Sharing Student Projects

The dissertation looks at how staff in SEN schools support students with their SMU and how SM impacts student wellbeing. Social relationships can be difficult for students in SEN settings, and their lack of understanding and exposure could leave them vulnerable, so the potential for SM to be a positive or negative could be higher. To explore this, seven teachers and TAs, two men and five women, from SEN settings in the North of England took part in one-to-one interviews over zoom and answered questions around the research aims. The findings from these interviews highlighted that those working closest with SEN students generally saw SMU as a negative thing, rather than a positive, which mirrored other work in the area. The content of SM, particularly the problematic things, like cyberbullying and inappropriate content, were talked about and their impact on students wellbeing. This opened up the question of how to decide if content is appropriate for the user or not, and whether or not SEN students are sheltered, which could make their SMU more difficult. The key resources participants used to support students were their strong relationships with the students they worked with. They reported a range of different support being offered to students, and relationships with staff were key which is a strength for SEN schools, which normally have much smaller staff to student ratios. All the participants talked about the need for more support for parents, and discussed the challenges parents face supporting and protecting SEN students in the digital age. They talked about the responsibility of SM platforms to protect their users and have better controls to help protect more vulnerable people, including those with SEN.

This research has real world applications as it highlights a need for more comprehensive SM training for school staff, to help them understand the positives and negative of SM and help them stay aware of the latest platforms, to allow them to best support students. During teaching and learning, the practicalities of staying safe and using technology and the internet should be integrated with more social education around positive online relationships. It may encourage teaching staff to reflect on their own opinions on SM and consider whether they are colouring their practice, and preventing SEN students from fully engaging with the SM world they are living in. It is useful to guide parents to reflect on the level of control they have over their young person’s SMU, and to decide if it is enough, too much or not enough. It demonstrates the need for more parental support, and possible changes to policy to ensure schools and parents are working together to keep everyone as informed as possible. The study has potential to effect legislation for SM platforms to provide a safer version of apps, which are restricted, to help protect more vulnerable users, or implement a system where users have to show competence and understanding of how a platform works before they can set up accounts. This would mean users on a platform have a basic understanding of what they have signed up for