Teachers on Facebook: explorations on distance and proximity management faced by school audience

Abstract The presence of social medias in teacher- student interactions raises questions on the collective work of managing proximity and distance. From teachers’ testimonies extracted from a video documentary we sought to understand practices of management of school interactions on Facebook. The reports are analyzed in the light of two categories of analysis that, organized to apprehend everyday situations, gather the impressions teachers have when discussing Facebook use. The first one points to what we have called the “gathering of differentiated social circles”, allowing us to recognize the uniqueness of a space such as Facebook in relation to the management of proximity and the distance of the teacher from the school public. The second is distinguished by the “technical conditions of discretion,” signaling margins of maneuvers teachers can use on the online social network, establishing an ideal form of interaction with their students. These categories result in a reality in which teachers manage both their relationships with the school audience (and technology) as well as their personal images and the possible educational (dis)credits associated with them.

摘要：社交媒体介入师生互动，引发了关于管控亲疏边界的协同工作的相关议题。本研究依托取自某部纪录片的教师口述证词，旨在探究教师在Facebook上开展校园互动的管理实践。分析报告基于两类为把握日常情境而构建的分析框架，汇总了教师谈及Facebook使用时的主观感受。第一类指向我们称之为“差异化社交圈层的聚合”的维度，借此可明晰Facebook这类空间在教师与校园公众的亲疏边界管理层面所具备的独特性。第二类则以“审慎社交的技术操作条件”为核心特征，揭示了教师可在该在线社交网络中运用的操作余地，并由此构建起与学生互动的理想模式。上述两类分析框架共同勾勒出这样一种现实图景：教师既要维系自身与校园受众（及技术工具）的关系，同时也要维护个人形象，以及与之相关的各类教育声誉得失。