Analysis of social media usage of middle school mathematics teachers: The case of middle school mathematics teachers study group Facebook page

The purpose of this study is to examine the types and contents of posts in the online community created by middle school mathematics teachers on Facebook, a social media tool, and to contribute to the studies in the field of mathematics. In the study, the netnography method, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used as an adaptation of the ethnography method to the virtual environment. For this purpose, a group of middle school mathematics teachers was selected on Facebook within the framework of the criteria. The posts shared in the selected "Middle School Mathematics Teachers Working Group" between 01.09.2023-30.06.2024 covering the 2023-2024 academic year were recorded and analyzed. Of the 876 posts, 272 were excluded from the study because they were for advertising and promotional purposes, and 604 posts were analyzed using Maxqda Analytics Pro 2020 qualitative data analysis program. Each post analyzed was coded according to its type and content. As a result of coding, 47 categories were obtained and these categories were grouped under 7 themes (question discussion, professional discussion and information, material sharing, current news discussion, informatics cooperation, fun and popular sharing, conceptual discussion) and 9 sub-themes. The themes of question discussion, material sharing and conceptual discussion were also coded separately according to mathematics sub-learning areas. In the light of all the findings obtained, it was determined that middle school mathematics teachers mostly shared posts related to question discussion and asked for help from their colleagues, exchanged opinions with each other regarding professional discussion and information, and helped each other by sharing files and documents In addition, the fact that there are fewer posts on the conceptual discussion theme and more posts on the question discussion theme draws attention to the differences between teachers' pedagogical content knowledge and mathematical content knowledge. In the light of the general results of the study, suggestions were made to the researchers for future studies.