Teacher Professional Development in the 21st Century

This chapter discusses how social media assist teachers in their informal professional development (PD) activities, which pave the way to support their practices, motivate job satisfaction, and lifelong learning purposes. Social media's capacity to facilitate social interaction and the creation of user-generated content allows teachers to perform self-initiated learning, join professional learning networks, and obtain immediate responses from colleagues. However, using social media for PD can risk teachers' privacy and retrieval of voluminous and low-quality information. Therefore, the authors provide recommendations to guide school administrators in facilitating a well-designed social media-based PD to sustain teachers' continuing education efforts that can address their professional needs and students' diverse learning needs.