TEACHERS ON INSTAGRAM: CHALLENGES AND PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

Abstract

Instagram is a social network that provides a diversity of interactions and uses that go beyond connecting people and providing information. Nowadays, we are witnessing an expansion of the pedagogical practice and a resignification of its public nature through the accounts of teachers who generate and share contents for educational objectives. The purpose of this study is to characterize the use of Instagram with pedagogical purposes and to identify which aspects of teachers' professional practice and identity are involved in the use of this social network. A qualitative methodology is used to access the experiences of 20 Chilean teachers through a questionnaire and in-depth interviews. The study concludes that the main pedagogical use of Instagram is to create digital educational communities to share didactic resources and classroom experiences, transforming it into a tool for the development and construction of digital professional identity. The challenges are related to the selection of contents, the didactic transposition pertinent to the digital context and the critical and non-commercial and naive professional positioning in the face of the seduction of social networks.