SOCIAL MEDIA

Links are made between education and democratic participation, and there is encouragement of increased political awareness and activity by teachers and learners, locally and globally. A signifi cant theme is advocacy for the positive impacts of FE beyond the world of work and the individual learner, extending to the family, the community, between generations and to wider society.

An important initial role for the 26 interview and focus group participants was memberchecking of the three-lens model. Participants included teachers, teacher educators and managers, who spanned regular and occasional Twitter contributors and new and longstanding community users, and also engaged two community founder/moderators.

Participants report that the three-lens model describes accurately their impressions of dialogues in educators’ Twitter communities. Participants also engaged with the research question: How do FE teachers who participate in online educators’ networks consider that they are engaging in meaningful professional learning?

Participants report that they gain meaningful professional learning by engaging in discussions on pedagogy, sharing resources, reading and practical strategies and consulting peers on emerging challenges. They were ‘given practical ideas’, had existing ways of working ‘challenged’ and were ‘exposed to new thinking’.

Teachers valued a break from ‘stuckness in organisational thinking’, using words including ‘mobilise’, ‘buoyancy’ and ‘connecting’ to describe Twitter community participation. They spoke of ‘contextualised’ discussions allowing them to ‘reclaim professionality’ to escape from ‘silo mentalities’ when a

Figure 1: Three-lens model

Identity and voice lens ‘how we defi ne our values and advocate for them’

Learning community lens ‘how we connect and support each other to develop’

Pedagogy lens ‘what we do in evidenceinformed practice’

shortage of inter-organisation learning dialogues made work ‘very isolating’.

Many were critical of compliance-focused, generic CPD they had undertaken that did not meet their learning needs, calling sessions on use of data systems or standardised documents ‘training, not learning’. Twitter communities give teachers an opportunity to set their own learning agenda, ask relevant questions, seek peers’ advice and engage in self-selected dialogues.

Though fi ndings suggest that outcomes from Twitter community participation are largely positive, some interviewees encountered challenging behaviour described as ‘boisterous mansplaining’ or reported ‘highly engaged contributors’ getting ‘out of hand’. A moderator notes an occasional need to remind ‘those who kick off ’ during animated dialogues that ‘teachers are role models’. Twitter community thread topics correspond well to professional development areas set out in the ETF’s Professional DR LYNNE Standards, providing participants TAYLERSON with challenging, contextualised, is a teacher on-demand learning dialogues. educator, mentor and director of independent training provider Dialogues plant the seeds of new practice but Coffi eld (2017: p41) reminds us that ‘transformative Real Time change’ is a two-stage process. Education. With Educators’ dialogues the support of the ETF’s Practitioner Research ‘generate new knowledge among themselves’, provoking Programme, Dr ‘new actions’. Collaboration Taylerson has must be actioned practically undertaken a PhD through SUNCETT at the University of Sunderland or teachers will be ‘sharing, but not implementing, good practice’ (ibid: xiii); a challenge, which brings us to a fi nal, problematic research question: What evidence do educators report of any formal recognition of impact from informal online learning opportunities?

This research discovered little evidence that teachers document informal online dialogues in their CPD records or acknowledge them as a source of professional learning.

A sole interviewee reports Twitter dialogues as CPD thinkpieces for teacher education groups and acknowledges them to colleagues as sources of reading and resources. This is a ‘Catch 22’, in a sector which prizes immediate impact on learner outcomes as a requirement for teachers’ CPD.

Further research is needed on the impact of informal learning dialogues, online and off . As Eraut notes (2004: p249), ongoing, spontaneous, informal learning is ‘largely invisible… taken for granted or not recognised’. I invite inTuition readers to respond to this research with their experiences of informal online learning via Twitter @realtimeedu.

References and further reading

Bergviken-Rensfeldt A, Hillman T

and Selwyn N. (2018) Teachers ‘liking’ their work? BERJ 44(2): 230-250.

Coffi eld F. (2017) Will the Leopard Change Its Spots? A new model of inspection for Ofsted. London: UCL IoE Press.

Cormier D. (2008) Rhizomatic education: community as curriculum. Innovate: Journal of Online Education 4(5): 2.

Eraut M. (2004) Informal learning in the workplace. Studies in Continuing Education 26(2): 247-273.

Hammersley M. (2012)

Methodological Paradigms in Educational Research. London: BERA.

Kozinets RV. (2010) Netnography. Doing ethnographic research online. California: Sage.

Performing under pressure

Every soldier in the British Army undertakes mental resilience training to help them perform in stressful circumstances. Teachers can also benefi t from some of the techniques, say Jim Crompton and Austin Lindsay. So how can the army’s approach help teachers perform during stresses and strains?

Mental resilience training (MRT) has been conducted formally at the Infantry Training Centre since 2012, and across the army since 2018. Initially trialled with Parachute Regiment recruits by Warrant Offi cer Class 2 James Fitzwater, School of Infantry master coach, the programme sought to improve fi rst-time pass rates and individual performance scores. The initial trial and related research was published subsequently by Bangor University and focused on the concept of mental ‘toughness’.

The content was then refi ned and developed by military clinical psychologist Captain Duncan Precious and infantry master coach Colour Sergeant (now Warrant Offi cer) Austin Lindsay. The revised training incorporated more recent advancements in performance psychology, including mindfulness training, and was refi ned to make the psychological skills training programme more applicable and accessible to instructors and recruits.

The programme has seen tangible improvements in pass rates and statistically signifi cant improvements in perceived readiness for key training events. MRT is now delivered to every soldier in the British Army throughout their careers as it provides understanding of the eff ects of stressful situations and practical steps to manage those eff ects.

What is MRT? Mental resilience is a person’s ability to respond eff ectively to stress, pressure, risk and adversity. It is built on seven pillars: Self-belief: confi dence in your own abilities and judgement Positive eff ect: the ability to interact with life in a positive way Emotional control: the ability to understand and express your emotions Mental control: the ability to control thinking, attention, concentration, focus, selfawareness, refl exivity and problem-solving Sense of purpose: the motivation that drives you forward Coping: adaptability, natural coping strategies you have learnt through coping in previous stressful situations Social support: the social network you have and the ways you use it

It is underpinned by eff ective coaching. Everyone is aff ected by their environment in diff erent ways. One person may be uncomfortable dealing with physically arduous circumstances, whereas another may struggle with high levels of concentration for extended periods. MRT seeks to help people recognise signs of stress and regulate them, and prepare for events that they suspect could be diffi cult for them.