SOCIAL NETWORKS AND TEACHERS

Teachers to be advised on Facebook use

By James Debono

The teachers' union has been approached by teachers who were subjected to harassment on social networking sites during the past years.

How should teachers behave on Facebook - the social networking site that has already fundamentally changed how people interact?

Should teachers accept friend requests from students on Facebook? And how can teachers prevent personal and potentially embarrassing photos being tagged online and seen by their students?

These issues are serious enough to warrant an upcoming official circular advising Maltese teachers on how to cope with these issues.

A spokesperson for the Ministry for Education confirmed that the Directorate for Educational Services is drafting a circular through teachers in state schools will be advised on the appropriate use of social networking sites. The circular is expected to be issued at the beginning of the upcoming scholastic years.

When contacted, Malta Union of Teachers newly-elected president Kevin Bonello confirmed that the union has been approached by a very small number of professionals who were subjected to harassment on social networking sites during the past years.

“This number is likely to increase in the future if people are not careful about their privacy settings. The Union always takes these issues very seriously and always refers such cases to the police force if it is deemed necessary.”

But Bonello is cautious about heavy-handed regulation on the matter, insisting that teachers are professional educators who are able to make their own judgements with regards to the levels of interaction on social networks.

“Telling teachers who to add or who to not add on a social networking website would be counterproductive to the trust teachers enjoy from institutions as professionals.”

But despite his reservations about outright prohibition of digital friendships, Bonello thinks that “it is highly advisable” that students are not added as friends on social network sites to maintain “a dignified level of privacy” – even it is up to the teacher to make such decisions based on his/her own judgements according to the various cases.

According to the MUT, official professional teachers who want to maintain a divide between their private lives and their professional role are less likely to be able to do so if they add their students or parents of their students to their list of social networking friends.

One clear no-go area for Bonello is posting potentially embarrassing photos on social network sites. “If teachers upload items on their pages which may potentially cause embarrassment, if these items are accessible to students then it is very obvious that they may end up in difficult situations.”

But he acknowledges that social networking sites can also be used as an educational tool.

“Some professional educators may feel the need of using such platforms to help out in situations which are not readily accessible in conventional means.”

Bonello is calling on the Council for the Teaching Profession, charged with updating the code of ethics for professional teachers, to meet with the Union to find a way forward to update the current code of ethics “to reflect the various modern developments that are slowly becoming part of everyday life.”

Facebook regulation in other countries

The Ontario College of Teachers, the regulatory board for all public teachers in Ontario, Canada, advises its 230,000 members not to accept Facebook friend requests from students.

According to the advisory, teachers must decline student-initiated friend requests, and never initiate a friend request with a student. The college asserts that when a teacher and a student become friends in an online environment, the dynamic between them is forever changed. An invisible line between professional and personal is crossed, which can lead to strictly forbidden informal conversations.

In the UK, teachers have been warned by the National Union of Teachers not to befriend pupils on Facebook amid concerns over the blurring of boundaries between school staff’s professional and private lives.

Karl Hopwood, an internet safety consultant and former head teacher, told the NUT fringe meeting: “The line between private life and professional life is blurred now because of social media.”

He also gave the example of a deputy head of a school who found that photographs of him in a Superman outfit were put up on the school’s bulletin board. The pictures, taken by a colleague who was a fellow guest at a birthday party, had then spread thanks to his Facebook friendships with pupils.

Teachers at schools in Kent were advised by the council to close down social networking profiles after a headteacher at a college in Dartford was criticised for posting a photograph with a caption boasting about the size of her breasts.