Teachers: To Be, Or Not to Be (Your Students’ Facebook-friends)?

Student-teacher relationships have been heavily influenced by the emergence of social network sites (SNS). At the same time, policymakers are concerned about the implications of student-teacher connections using them, often resulting in banning such communication. However, there is meager empirical evidence supporting such steps. This paper presents two qualitative exploratory studies, involving lower and higher secondary school Israeli students (N=11) and teachers (N=5), examining the relations between Facebook-based student-teacher communication and student-teacher relationships. Overall, students and teachers exhibited similar perceptions of SNS-based student-teacher communication. Findings suggest that instances in which such communication exists were beneficial for both parties. Normally facilitated only upon the teacher’s consent, findings also suggest that policies for banning such communication might be destructive for teachers who are willing to use SNS and for their students.