Abstract:

This study examined 124 teachers in the United States of America to understand teachers’ proficiency and degree of personal use with social media applications and their perceptions of integrating these tools into literacy instruction.

Research Questions are:
1. What are K-12 literacy teachers’ belief and their use of individual types and genres of Web 2.0 tools?
2. What do K-12 literacy teachers perceive as the relevance and benefits of Web 2.0 tools in supporting literacy instruction?
3. What factors impact K-12 literacy teachers’ reported integration of Web 2.0 tools into literacy instruction?

The participants are 146 inservice and preservice teachers enrolled in a literacy instruction program at the time of data collection. After removing missing data, the final data consisted of 124 participants (males = 7; females= 117).

In addition to the demographic questions, the survey contained a total of 15 questions inquiring about participants’ perceptions of their Web 2.0 integration. The survey consisted of ten Likert-scale items on participants’ perception of Web 2.0 integration on varying dimensions and five open-ended questions. The survey development and validation process followed procedures and recommendations in Dillman (2007). The questions were mostly adapted from Hutchison and Reinking (2011) as well as Crompton, Olszewski, & Bielefeldt (2016). We computed Cronbach’s to validate internal consistency, resulting in values ranging from .82 to .98 for the various constructs in the survey.

Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Chi-square cross-tabulations to verify the relationships between categories. A series of stepwise linear regression analysis was used to examine factors associated with perceived usefulness, intended use, and actual use of social media tools. Open-ended questions were also analyzed qualitatively using content analysis methods.

Participants were found to perceive Web 2.0 tools positively, agreeing with its benefits related to enhancing engagement, exploration, and interaction, as well as supporting content areas such as vocabulary. Precise genres within Web 2.0 tools family were identified as the most valuable. Literacy instructors’ age, perceived usefulness, perceived capability, and proficiency and comfort levels with Web 2.0 tools as well as perceived obstacles all predict their actual use of Web 2.0 tools. However, their frequent personal use of Web 2.0 tools does not necessarily translate to successful instructional use. The results indicate that participants’ capability in using Web 2.0 tool is the only predictor for the following obstacles in using Web 2.0 tools: lack of incentive F(1,122) = 8.961, p = .003, lack of privacy to use Web 2.0 tools F(1,122) = 6.134, p = .015, and lack of model lesson plans F(1,122) = 16.227, p < .001.

Our study highlighted critical considerations of using the various technologies relevant to literacy instruction. We speculate that the participants tend to perceive video sharing, blogs, social networking, Wiki, and podcasts, as highly useful, while instant messaging and social bookmarks were seen as the least useful. These findings are consistent with prior studies that emphasized teachers’ actual integration of Web 2.0 tools for instruction were closely linked with their attitudes and beliefs concerning the usefulness of the tools for student learning and their proficiency and familiarity with the available technologies.

Keywords:

Teacher perceptions, social media applications, Web 2.0 integration, literacy instruction.