A Study of Teacherpreneurs Who Create Elementary Mathematics Curricular Resources
Author:
Lainey Lavelle ’22Co-Authors:
Faculty Mentor(s):
Lara Dick, MathematicsFunding Source:
James L.D. & Rebecca Roser Research FundAbstract
Online teacherpreneurs are teachers who use social media platforms to create, sell, and distribute educational resources to others. For many teachers, they have become the new curriculum developers in our virtually intensive world, but little is known about these teacherpreneurs. Therefore, as part of a larger study investigating the top 1000 elementary mathematics educational resources found on TeachersPayTeachers.com (TpT), I have sought to learn more about the teacherpreneurs who created these top resources. From their TpT pages, I have recorded each teacherpreneurs’ teaching experiences, their educational background, what state or country they are from, the number of followers they have and how they market their resources. I compare this information to the number of their resources that are in the top 1000 and if they charge for these resources or not. Results show most teacherpreneurs have previous teaching experience with 18.7% reporting more than 20 years of teaching experience. The average number of followers for these teacherpreneurs is 15247 with 23.6% having more than 20,000 followers; this points to the popularity of these teacherpreneurs and leads to questions about how they promote themselves on social media. Results show that teacherpreneurs who promote themselves on 3 to 4 social media accounts and who are not currently teaching have higher follower counts.