Promoting teacherpreneurship in creative education through Instagram

Abstract

Teacherpreneurs use their high risk-taking entrepreneurial leadership skills to create an innovative classroom using modern technologies. Given the changing learning patterns of modern-day students, and the influence of social media in highlighting their creative achievements, Being a popular social media platform, Instagram has the potential to play a valuable role in teaching and learning, particularly in the field of creative education. The objective of this paper is to explore the role of Instagram in promoting teacherpreneurship in tertiary level creative education. Using a digital ethnography approach, Sri Lankan teacherpreneurs’ practices were explored.  Higher education plays a critical role in Sri Lankan economic development and has demonstrated it’s potential to develop creative industries. A purposive sample of twelve participants were observed and interviewed over a period of two months.  Qualitative content analysis was used to understand this rich visual and textual data. It was revealed that Instagram promotes teacherpreneurship by facilitating edutainment (education + entertainment) via a flipped classroom pedagogy, breaking away from hierarchical structures and snail pace policy changes, fostering innovation, diversifying professional pathways and careers and seamless connections in and out of cyberspace.