The examination of online learning environments in terms of social studies teachers' professional development: A netnography study

Teachers have recently created online learning communities by transferring in and out-of-school professional development activities to online environments thanks to technological changes and developments. The primary purpose of this study is to examine social media posts regarding the professional development of social studies teachers in groups established exclusively for social studies teachers on Facebook, one of the online learning communities. The secondary purpose of the study is to reveal the opinions of social studies teachers toward online learning communities in terms of professional development from a holistic perspective. The study was designed by the netnograpy study on the basis of the qualitative research paradigm. In the first phase, a total of 2050 posts between September 2021 and January 2022 directly related to the professional development of social studies teachers in the pre-determined Facebook groups entitled "Social Studies Note and Information Sharing", "Turkish Social Studies Department" and "Social Studies Teachers" were analysed and documented. In the second stage, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 social studies teachers determined through snowball sampling technique based on the active use of those online communities. Certain themes and categories were created by applying content analysis to the obtained data from the interviews. The results of the first stage of the study implied that the theme of professional attitudes and values is mostly addressed in Facebook groups. Collaboration for the professional development of teachers and cooperation between colleagues are highly shared. In a similar vein, the second stage results yielded that the teachers use these communities for communication, cooperation, and solidarity with their colleagues. Based on the interviews, it was concluded that the main difficulties of these communities are the accuracy of information and wording issues while the main benefits are getting information and accessing information quickly, and what's more, the use of these communities by teachers who have never employed them will be beneficial in terms of professional knowledge and skills. The overall results of the study revealed that online learning communities make significant contributions to the professional development of social studies teachers. Keywords: Social Studies Teachers, Professional Development, Online Learning Communities, Facebook, Netnography