Content analysis of a closed Facebook group for school-based agricultural education teachers in California

Abstract

Since it began in April of 2004, Facebook has been used as a means to connect people around the world. In 2010, the platform introduced the Groups feature to allow members to communicate about shared interests (Facebook, 2020). Included in the multitude of groups around the world are a new wave of communication for school-based agricultural education teachers. In 2015, the Ag Education Discussion Lab at the national level, and later in 2016 the California Ag Ed Discussion Lab for SBAE teachers in California. A dearth of literature exists about the use of closed Facebook groups for teachers, especially in agricultural education. The purpose of this study was to classify and analyze posts in a closed Facebook group for school-based agricultural education teachers in California. This study employed quantitative content analysis to identify what teachers were posting about in the CAEDL Facebook group by SBAE teacher role and how they communicated the information via communicative functions of social media. Data were collected covering a three-year span of time of the group. The study analyzed the number of posts, comments, and reactions during the timeframe of the study as well as the authorship of the posts. The number of posts increased significantly from 2017 to 2018 and also increased in concert with membership growth in the group. The content of the posts was coded to identify the subject of the post. Findings indicated a small group of members in the CAEDL accounted for most of the posts during the time frame of the study and the SBAE teacher roles of Instruction and FFA were the most posted subjects. Using the conceptual framework developed for this study, data revealed 53.9% of posts were found in one of three categories; mobilization/instruction, information sharing/instruction, and mobilization/FFA. Furthermore, the content of posts coincided with events happening within the profession.