Effect of Faculty Member's Use of Twitter as Informal Professional Development During a Preservice Teacher Internship

Educators have increasingly turned to Twitter as a means for receiving professional development and building and sustaining professional learning communities. This paper reports the results of a study of 82 undergraduate preservice teachers and their attitudes regarding Twitter as a medium for informal professional development support during their internships. Preservice teachers were invited to follow a faculty-mediated Twitter account and subsequently reported their willingness to continue using Twitter after their internships. Data from the end of the internships, as well as a follow-up of those continuing to follow the Twitter account 2 years after their internships, were analyzed for trends in acceptance of Twitter as an informal means of professional development support. Findings show that most preservice interns who followed the faculty-mediated Twitter account were inclined to using Twitter after their internships to learn about new classroom strategies and new technologies