Abstract

With social media access nearly ubiquitous, teachers and students must explore how to mitigate distractions and unhealthy uses. In this mixed methods study, the authors invited 60 pre-service teachers across two universities to cultivate mindfulness around social media beliefs, habits, and behaviors by completing a social media survey, diary, and fast. Participants identified reasons for regular social media use, including unconscious impulses, and made new realizations about what is gained and lost in social media engagements. Participants were optimistic about teaching similar lessons. The authors recommend pedagogical guidelines for social media mindfulness that allow for complexity, variance, and idiosyncrasy.

Citation

Damico, N. & Krutka, D.G. (2018). Social media diaries and fasts: Educating for digital mindfulness with pre-service teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies, 73(1), 109-119. Elsevier Ltd. Retrieved January 29, 2020 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/202399/.

Keywords

• Contemplative education
• instructional practices
• mixed methods
• Online teacher learning
• social media