Social media is part of everyday life for future teachers, yet it has barely found a place in their university education. This contradiction is the starting point of a study by Paula Marcelo-Martínez, Carmen Yot-Domínguez and Cristina Yanes Cabrera, published in RIED. The researchers analysed responses from 231 prospective early childhood, primary and secondary school teachers enrolled at ten Spanish higher education institutions.
The findings reveal a clear preference for Instagram and YouTube, used continuously by 55.6% and 42.2% of participants, respectively. However, only 3% began using social media as a result of a university course, highlighting the gap between students' digital practices and the learning opportunities provided by their institutions.
What are future teachers looking for when they turn to these platforms? Primarily, educational resources, experiences shared by other teachers and ideas they can apply in their own teaching practice. The study identifies three main motivations: finding materials and people to learn from, supporting academic learning, and seeking help from fellow teachers or peers.
The first motivation clearly predominates, while active collaboration, sharing personal experiences and seeking emotional support are less common. Differences also emerge between groups: younger students and those pursuing undergraduate degrees have a more positive view of the educational potential of social media than older students or those enrolled in a Master's programme in teacher education. By contrast, gender differences are virtually nonexistent.
The problem, therefore, does not seem to be a lack of familiarity with technology, but rather the limited extent to which that familiarity is translated into professional skills. Participants report few university experiences in which social media has been used to carry out learning activities, collaborate or receive feedback from lecturers. The authors advocate integrating these platforms more deliberately into initial teacher education, not merely as communication channels, but as spaces for building personal learning networks, developing a professional digital identity and learning to evaluate online content critically.
This also requires addressing privacy, ethics and the risks associated with public exposure. Although the study is limited by its non-probability sample, it raises an important question: preparing teachers for a connected society means teaching them not only to consume digital resources, but also to participate, collaborate and engage in professional learning within these environments.
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How to Cite: Marcelo-Martínez, P., Yot-Domínguez, C., & Yanes Cabrera, C. (2025). Connected outside, disconnected inside. Social Networks in initial teacher training . RIED-Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 28(1), 83–106. https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.28.1.41343
