Who is the child on teacher Instagram? A child as method analysis of three popular teacher influencers

Extant research on teacher social media influencers tends to either describe influencer accounts and culture, or critique the intense neoliberal, capitalistic sensibilities promoted by teacher influencers. This paper takes a new theoretical lens, applying Erica Burman’s (Burman, E. 2019. “Child as Method and/as Childism: Conceptual – Political Intersections and Tensions.” Children & Society; Burman, E. 2022. Child as Method: Othering, Interiority and Materialism. New York: Routledge) ‘child as method’ approach to an analysis of three popular US teacher influencers on Instagram. My study of approximately one thousand teacher influencer posts from 2023 to 2024 reveals a striking absence of the child as a figure on teacher Instagram, even apart from privacy concerns about showing specific children. I offer various interpretations of this absence and I also show that when the child is recruited as part of teacher influencer identity, they are represented in very particular ways. Most notably, the child is shown as a threat or irritant but is also figured as someone in need of protection. I discuss how the platform of Instagram is particularly meaningful in terms of perpetuating social constructs of childhood because of its ubiquity, rapid-fire updates, and combination of visual, auditory, and textual material. The paper closes with implications for future research and teacher education.