School leadership and the knowledge of teacher-student interaction on Facebook: a study of a lower secondary school in Norway

Abstract

The use of various social media sites is one of the most common activities of today's adolescents. A content analysis of printouts of teacher-student dialogue from a 10th grade Facebook group throughout a school year suggests that teacher and school leaders' personal involvement in social media is of importance in a 'new era' of learning contexts. By lending perspectives from distributed leadership theories, the article investigates how teachers and students in a Norwegian lower secondary school jointly participate in Facebook interaction. It is important for school leaders to be present in the forceful and ephemeral nature of the social network sites students' use at any given time. The findings show that teachers and school leaders may profit from gaining knowledge about Facebook and equivalent sites for the benefit of leading instruction and managing schools. The implications for teachers and school leaders are thus discussed in this paper.