Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

To date, not much effort has been devoted to systematically study teachers' engagement with social media. Though engagement in social media continues to grow, little is known about how information and knowledge diffuses in virtual spaces, contributes to teachers' professional growth, or has indirect/direct impacts on classroom teaching and students' success (Frank, Zhao, Penuel, Ellefson, & Porter, 2011).

Pinterest represents a predominate virtual space for teacher interaction, knowledge, and information diffusion. Survey results of a sample of 90 early career teachers (ECTs) across four Midwestern states find 78 use Pinterest at least once per month for educational purposes. Within this group, 73 ECTs report acquiring educational resources within Pinterest. This may have implications for education policy and curricular coherence as communities of teachers become more connected beyond physical boundaries.

Resource acquisition and sharing may directly relate to national changes in educational reform. We examine a nationally sponsored curricular reform, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which explicitly defines content standards and national expectations for student success within mathematics and English Language Arts. We use an interuptted time series regression within a sample of 172 ECTs and their closest colleagues within school across two Midwestern states to identify changes in teachers' resource acquisition patterns before and after CCSS enactment as shown in model 1 below.

Teacher Pinterest use volume_t

=β₀+β₁CCSS_t+β₂Month_t+β₃Month_t x CCSS_t

+β₄DummyApril_t+β₅DummyJune_t+β₆DummyJuly_t

where

Teacher Pinterest use volume_t is the total volume of teachers' Pinterest use at month_t

CCSS_t is a dummy variable which takes on a value of 0 or 1 given CCSS implementation

Month_t is a continuous variable

Month_t x CCSS_t is the interaction between the CCSS intervention and month

β₀ is the total volume of teachers' Pinterest use at time 0

β₁ is the change in total volume of teachers' Pinterest use after CCSS implementation

β₂is the monthly change in total volume of teachers' Pinterest use before CCSS implementation

β₃ is the difference in the monthly change in teachers' total volume Pinterest use, total pinning volume, after CCSS implementation relative to before

β₄ through β₆ represent a seasonal effect

Table 1 presents differences in the average slope of teachers' pinning behavior before and after CCSS implementation.

Table 1. Summary table of regression analysis for total volume of teachers' Pinterest use (N_month=20)

	β	SE β
Intercept	1268.48***	234.19
Month	210.32**	59.36
CCSS	2021.62**	495.37
Month*CCSS	-262.65**	63.21
R squared	0.79

*p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001

Significant differences in the monthly increase of overall volume of teachers' Pinterest use, before and after CCSS, is -262.65 pins, indicating an approximatley 52 pin decrease in monthly pinning volume after CCSS implementation (210.32-265.65=-52.33). Thus, after CCSS, teachers continued to use Pinterest to access educational resources, however, they accessed less overall. We also find significant effects on pinning behavior across academic season, corresponding to summer break and statewide assessments. Results suggest teachers' Pinterest use relates to their local and national context. Ongoing work includes identifying district level responsiveness to curricular and policy change.