Social network sites in secondary school: when students and teachers express their viewpoints

The proliferation of social network sites (SNS) has been one of the most influential phenomena in the last decade especially among young people. Recent surveys that have investigated the use of these sites by teens reported that they go online daily and almost constantly, facilitated by the widespread availability of smartphones. However, the value of SNS for educational purposes has been questioned with contrasting positions. Despite the great amount of literature investigating students’ opinions and attitudes in higher education, very few studies have focused on secondary school students’ and teachers’ opinions on the use of SNS at school. This study explores the experiences, attitudes and perceptions of SNS for education also in relation to previous educational practices based on active learning and participation at school. Five hundred Italian students and 353 teachers took part in two online surveys (one for the students and one for the teachers) through a snowball sampling technique during the period of June-September 2015. The two surveys include a vast number of questions and provided rich data for the comparison between the two samples. A mixed method approach was used for data analysis and descriptive statistics were used to compare students’ and teachers’ answers to the closed questions. The results show that both students and teachers expressed positive attitudes towards the use of SNS at school, although teachers were more positive than students. While students identified “sharing” as the major characteristic of these sites, teachers mostly reported “collaboration” as the main feature. At the same time, threats and challenges related to the use of SNS at school were pointed out, such as the risk to be influenced and distracted, privacy issues, or the lack of appropriate digital competence. Although results cannot be generalised, this study offers one of the first investigations about secondary school actors’ attitudes towards SNS in the Italian context. It also provides a number of considerations on the involvement of students and on the importance of listening to their voices in relation to ideas of good educational practices at school.