New Paper: Affinity and Anonymity Benefitting Early Career Teachers in the R/Teachers Subreddit
Background
Hunhui Na and Dr. Bret Staudt Willet recently co-authored an article titled “Affinity and anonymity benefitting early career teachers in the r/teachers subreddit” in the Journal of Research on Technology in Education.
Here is the abstract for our article:
Early career teachers experience numerous challenges during their transition into the profession. Reddit is a social media platform that allows users to gather around shared affinity while remaining anonymous. This study explores how early career teachers participate in the r/Teachers subreddit through posts tagged as “New Teacher” content. Hand-coding of 2,445 posts created in 2021 showed that early career teachers primarily seek information and advice but also share personal stories. Early career teachers’ reasons for posting varied according to their background characteristics. This research has implications for using an anonymous online affinity space for early career teachers’ preparation and professional development.
The article is available on Taylor & Francis’s website.