Copyright

Linda Herrera; Menna Ahmed Saieed; Ayman Alhusseini;

Published On

2025-11-17

Page Range

pp. 493–508

Language

  • English

Print Length

16 pages

28. Primary School Teachers Leverage Social Media for Professional Development

  • Linda Herrera (author)
  • Menna Ahmed (author)
  • Ayman Alhusseini (author)
Chapter of: Education 2.0: Chronicles of Technological and Cultural Change in Egypt(pp. 493–508)
There has long been a consensus that quality teaching leads to better learning outcomes and that Professional development plays a role in that process. Yet to be effective, Professional Development must be grounded in local contexts and practices. This chapter investigates how primary school teachers in Egypt have been leveraging social media for Informal Teacher Professional Development during a national education reform. They are expected to transition from a traditional pedagogy based on drills, memorization, and top-down teaching, to activity-based and studentcentered approaches that align with the new multidisciplinary curriculum. Teachers’ initiatives on Facebook, YouTube channels, and WhatsApp groups, show what they themselves identify as their professional gaps and needs, and highlight their skills, techniques, and communication and artistic styles. A better understanding of teachers’ professional cultures can lead to more relevant programs for Professional Development in which teachers and their students can have better chances to thrive.

Contributors

Linda Herrera

(author)
Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership in the Global Studies in Education program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Linda Herrera is Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership in the Global Studies in Education program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was director of the Education 2.0 Research and Documentation Project in Egypt and served as an international education advisor. A social anthropologist with expertise in the Middle East and North Africa, her research and teaching cover a range of areas including education and power, youth studies, citizenship education and critical democracy, technology and society, and international education development. Her books include, Educating Egypt: Civic Values and Ideological Struggles (American University in Cairo Press, 2022), Global Middle East: Into the Twenty-First Century (with A. Bayat, University of California Press, 2021), Revolution in the Age of Social Media (Verso, 2014), Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East (Routledge, 2014), Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (with A. Bayat, Oxford University Press, 2010), and Cultures of Arab Schooling: Critical Ethnographies from Egypt (with C. A. Torres, State University of New York Press, 2006).

Menna Ahmed

(author)

Menna Ahmed earned her Master of Education (M.Ed.) in Education Studies from the University of Glasgow in 2020. Her research interests include education, pedagogy, and culture. She has worked for over fourteen years as an educator, researcher, and community development practitioner in Egypt and has contributed to various local and regional alternative education projects, particularly for marginalized groups. Currently, she leads the SPARKS (Strengthening Pedagogical Approaches for Relevant Knowledge and Skills) project in Egypt in partnership with the Center for Education at the Brookings Institution.

Ayman Alhusseini

(author)

Ayman Alhusseini holds an M.A. in political science from Saint Joseph University in Beirut, Lebanon with a thesis focused on Ahliyya (not-for-profit) universities in Egypt. He is an independent researcher, evaluation consultant, and translator. He has contributed to multiple evaluation assignments in formal education, higher education, and youth development in Egypt and the MENA region for Save the Children, USAID, and GIZ, among others.