Written by: Adam Brown, Deakin University, Australia
Abstract: The social media landscape has fundamentally reshaped the conventional and still commonplace notion of ‘authenticity,’ raising pressing questions over how educators might construct credible and compelling personas to facilitate student learning online. Such questions are now more important than ever in an environment where the global COVID-19 pandemic has enticed countless more teachers to explore the potentialities of the digital world for engaging with students, colleagues, and other stakeholders. This visual essay explores this issue through an examination of the author’s own construction of a ‘teaching self’ on various social media platforms, particularly through the lens of the shelfie. The roles of performativity, playfulness, and the potential for repurposing content are shown to shed light on the complexities of what it means to convey an ‘authentic’ persona online.
Keywords: authenticity; education; social media; teaching self; performativity; digital learning