A content analysis of school leaders’ conversations about ‘off rolling’ on Twitter and its relevance to teacher education

Abstract

This article seeks to illustrate the usefulness to teacher educators of small-scale qualitative social media content analysis by reporting a study of online microblogs (tweets) posted by senior school leaders’ relating to ‘off rolling’ (practices that bypass legal permanent exclusion procedures in English mainstream schools). The outlined method enables analysis of social media content in the absence of costly opinion mining software and its associated affordances and limitations are discussed. The article also outlines the implications of the study’s findings for teacher education. In this instance, it served to illustrate a disparity between different types of professional discourse which future teachers should be prepared to navigate in their teacher training. Given the illegality of ‘off rolling’ and an increasingly incontestable socio-political discourse around inclusive education, it was hypothesised that Twitter affords school leaders a forum for the articulation of views that rest uneasily with this discourse, current legislation and statutory guidance around off rolling. A tendency to discount ‘off rolling’ as a rare occurrence was found despite growing anecdotal evidence that it is viewed as a legitimate, if illegal, practice within some school cultures. This finding is relevant to teacher educators and future teachers who aspire to an inclusive education system.