Bret Staudt Willet
Michigan State University
United States of America - Elizabethtown
PhD candidate in Educational Psychology & Educational Technology at Michigan State University. I study how social media platforms support induction and ongoing professional learning for K-20 educators. #SocialMediaEd
Areas of interest
- Networked learning
- Information science
- Teacher education
- Social media
- Educational technology
Twitter
LinkedIn
github
Presentations
- The Hashtag-Thread Mashup: How Educators Talk to Each Other in Twitter #Edchat
- Foregrounding Critical Technoethics in Technology and Teacher Education: A Workshop for Pedagogical Action
- For the Longest Time: Continuity and Change in One Teaching-Related Subreddit
- Early-career Educators’ Experiences with Social Media during Induction
- Communities and Clusters: User Interactions in an Online Discussion Forum for Computer Science Education
- Educators on the Front Page of the Internet: Education-Related Subreddits as Learning Spaces
- Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam: Methodological Considerations and Challenges for Studying Educators’ Twitter Use
- #Edchat is Bigger, But Better Only for Some: Revisiting How and Why Educators Use Twitter
- Back to the Gaming Board: Understanding Games and Education through Board Game Reviews
- The Career You Save May Be Your Own: Exploring the mathtwitterblogosphere as a Community of Practice
SIGS
Biography
I am a PhD candidate in the Educational Psychology & Educational Technology program at Michigan State University. My research focuses on networked learning at the intersection of information science and teacher education. Specifically, I have been exploring how social media platforms support induction and ongoing professional learning for K-20 educators.
Through a mixed-methods dissertation (interviews first and then a survey), I am seeking to understand the challenges faced by early-career educators during their transition from educator preparation programs into professional employment contexts (i.e., their induction period). This study explores what supports for professional learning early-career educators seek during induction, if any; from whom; and how, if at all, they use social media with the intention of seeking supports and connections.
My research is interdisciplinary and utilizes a variety of methods — both qualitative and quantitative, human and computational — including qualitative content analysis, social network analysis, and machine learning.