Jeffrey Paul Carpenter

Professional learning has long been a source of tension related to the value for in-service teachers. It has increasingly started to take place in online and social-media spaces – environments whic...

Although YouTube is widely used worldwide, little is known about how pre-K–12 teachers employ it for instructional purposes. This article reports findings from a national survey of U.S. pre-K–12 teachers ( N = 393) on their instructional use of YouTube. Nearly three-quarters of respondents reported using the platform as a classroom resource, with almost half doing so at least daily or weekly. On average, teachers devoted 17.9% of instructional time to watching videos, often alongside lectures, group work, and independent practice. These findings underscore YouTube’s important role in supporting instruction and enhancing teachers’ content knowledge.

TikTok has rapidly become a mainstream social media platform, particularly popular among younger populations. However, young people's perceptions of TikTok's use as a teaching–learning tool remain largely unexplored. To address this literature gap, this study involved an educational intervention in which TikTok was integrated into sport management classes at a Spanish university through active learning methodologies. Specifically, it sought to assess changes in students’ perceptions before and after the intervention across three key dimensions: TikTok’s usefulness as a teaching tool, its contribution to professional development, and its potential for industry engagement. To assess students' perceptions of TikTok, a pre-test and post-test were conducted with 48 students (71% male, 29% female) enrolled in the course. Quantitative findings revealed statistically significant positive changes across all three dimensions, suggesting that the intervention positively impacted students’ perceptions of TikTok’s educational, professional, and industry-related value. These findings were reinforced by qualitative data collected through open-ended responses, in which students highlighted TikTok as a creative, motivating, and professionally relevant learning tool. The results of this study offer both theoretical and practical insights that may be valuable to educators and educational institutions considering the strategic integration of social media such as TikTok into higher education.