and decreased autonomy and planning time (Apple, 1986; Apple & Teitelbaum, 1986). Forty years later, we argue another massive shift in teachers’ work has occurred. The presence of digital platforms like Instagram, TeachersPayTeachers.com (TpT), and Facebook has given rise to a host of new labor practices for teachers. Like Selwyn et al. (2017), we argue that while much has been written about the “practical, pedagogical, psychological and even philosophical aspects of using technology to support learning in classrooms and elsewhere” (p. 390), less attention has been given to “the roles that digital technologies play in teachers’ work and the work of being a teacher” (p. 390). When narrowed to specific types of technology, such as networked platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, TpT, Youtube, Patreon, and teacher blogs that make up the Teacher-to-Teacher Online Marketplace of Ideas (TOMI; Shelton et al., 2020), scholarly attention narrows even more. Our purpose is to explore how teachers engage in these new labor practices around curricular materials from the TOMI. We situate these digital age practices as a remix of work intensification, asking the following research questions: (1) What practices do teachers engage in when using the TOMI? (2) How do these practices constitute a new type of work intensification?

Related literature

The Teacher-to-Teacher Online Marketplace of Ideas (TOMI)

Scholarship indicates the TOMI is a popular global ecosystem of participatory platforms for teachers seeking to share and/or curate classroom materials (Sawyer et al., 2020; Sawyer & Myers, 2018; Tosh et al., 2020). The TOMI, made up of platforms like TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, TpT, Youtube, Patreon, and teacher blogs, is a thriving ecosystem of interconnected links, products, and personalities (Shelton et al., 2024). As we have written elsewhere, “content creators, many of whom are current or former classroom teachers, self-publish their ideas and materials for free or for profit” in these online spaces (Shelton et al., 2024). As a result, “The TOMI has been lauded as a space for teachers to exhibit agency as creators and consumers of curricular resources (Hodge, et al., 2019; Sawyer & Myers, 2018)” (Shelton et al., 2024). Despite its positive attributes, what makes the TOMI distinct is its unvetted nature—teachers use the TOMI free of institutional gatekeepers (Hunter & Hall, 2017)—as well as its emphasis on sharing, consumerism, and profit (Carpenter et al., 2022; Shelton et al., 2020, 2023). The unvetted nature of the TOMI, as well as its emphasis on consumerism, distinguishes it from other sources of online curriculum, vetted through museums, foundations, or nonprofit educational organizations, which produce materials that are written and edited by professional or experts in their fields, often available for free to educators.

Considerable research over the last decade has illuminated why teachers turn to social media and other online networks (Huber & Bates, 2016; Macià & García, 2016; Sawyer et al., 2020; Sawyer & Myers, 2018; Trust et al., 2017), finding that what teachers desire most from these spaces are professional learning networks and community (e.g., Colwell & Hutchison, 2017; Cook et al., 2017; Garrison, 2019; Prestridge, 2020; Sie et al., 2013; Torphy et al., 2020; Trust, 2012). Many studies have focused on why teachers turn to Twitter (Greenhow et al., 2019a, 2019b) and Facebook (Kelly & Antonio, 2016; Muls et al., 2019). Research also explores how teachers use Pinterest, Instagram, and TeachersPayTeachers. Teachers have used Pinterest to seek evidence-based practices (Cleaver & Wood, 2018), to learn the nuances of teaching (Ingram, 2019), and to connect, network, and share new ideas (Franks & Krause, 2017). These findings parallel Carpenter et al.’s (2020) study of teachers’ use of Instagram, indicating that teachers use the platform to look for ideas, learn from others, build community, seek affirmation, and collaborate. TpT, often linked from both Pinterest and Instagram (Shelton et al., 2024), is used similarly, with teachers sharing they use the site to supplement curriculum and find engaging activities that save them time (Curcio et al., 2023; Polikoff & Dean, 2019). Teachers see the TOMI as offering curricular inspiration and professional community, with research into each platform offering consistent rationales for teacher use.

Current research explores these various platforms as independent entities rather than an interconnected ecosystem (Shelton et al., 2024), and little research explores how teachers translate their learning from the TOMI into classroom practice (Drake, 2021). Given concerns about the drawbacks of TOMI platforms, including poor quality resources with stereotypical and racist imagery lacking rigor and not aligned to standards (Gallagher et al., 2019; Hertel & Wessman-Enzinger, 2017; Hu et al., 2018; McDonald, 2018; Polikoff & Dean, 2019; Rodríguez et al., 2020; Sawyer et al., 2019; Stebbins, 2021) and unhealthy messaging around consumerism (Curcio et al., 2023; Shelton et al., 2020) and what it means to be a “good” teacher (Gillespie & Thompson, 2021; Pittard, 2017), more knowledge around how TOMI platforms intersect and how TOMI use translates into classroom practice is necessary (Drake, 2021; Silver, 2021).

Intensification of teachers’ work

We conceptualize teachers’ TOMI use in terms of work intensification. As Easthope and Easthope (2000) explained over 20 years ago that “teachers’ work has increased in absolute terms (through both more tasks and a greater variety of tasks), but it has also increased in ideological terms as teachers face competing demands to be both a professional teacher and an efficient manager” (p. 55). Now well into the 21st century, after neoliberal, standards-based accountability reform across the globe that “constricts our daily life in schools, and influences how we think about what we do in our classrooms” (Taubman, 2009, p. 13), we posit that work intensification continues. Scholars attest to the narrowing of curriculum, which occurs when teachers are “told what and how to teach” to meet accountability aims (Stillman, 2009, p. 136). These constraints result in what Au (2007) calls “increased fragmentation of knowledge forms into bits and pieces” (p. 246), as curriculum is “organized scientifically for efficiency” (Sleeter & Stillman, 2005, p. 266) as opposed to holistic learning. In the United States, teachers’ curricular work has altered since the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) over a decade ago. Rather than abiding by scripted curriculum, CCSS created more work and more autonomy for teachers (Hodge, 2019). Under CCSS, evidence suggests teachers do make decisions about what to teach (Hodge, 2019). In doing so, they spend more time looking on the Internet for resources, increasing rigor, and working without textbooks as the CCSS are “purposefully silent” around how to implement the standards (Graham et al., 2015, p. 499). Hodge et al. (2019) point to the corresponding rise of a new “ecology” of available instructional materials and research suggesting that “individual teachers, schools, and districts are increasingly selecting instructional materials from a variety of online sources, including databases of open educational resources and open- access, yearlong curricula” (p. 425). CCSS has not ushered in an era of national curriculum (Polikoff, 2020) but multiple and sometimes problematic sources of curricular inspiration.

Selwyn et al. (2017) point to the infusion of digital technologies as adding a new layer of intensification. In their research into Australian teachers’ experiences with digital technology and intensification, Selwyn et al. (2017) argue that teachers’ work was most impacted by the “slippage of various forms of labour into the realm of non-labour. The ‘always-on’ nature of cellphones, email and other online communications is undoubtedly extending the times and places of teachers’ work” (p. 401). They liken this to “‘casual digital labor’—that is, mundane online tasks that do not ‘feel, look, or smell like labor at all’ (Scholz 2013, 3)” (p. 402). Connecting to teachers’ work with curriculum, Shelton et al. (2020) explain that while technologies like TpT “offer [teachers] flexibility and choice” (p. 17) in what and how they teach, such technologies “simultaneously exploit teachers’ labor” (p. 17), as many spend significant time searching for the next best classroom activity, lesson, or idea. Similarly, teachers who use social media may not realize the casual digital labor they exert when scrolling through education influencers’ posts or engaging with educator private group discussions. Given the abundance of web-based curricular resources, the confluence of curricular and digital shifts, we argue, has shifted teachers’ work in distinct and profound ways.

Theoretical framework

Despite evidence that teachers’ work (and curriculum as an extension) remains controlled by strict accountability standards (Guillory, 2015; Henderson, 2014; McDermott-McNulty, 2014; Schneider & Saultz, 2020; Wraga, 2012), the emergence of Internet technologies has altered the curricular terrain. Our purpose is to explore labor practices around the TOMI. We draw on a framework presented by Literat (2019), who identified four stages “in the life cycle of a creative product” on the Internet: (1) creation/production, (2) exhibition/distribution, (3) interpretation/criticism, and (4) appropriation/remix (p. 1169). In the life cycle of a creative curricular product on the TOMI, content creators make and share products for consumption, which are inevitably adapted for classroom use by teachers (Sawyer et al., 2020; Silver, 2021). We developed a theoretical framework for understanding the life cycle of TOMI products and conceptualizing the labor teachers engage in when bringing TOMI content to their classrooms consisting of four distinct steps teachers take when supplementing their curriculum using the TOMI: Identify, Remix and Teach, Reflect, Review.

Identify

The identify stage of our framework assumes that teachers engage in several processes as they identify curricular materials. First, they must have a purpose for seeking out supplemental curricular resources. Silver (2021) explains “there are always reasons for any act of supplementation” (pp. 21–22). Based on purpose, teachers may seek out various sources, such as Instagram, Pinterest, or TpT (Silver, 2021). Then, to select appropriate resources, teachers must recognize, interpret, evaluate and “balance tradeoffs” of curricular materials (Brown & Edelson, 2003; Chong, 2016, Remillard, 2005). Sawyer et al. (2020) argue that critical curation theory can support teacher candidates as they determine “who to follow…how to search for categories, develop strategies to skim through posts, and determine the significance of various tools (Mitton-Kükner & Murray Orr, 2017; Walsh, 2017)” (p. 532). As part of critical curation theory, faculty help teacher candidates “to develop a habit of critical consumption by considering the worth of these activities, determining biases, and researching other sources during the curation process” (Sawyer et al., 2020, p. 532). Teachers need content knowledge to interpret bias and inaccurate representations within curricular materials (Rodríguez et al., 2020) as well as awareness of platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2017), algorithmic bias (Noble, 2018), and the influencer ecosystem to select appropriate materials (Carpenter et al., 2022).

Remix and teach

Once identified, teachers remix materials, adapting, refining, and weaving them together to make (ideally) coherent curriculum. Curricular remixing is nearly ubiquitous (Literat, 2019). Curriculum culled from a host of digital and print repositories reflects the notion of a bricolage–a patchwork of materials that teachers learn to adapt and weave together. Remixing of materials reflects new literacies theory in that new literacies “are more participatory, collaborative, and distributed, and less ‘published,’ less ‘author- centric,’ and less ‘individual’ than conventional literacies” (Knobel & Lankshear, 2014, p. 98). Ownership is fluid and contested (Literat, 2019). Remixing aligns with the application component of Sawyer et al.’s (2020) critical curation theory, in which teachers curate ideas from the internet to create lessons that bring together teachers’ past experience and prior knowledge and can be seen as part of the “mobilizing” stage of teachers’ pedagogical design capacity, in which they “take up or use those resources in an adaptive way” (Brown & Edelson, 2003; Chong, 2016; Land, 2011). The end point of this stage is the actual use of the new curricular product in the classroom: the teaching.

Reflect

After teaching with a new curricular product, remixed for a particular classroom use, teachers reflect on what is and is not working in their classrooms. Iterative with the remixing stage, teachers may ask themselves “How might I do this again?”; “What worked?”; “What tells me things are working in my classroom?” This stage reflects an inquiry stance, which can be understood as “questioning, systematically studying, and subsequently improving one’s own practice” (Dana, 2015, pp. 162–163). This stage illustrates the agentic ways teachers grapple with curricular materials available to them on unvetted online resource marketplaces. The reflect stage is undertheorized due to a lack of scholarship into whether, how, and to what extent teachers reflect on their use of supplemental materials. However, viewed from a pedagogical design capacity lens, in which “our ability to act on reality is inherently limited, or constrained, by the tools [or materials] we use,” reflection becomes essential in acknowledging how affordances and constraints of particular materials enable teachers to teach in certain ways, but not in others (Brown, 2009, p. 20).

Review

Finally, after identifying, remixing, teaching, and reflecting, teachers can review material, providing evaluative feedback to the original content creators. Literat (2019) explains that the internet’s impact on art criticism has been to open space for “everyone—knowledgeable or not, credentialed or not, ‘right’ or not” to “publicize their views in online vernacular criticism (Droitcour, 2014),” ultimately leaving “the role of the professional critic…decentered” (p. 1175). In a similar fashion, the TOMI has opened space for anyone to publish curricular materials and, likewise, any teacher to access those materials. As Sawyer et al. (2020) write, “In years prior to the Internet and the growth of highly accessible media, recognized experts were primarily the sources of pedagogical knowledge (Coiro et al., 2014)” (p. 531). The expert has been de-centered and with this decentering comes a responsibility that all teachers individually vet online materials.

Our adaptation of Literat’s framework fits within the research and theory focused on teacher agency and capacity for curriculum making. Craig and Ross (2008) explain the concept of teachers as curriculum makers, or “the view of teachers as knowing and knowledgeable human beings” (Craig & Ross, 2008, p. 283). Similarly, Giroux (1985) argues that teaching is fundamentally an “intellectual labor” in which “teachers must take active responsibility for raising serious questions about what they teach, how they are to teach, and what the larger goals are for which they are striving” (Giroux, 1985, p. 378). Teachers’ labor to identify, remix and teach, reflect, and review curriculum materials must be an intellectual pursuit, and is governed by a sense of responsibility to ethically serve the students in their classrooms. Sawyer et al. (2020), whose work we draw on to build our framework, also draw on this tradition of teacher agency in curriculum making as they define teachers as curators, who “find sources to apply the foundational understandings of their field for…their students” as opposed to technicians, who “delivers a curriculum, in some cases even scripted lessons, never deviating from the plan” (p. 518). The labor of curation, we argue, is undergirded by a sense of agency.

Methods

Data sources

Ten practicing kindergarten to 12th grade teachers across the United States participated in a 1-hour semi-structured interview with the first author via phone in the Spring of 2020. Interviews followed a protocol that had been refined using research on teachers, social media, and online educational marketplaces (Pittard, 2017; Sawyer et al., 2020; Sawyer & Myers, 2018; Schroeder et al., 2019; Shelton et al., 2020; Torphy & Drake, 2019; Trust, 2012) as well as the four-stage Identify, Remix and Teach, Reflect and Review framework. The interviews sought to illuminate the procedures and thought processes that this sample of educators engaged when using the TOMI. See Appendix A for the interview protocol.

Participants were recruited via convenience sampling through social media posts on Twitter and Facebook. They were eligible to participate if they used multiple TOMI platforms for curricular inspiration (participants reported using Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, TpT, Tumblr, and Twitter). Participants taught elementary (n = 5) and secondary (n = 5) students, with most working at what they described as low income, public schools (n = 8) across the United States. Their geographical locations spanned the South (n = 5), West (n = 1), Midwest (n = 2) and Northeast (n = 2) regions. Participants self-identified as White females (n = 8), a Black female (n = 1), and a White male (n = 1), ranging in age from 22 to 37 years of age, with between one to 13 years teaching experience.

Analysis

Interviews were transcribed by a transcription service and analyzed qualitatively to identify patterns across responses (Tracy, 2019). Analyses began with a deductive approach aligned to the Identify, Remix and Teach, Reflect and Review framework, followed by an inductive approach to identify sub-themes within the framework’s categories. More precisely, we began by reading a given transcript in its entirety, taking memos to develop tentative ideas about the categories present within that response and relationships to other responses (Maxwell, 2013). Then, in a second round of analysis, we read and re-read transcripts, using deductive coding to document instances of Identify, Remix and Teach, Reflect, and Review. In a third round, we again read and re-read transcripts, this time, using inductive coding to detail particular processes within each stage of our framework.

In an effort to increase trustworthiness and credibility (Tracy, 2019), all coding was completed by two coders (the first and second authors) who engaged the coding process independently, followed by periodic convenings among the entire author team to expand, consolidate, and synthesize coding decisions. Coding was engaged iteratively as we conducted the semi-structured interviews, such that emergent themes could be further probed in subsequent interviews. Upon completion of the tenth interview, the research team came to the consensus that the analysis had reached saturation, that is, new interviews were not revealing new findings in terms of this study’s research questions (Tracy, 2019). Then, in the final stage of the coding process, the entire author team collaborated to consolidate codes into a final codebook (see Appendix B).

Findings

Our goal in this study is to understand what practices teachers engage in when using the TOMI and whether those practices could be construed as a new type of work intensification. We acknowledge that the practices shared by this sample of teachers represent only that, a sample of reported behaviors. However, our observations help illustrate a process of teachers’ TOMI use, albeit one that spans highly effective to sometimes less effective practices. The findings below therefore offer authentic examples of TOMI use that we commend and critique in the discussion.

Identify

Based on our theoretical framing, we considered (a) purpose for TOMI use, (b) sourcing of TOMI platforms, as well as (c) the selection process to each be considered a component of the “identify” stage.

Purpose for TOMI use

Teachers identified five interconnected reasons they turned to the TOMI for ideas and curricular materials: (1) insufficient curriculum; (2) student engagement; (3) ready-made materials; (4) saving time; and (5) ideas, inspiration, and community.

Insufficient curriculum

Eight of the 10 teachers shared that they used the TOMI to supplement insufficient curriculum, whether it be for standardized test preparation practice, teaching summer school, or subject areas without a school-provided curriculum, like science or social studies. Participants described unique situations, such as working at “wall-to-wall” project-based learning schools, where teachers were “building all of our curriculum in-house” or not-so-unique situations, such as being in between textbook adoptions. One participant, Rachel, a second-grade teacher shared, “we had a whole new language arts curriculum this year, so I didn’t even… We’re getting it the week before we had to start it, each unit, so I never had time to plan.” When textbooks eventually were adopted, one participant, Dennis, a ninth- and 12th-grade English teacher, explained, “we got stuck with a curriculum that, while it’s not bad, it’s just not necessarily accessible to our demographic and to our students.” As a result, he sought novel studies on TpT for novels written by diverse authors that would be more appealing than novels written by “old white guys across the board.” Others wished to add enrichment and practice into their officially adopted curriculum. In other instances, teachers simply had freedom within their curriculum and sought material that would be more relevant and interesting.

Student engagement

Teachers also indicated they used TOMI content to inspire more student engagement, a tacit acknowledgement that their adopted curriculum did not adequately engage students. A second-grade teacher, Lina, shared about her process for selecting literature and related extension activities. She explained how she liked to “get my kids involved, whether it’s dressing up or doing something fun one day,” using Pinterest as a source of inspiration. Other teachers sought out the TOMI to make content relevant to students’ lives, whether it be connecting to “scientists of Color” or life in urban or rural areas.

Ready-made materials

Four participants explained that they go to TpT in particular to find curricular materials they did not have to adapt. They go to the site for a specific purpose–not to browse, but to search directly for the material they need. Dennis shared that he sometimes wanted to find “an easy set of comprehension questions to help them get through the text.” A first-grade teacher, Karen, agreed that TpT allowed her team to get their “basic needs met.” She elaborated that during a project-based learning unit she looked for worksheets to supplement students’ learning. She explained that

sometimes there are some things that are worth us creating because we have a certain vision for whatever that thing is. And then there’s other things that are just kind of, we’re going to need this so why not find someone who’s great at doing this thing and buy their resources to do it?

For these teachers, the availability of ready-made materials to teach basic content was a purpose for TOMI use.

Saving time

Four teachers emphasized that the need to save time was a purpose for TOMI use. Two of these teachers connected their need to save time to the simultaneous need to do other more important things, like providing feedback to students. For example, Karen explained that she used TpT specifically “to save myself from recreating the wheel.” One high school teacher explained that as a department head with staffing issues, she used TpT to find ready-made substitute plans that she did not have to “sit down and write” herself. Likewise, the ease of “having pre-made stuff that I can just drop into a Google Doc and put on Canvas” was appealing to Dennis, as he could then “turn around and focus more on giving them [students] solid feedback and really getting to know what their strengths are.”

For Leah, a seventh-grade teacher, the ability to save time while using the TOMI, and specifically TpT, was related to her years of experience teaching. She addressed a colleague’s critique of her using TpT by saying, “I’ve been teaching long enough to know that I don’t need to spend my time making up questions for Six Minutes [a podcast she uses with her class], when someone else did and they worked really hard on that.” For her and others in this study, saving time by bringing a discerning eye to the TOMI was simply a smart economical choice with both time and money.

Ideas, inspiration, and community

Finally, teachers reported searching the TOMI to gain ideas, inspiration, and community. Lex, a first-grade teacher, explained they used the TOMI to identify creative ideas, claiming “two brains are better than one” and that “what teaching really is about is leaning on each other and using each other for support and using everybody’s creative ideas.” Rachel noted that “the stuff that people are willing to share is amazing to me. I just don’t work with people that are that generous. I have not been that fortunate to have people that just share things with me.” Facebook groups were particularly conducive to this kind of engagement, as teachers could simply ask a question in a specific group and “Within an hour you’ll have some responses from other people because you’re tapping into such a wide range of help.”

Sourcing

Teachers reported being intentional about their use of individual sources and TOMI platforms, and they were part of many communities within these platforms, using both personal and professional accounts. Facebook groups offered teachers who considered themselves “older” with an opportunity to develop community within both local and national teacher affinity groups. Cathy, a fifth-grade veteran teacher of 12 years, listed the numerous groups she was a member of, including VIP Kids Education, Tenured Teachers Tougher Together, Badass Teachers Association, and school level groups formed specifically during the pandemic. A middle school teacher explained that she disliked Instagram and Twitter and that she mostly used Facebook out of the array of TOMI platforms. Despite being more comfortable with Facebook, this teacher was still able to connect to TpT and teacher bloggers who are active on Instagram through Facebook pages and groups as well, showcasing the interconnectedness of the TOMI.

Teachers considered TpT the place to go when they knew exactly what they needed. Lex shared that the search functions of TpT were helpful in that endeavor. She explained,

TeachersPayTeachers is really good too because you can narrow it down to grade. You can narrow it down to the Common Core State Standards that you’re looking for. You can do it by subject. You can do it if you want to pay for it or if you don’t want to pay for it.

Rachel agreed that on TpT she was “usually looking for something specific.” TpT, then, was not a space teachers browsed in the same way as Instagram or Facebook, where teaching ideas were more integrated into a streamed feed of posts.

Selection processes

Teachers in this study described careful selection procedures. A common practice was to follow influencers and sellers whom they deemed to be reliable on social media or to join groups they believed to be helpful. Participants also shared a host of reasons why they would select a certain idea, activity, or material and reasons why they would avoid others.

Following particular accounts

More than half of the participants referenced making informed decisions in who they followed on social media and TpT to avoid sifting through problematic materials. They described finding people who have created what they observed to be good curriculum in the past and “stuff that has been really successful in my room” and either following them or seeking them out specifically when a need arose. Karen explained that once she identified someone who was “fabulous at teaching certain topics” she would “use their TeachersPayTeachers more than just the random person who happened to make an item.” Leah shared a similar tactic, in that she identified and specifically followed an influencer who sold leveled and differentiated reading worksheets. She explained, “I follow her and I buy her stuff because she’s already made and adapted accommodations for me.” Lina, a second-grade teacher, described intentionality in following influencers of Color and purposefully trying to alter the Instagram algorithm to see fewer white women in her feed. Finally, Rachel mentioned the professional development conference Get Your Teach On (https://www.getyourteachon.com) and her strategy of following the teachers involved with the group, whom she deemed to be a reliable collaborative.

Selection criteria

Teachers reported holding personal and intentional criteria for selecting materials. They selected materials based on the materials’ appearance, whether the material could meet student needs and the standards, and how long they would be able to use the material in their classroom. Rachel explained, “It usually has to be really cute. … I like bright, fun, exciting things.” Others were less drawn to the esthetics and instead focused on the students. A ninth-grade teacher, Lexy, explained that what guided her decision-making was whether the material was “for the kids.” Likewise, Lina resisted materials without a purpose, claiming “I won’t implement something in my classroom if I don’t understand the purpose or what the outcome’s going to be.” Finally, Karen was willing to spend money on materials from TpT if she could envision the material being used for a long time. She says she asks herself, “So like how long can I actually use this thing? Right?” She explained that she was more inclined to spend money on items that are “a mega pack of something” as opposed to single items. Thus, selection criteria varied from teacher to teacher but was driven by clear rationales.

Likewise, teachers had many reasons to avoid selecting certain materials. Given their various teaching positions, subject areas, and contextual features of their classrooms and schools, criteria were different for each teacher, but intentional nonetheless. Basic questions that could be culled from Sparknotes were unappealing to secondary English teacher Dennis. A high school science teacher, Nora, focused on appearance, claiming “there’s a lot of stuff people make where it’s really text heavy, it’s really clunky, and so I’m trying to skim through and weed out that clunky stuff.” Elementary teachers wanted to move beyond esthetics. Karen questioned whether something that was “fun and cute” would “push my kids to think deeply about whatever this content is.” A fifth-grade teacher, Cathy, echoed that concern, saying “I really just think that the level of rigor of most of the stuff out there is not high enough.”

Remix and teach

Teachers believed they were careful about selecting, editing, supplementing with, and redesigning TOMI materials and ideas. Nora explained,

I’m like scavenger hunting, like going through a scrap pile, and I’m like, okay, I can take this piece from this website, this piece from this website, let me put something in I know about my students, shake it up and then I get something out of it.

We identified three practices teachers engaged in during the remix and teach stage: (1) differentiating materials; (2) making activities more engaging, rigorous, and meaningful; and (3) breaking down, building up, or correcting mistakes in materials.

Differentiating materials

Often teachers shared how they differentiated TOMI materials to better meet learner needs and attend to grade level standards, students’ developmental levels, academic needs, languages, and classroom contexts. Teachers described adapting an individual resource or simply using an extra worksheet when planning for small group instruction. Karen explained, “When I’m thinking about what I’m going to do with my little babies that need a little bit of support with whatever the concept might be, that’s [TpT] a good place for me to look.” Another elementary teacher explained, “I think about my kids. I have to figure out, how can I adapt this for them?”

Adding engagement and rigor

Teachers also indicated that they adapted materials to add in engagement and rigor. Dennis explained that his first year teaching he purchased materials that were not “all that rigorous” and as a result, he has since “adapted it and made it better to make it more rigorous.” Conversely, Lina shared how she will plan her lessons for the week and work backwards to adapt her already planned lessons to be more engaging by infusing content from TpT or ideas found on Pinterest or Instagram. She explained her process as

I’ll start looking at Instagram, or I’ll shift and just go into Pinterest, and I go, “Oh, this’ll be a great idea.” Then, I start bouncing back between the three. Oh, on this day, I can do this. Wait, this teacher did this. Oh, I’m sure there’s something on TpT that will have something my kids can use.

Breaking down, building up, or correcting mistakes

Finally, teachers described a process of breaking down TOMI materials into smaller tasks, building them up with more supplements, or simply correcting mistakes. Often these adaptations were made due to student interest or ability level. In terms of breaking down, teachers made use of parts of novel studies or larger packets they purchased from TpT. When building up, Dennis described realizing that students were not comfortable discussing the topic of race as it related to the book Monster by Walter Dean Myers. He took material from a TpT novel study, “supplemented it with some different AVID articles … and pulled in some documentary clips from juveniles who were in the prison system.” Sometimes, teachers simply noticed mistakes and broken links, as Rachel explained, “There were tons of mistakes throughout. A lot of links wouldn’t work, so I had to go in and find some links that would work.” From large adaptations to small, teachers often remixed their existing curriculum with TOMI materials or simply adapted the TOMI material itself.

Remixing was not ubiquitous across the participants. Because the “identify” stage appears to be a time of intense scrutiny and purposeful searching, some teachers claimed they did not download materials they would need to adapt, and thus inserted curricular resources directly and wholly into their usual curriculum as pure supplements. Leah explained, “I’d say that if I had to do too much work to it, I might as well do it myself.” Cathy said, “the purpose of it is to make it easier for me,” so if the material needed adaptations, she would not use it.

Reflect

Teachers were careful to tell us that remixing was a long-term process, continually honed through trial and error with students over multiple years. While in-the-moment alterations were mentioned, it was more common for teachers to tell us that they reflected, took notes, and improved materials as their experience and knowledge grew, even if at first they may have used the material, like high school teacher Allison, “very much wholesale, just taken or purchased…off of TeachersPayTeachers.” This long-term adaptation process was inevitably connected to their reflection during and after teaching, and their foci for reflection mirrored the reasons why they sought out the TOMI in the first place—a desire to differentiate curriculum and engage students. Specifically, during and after teaching teachers predominantly reflected on three main things regarding ideas and materials found on the TOMI: (1) differentiation needs of various students; (2) student involvement and engagement in the learning process; and (3) clarity of instructions and appropriateness of student scaffolding.

Differentiation needs

Teachers reflected on differentiation needs for materials and ideas culled from the TOMI. Karen explained that if a resource was not appropriate for one set of students, she “might repurpose it for my next group. So it might be that instant reflection of, “That was too easy for you, but this will work perfectly for this group of kids.” She specifically noted that she would reflect on how to use the material “instead of throw it out.” She believed her critical eye toward what she purchased on TpT helped her find “things that are good” even if “they just might not always fit the need of the group I intended.” As a first-year teacher, she engaged in trial and error with materials, especially using TpT “to support me as a teacher for building an understanding of what are age [appropriate] activities for first graders.”

Student engagement

Teachers also reflected on their perceptions of students’ engagement levels with materials, describing instances where they felt the chosen TOMI resources had engaging elements, like gallery walks or centers. For example, Lexy described how an activity engaged students:

It went over all the things that they needed to know and learn. It was just fun. … The kids really liked it. They had a lot of fun. It really was able to let all the kids shine in the areas that they do. And then they really liked getting to see everybody else’s work.

Allowing students to have fun, letting different students’ strengths shine, and learning in the process was appealing to teachers and something they reflected on when determining how and whether to use a resource again. Other participants echoed similar notions, particularly reflecting on resources that engaged “kids who weren’t normally engaged.”

Clear directions and scaffolding

Finally, teachers reflected on whether students were able to complete activities with minimal additional scaffolding or instruction. Leah shared that part of her reflection process was “how much additional clarity that the kids need on top of what was provided.” High school science teacher Nora reflected on using a new template for a lab report that she thought “was going to be way easier for the students” but she had “underestimated how used to the old form they were and it showed there were gaps in other skills that I hadn’t anticipated.” Likewise, Lina reflected on times when she used a new engagement strategy that gave her students more freedom in the classroom “and it was a mess.” She reflected on ways she would do the activity differently, still providing freedom of movement, but within only “one area of the classroom versus the whole.”

Review

In terms of formal reviewing or communicating feedback to content creators, most participants did not review or communicate on TOMI platforms, while the few that did were inclined to communicate privately with a seller or influencer via direct messages rather than post a formal review. Karen explained she was more likely on “Instagram to DM someone” if they noticed something positive, or that she might reach out if she used “one of their resources to say like, ‘Hey, here’s how I used your resource.’” Another teacher explained how she spoke back to an influencer via direct message, critiquing a post she disagreed with. These participants, then, were willing to communicate via direct message with positive and negative feedback.

Three participants claimed they actively reviewed products on TpT, but none were inclined to be negative in their reviews. Teachers wanted to protect content creators from unnecessary criticism. For example, second-grade teacher Lina shared, “On TeachersPayTeachers, if I buy anything, and I use it, or even if it’s a free download, I’ll go, and I’ll comment, and I’ll write about it.” However, she was careful to say that she has never left a negative review. She shared that she may talk to colleagues about how a product did or did not work, but that she does not “have the heart to leave a negative review.” Dennis shared similarly that he would rather explain the merits of a resource than claim something was of poor quality. He explained that when providing a review, he states things such as, “I was expecting higher level questions but it was a great review source or great to use as revision” noting that reviews of this nature may inform others that, “Hey, it’s not a perfect test, but it was a great review thing to do, something like that.”

Despite the active way some participants reviewed TOMI materials, most did not review or communicate on TOMI platforms, mostly due to time constraints or a belief that other buyers should be able to identify what will work in their classrooms. Fifth-grade teacher Cathy explained, “I have not reviewed anything. I think if I ever have, it would have only been like, “This was incredible.” I just don’t feel like it’s the place for constructive or not constructive criticism. It’s out there. If you don’t like it, don’t use it.” Lexy explained that even though she gets emails from TpT asking her to rate her downloads, she never does, but she reflected, “I should because they take the time to make it and make it accessible for us. So, I should, but I don’t.” Nora explained why she was “like a ghost” online without any engagement: “Maybe it’s just a bit of the teacher survival brain of like, okay, I figured something out, let’s go. I got to make it happen. I got 50 more things to do that engaging with them feels like the last…” A general sentiment was that it was either not their responsibility to tell another teacher what would work in their classroom or whether something was “good,” and even if it was, they lacked the time to do so.

Discussion

Presenting our data using the theoretical framework of Identify, Remix and Teach, Reflect, and Review we shared the practices a sample of United States K-12 teachers engage in when using the TOMI and consider the implications of these practices for teachers’ work intensification. Silver’s (2021) recent review of teacher curricular supplementation indicated that “between 70% and 90% of teachers are regular users of virtual resource pools like TPT and Pinterest” (p. 7), suggesting the present study addresses an urgent need to understand a prolific practice among teachers today. Like past studies looking at TOMI platforms in isolation, we find that teachers use the TOMI intentionally to address insufficient curriculum, engage students, access ready-made material, save time, and for inspiration and community (Carpenter et al., 2020; Pittard, 2017; Polikoff & Dean, 2019; Sawyer et al., 2020; Schroeder et al., 2019; Shapiro et al., 2019). Our research adds new findings, however, that have been unaddressed until now. We find that teachers intentionally source different platforms for different needs, and see that teachers select material with a focus on not only cuteness (e.g., Pittard, 2017), but whether the resource addresses their anticipated student outcomes and if it can be reused. In his review, Silver (2021) concluded that existing evidence suggested pre-service teachers “are generally uncritical about the quality of downloaded materials, put a greater-than-ideal emphasis on cute materials, and that the modifications they make to official curriculum tend not to be particularly educationally meaningful (Forbes & Davis, 2010; Grote-Garcia & Vasinda, 2014; Rodriguez et al., 2020)” (p. 13). The present study suggests that in-service teachers may behave quite differently when it comes to remixing TOMI material. Our participants described rich efforts to differentiate, increase rigor and engagement, and to correct mistakes.

Ways teachers reflect and review materials and ideas have yet to be positioned as part of the labor teachers exert when engaging the larger interconnected TOMI ecosystem. Knowing that what teachers reflect on mirrors their remixing practices (e.g., for differentiation or engagement) or that their lack of in-depth reviewing is connected to their purposes for using the TOMI in the first place (e.g., to save time) helps to place these practices within context and showcase teachers’ agency, intellect, and constraints as they develop curriculum. Frameworks and theories developed around teachers’ supplemental use of curricular materials leave out teacher reflection and reviewing from their frameworks (e.g., Sawyer et al., 2020; Silver, 2021). Considering these are key teacher labor practices, they must be studied as part of the supplementation and curricular curating process.

Our second research question addresses to what extent these practices constitute a new form of work intensification in the digital age. We identify two ways the TOMI labor practices described in the findings correlate to work intensification: through an expressed market orientation (Lundström & Holm, 2011) and through the presence of casual digital labor (Scholz, 2013). Many of the TOMI labor practices outlined indicate a move toward a market orientation and the need for efficiency. Wotherspoon (2008) argued that intensification leads teachers to work “longer hours” while time during the workday to complete necessary tasks “has been compressed (Smyth et al., 2000; Michelson & Harvey, 2000)” (p. 393). This environment led teachers in our study to question whether a product that cost three dollars would be worth buying if it saved them time. They weighed their options: purchase a product they could spend time creating or spend time giving students valuable feedback. With scarce resources of time, money, and curriculum, teachers were forced to make decisions based on neoliberal rationales that place “economic values, practices, and metrics” on everyday decisions (Brown, 2015, p. 30). While teachers sought efficiency through technologies embedded within the TOMI, Selwyn et al. (2017) note that “rather than resulting in less work,” teachers “depicted technology as allowing them to complete greater amounts of work, thus making working hours ‘smarter [but] not necessarily shorter’” (p. 398). Put another way, technology may facilitate work, but it also creates the opportunity for more work, leading to more intensification.

The efficiency-based rationales teachers bring to TOMI labor practices echo scholarly claims that, “teachers appear to adjust to the burdens of their work through a selection process that enables them to streamline their workloads to manageable levels” (Wotherspoon, 2008, p. 413). These processes become “coping strategies,” allowing “teachers to maintain a sense of control” (Ballet & Kelchtermans, 2009, p. 1155). Teachers may be driven to the TOMI, then, as a way to cope with increased demands and intensification, even when the TOMI creates its own set of demands, such as the remixing of materials to fit within established curriculum, editing out mistakes, breaking apart lessons from longer novel studies or math packets and other similar work that would likely not occur with coherent, sequenced, standards-aligned curriculum materials. Moreover, to be able to continue to work efficiently, some teachers feel compelled to review materials on TpT to gain additional “points” that provide them access to more curricular materials for a lesser cost. These practices are distinctly new ways teachers’ work has been intensified as the expert curriculum writer has lessened in importance.

Despite increased demands, teachers may perceive TOMI labor practices as manageable given how the sourcing of materials is akin to what Scholz (2013) has called casual digital labor. This creep of labor into the private lives of teachers is thus the second way we see TOMI labor practices as a new form of intensification. Although teachers may see their use of the TOMI as a time-saving mechanism, TOMI usage, including the casual browsing of influencer-embedded personal or professional social media accounts, is still work even if it can be done while at home otherwise relaxing or during breaks at school. The ability for teachers to follow and communicate with influencers in their regular scrolling of Facebook or Instagram may look “merely like the expenditure of cognitive surplus” or “the act of being a speaker within communication systems” online, but is “akin to those less visible, unsung forms of traditional women’s labor such as childcare, housework, and surrogacy” (Scholz, 2013, p. 12). In the digital landscape, “all of life is put to work, harnessing implicit participation for wild profits” (p. 13). Teachers who engage in the TOMI labor practices of sourcing, wherein they may scroll and archive materials on social media platforms, are both laboring for their immediate job as teacher, but also for the platform itself, generating revenue for an outside entity. Despite its everydayness, it is labor.

Ultimately, the dynamic nature of TOMI usage and associated labor practices is complex. Foremost, the ability for teachers to exert creative control over their curriculum using the TOMI complicates a “simple dichotomy … which depicts teaching to be moving in directions that will either advance the status of the profession as a form of knowledge work or destroy the occupation’s integrity through the dead weight of intensification and control” (Wotherspoon, 2008, p. 413). If seen as a new kind of work intensification, TOMI labor practices refute notions that work intensification and accountability has led to entirely scripted curriculum. Our research indicates that teachers are able to exercise freedom over curriculum and do reflect meaningfully on their curricular designs. It is important to note that intensification occurs not only because teachers are forced to take on more administrative tasks, but because many teachers are committed to their professional responsibilities, including the creative design of lessons and fostering more student engagement. There is agency and creativity embedded within remixing and reflecting, which is laudable, and runs contrary to Ballet and Kelchtermans’ (2009) contention that intensification restricts creativity, indicative of a distinctly different kind of intensification in the digital age.

However, the additional work involved with using the TOMI, while perhaps professionally fulfilling, has intensified, as teachers seek out ways to overcome poor curricular options. The need to save time and to supplement curriculum is a reaction to intensification and a divesting from public education that ultimately leads to a greater workload, a creep of work into the private lives of teachers, and an implicit acceptance of ongoing digital labor in service of for-profit platforms. The work of identifying, sourcing, selecting, and reviewing found curricular materials becomes yet another task for teachers already overwhelmed with increasing demands on their time. Easthope and Easthope (2000) identified this conundrum as the struggle to balance “competing demands to be both a professional teacher and an efficient manager” (p. 55). Thus, we see the labor practices involved with teachers using the TOMI to design curriculum as having both incredible potential and myriad drawbacks given the associated workload.

In terms of implications, structural shifts must take place to ease the workload burden on teachers. Many teachers in this study shared the desire to not “recreate the wheel” when it came to curricular materials, leading one to wonder why the metaphorical curricular wheels are simply not already available to teachers. Stronger curriculum that engages students, is adaptable, and has options embedded for differentiation should be available to teachers. Combined with stronger curriculum, additional time for identifying, remixing, reflecting, and reviewing should be made available within the working day for teachers and increased support around critical curriculum literacy offered (Carpenter et al., 2022). It is noteworthy that teachers identified little to no formal reflection process on their teaching, instead indicating the informality or in-the-moment reflections they jotted down or made mental notes of. As teachers remix curricular materials, time must be carved out in the official workday for reflection. To limit workload, this means more bureaucratic or administrative tasks should be shifted away from teachers. All of this, of course, requires a long-term, committed public investment in teachers and schools. We acknowledge this is unrealistic in the neoliberal era.

Thus, we find that Polikoff’s suggestion that “teachers could be strongly discouraged, or even prevented, from cobbling together curricula from random, unregulated websites like Pinterest” (p. 3) is not a solution. The ability to “cobble” or, as we prefer to say, remix, materials from the TOMI is indicative of teachers being able to exercise their professionalism, pedagogical design capacity (Brown, 2009), and critical curation skills (Sawyer et al., 2020). The feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction from having successfully created a coherent curriculum or met a students’ needs should not be denied simply because teachers either are not trusted to do this work, TOMI materials are potentially problematic, or, as we have argued here, the TOMI increases work intensification. The teachers in this study were positive, excited, and grateful that the TOMI existed. Whether this excitement is the result of a failure of public schooling to provide adequate materials, inspiration, and time for collaboration or simply the result of teachers enjoying more options and broader, expanded learning networks (Schroeder et al., 2019) is unknown, and a potential site of future research.

Conclusion

Given the types of work teachers engage in to design curriculum in a highly digital age of standards and accountability, we consider their work a new type of intensification—a remix. Originally theorized as a result of increased control over teachers’ work and the requirement that teachers teach prepackaged curricula, intensification of work through the new labor practices teachers engage in to use the TOMI has been brought on by a different set of circumstances and a plethora of new curricular options at their fingertips. There are many benefits to the TOMI, including the opportunity to be creative, exert control over curriculum, or even secure a second income (Curcio et al., 2023), and many drawbacks, including the additional work that comes with identifying, remixing, reflecting, and reviewing TOMI materials to create meaningful and coherent curriculum. Thus, whether the TOMI creates yet another burden teachers must bear or an opportunity for enhanced agency and professionalism remains up for debate, complicating the promise of technology in the digital age.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephanie Schroeder

Stephanie Schroeder is an Assistant Professor at The Pennsylvania State University. A former middle and high school English and social studies teacher, she now teaches courses focused on anti-oppressive elementary social studies education, democratic education, and civic education. Her research explores how teachers and other change agents develop their civic and professional agency through engagement with social media.

Catharyn C. Shelton

Catharyn C. Shelton is an assistant professor of educational technology at Northern Arizona University. She brings a background as a K-12 teacher, and currently teaches undergraduate and graduate educational technology courses at NAU. In her teaching and research, Catharyn explores how online technologies can help or hinder teacher learning, networking, and agency, while considering how teachers’ digital practices offer opportunities and challenges for centering educational equity and justice.

Rachelle Curcio

Rachelle Curcio is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Florida. Her research is grounded in an inquiry stance and focuses on clinically-centered teacher education and partnerships to prepare teacher candidates for diverse 21st century classroom contexts.

Appendix A:

Semi-structured interview protocol

Demographic Questions:

1. What grade and subjects do you teach?

2. How long have you been teaching?

3. Describe your educational background

4. Would you mind sharing a bit about your identity? Race, gender, ethnicity, age, etc.?

5. Describe the kinds of students you teach/students your school serves?

6. What kinds of social media and online sites do you typically use for professional purposes?

General:

• 2. Tell me a little about how you as a teacher use sites like Pinterest, TpT, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or others.

1. How do you use these differently and for what purposes?

2. Do these sites overlap (interact) for you at all? How?

Identify:

• 3. Think back to a great resource you found in the past online. Can you walk me through the process, step-by-step, of how you found it, and how you decided to select that one and then use it in your classroom?

1. How do you sift through the materials?

• 4. Can you share an example of a high-quality resource you’ve found on TOMI and a low-quality one? In general, how do you know if a resource is “high quality” or not?

• 5. Are there particular topics (or activity formats) you find yourself looking for more often on TOMI? Why?

• 6. Tell me about how the cultural and racial background of your students influences what you look for and choose.

1. Cultural background and social/political environment

2. Tell me about how you consider multiculturalism and equity within the resources you find online.

• Remix and Teach:

• 7. Tell me about a time you used a resource from the TOMI. Did you need to adapt or remix it first? How did you decide what to adapt?

• 8. How did you fit that single resource into your larger lesson, unit, or curriculum?

• 9. Tell me about how you adapt for your students as learners and for their backgrounds.

Review

• 10. Do you ever email, talk, comment, review, etc. the materials you’ve found online?

• 11. If a resource turns out to be problematic, what do you do?

Reflect

• 12. Can you share a story about a time when you used a classroom resource you found online that “worked”? How did you know it worked? How did you use the resource in the future?

• 13. Can you share a story about a time when you used a classroom resource you found online that didn’t go as expected? How did you know it didn’t work? How did you use the resource in the future? How do you reflect on these experiences?

Appendix B

Example code book: “Identify” theme

Table

Code	Sub-Code	Examples
Purpose for TOMI Use	Insufficient Curriculum	It was my first year teaching senior English. And our grade level, we don’t have a set curriculum aside from our textbook. And again it’s one of those textbooks that’s old that white guys across the board. And so it’s not really representative of our population.
	Student Engagement	One of the things that we really look for is, what are students willing to engage with. Because it’s difficult to get them to engage, a lot of the times, with anything.
	Ready-made materials	And then there’s other things that are just kind of, we’re going to need this so why not find someone who’s great at doing this thing and buy their resources to do it.
	Saving Time	So having pre-made stuff that I can just drop into a Google Doc and put on Canvas or make a copy of really saves time as far as my prep work, which it lets me then turn around and focus more on giving them solid feedback and really getting to know what their strengths are.
	Ideas, Inspiration, and Community	I just don’t have those people and so I guess I look to social media and I'm like, “Oh, see, there are other people. There are people like me. I'm not weird. I'm not putting too much effort into this. It’s okay to be this way and to be excited about these fun things and I don’t need to be looked down on for it.”