Mediating Role of Class Participation between Social Media Usage and Self-Compassion of the Pre-Service Special Needs Teachers in Pakistan

Abstract

The study aims to find out the importance of social media for the selfcompassion of special needs education (SNE) students to improve their online class participation in particular with a focus on the Pakistani perspective of special educators. The quantitative approach was applied through the application of a random sampling technique. A selfdeveloped questionnaire was used to collect data from pre-service special need education students (n=387) from two public and two private universities inPakistan. Quantitative data were analyzed through descriptive and inferential data analysis techniques. The reliability  of the instrument was found satisfactory. The results revealed a substantial and significant positive correlation among all the three factors i.e. social media, online class participation, and self-compassion. Social media was found a significant predictor of self-compassion. Whereas, online class participation found a significant mediator between selfcompassion and the use of social media.Future studies can be conducted to develop the social media model to facilitate the SNE students’ learning process.