Abstract
The purpose of this participatory action research study was to investigate if teaching in virtual spaces could offer the opportunity to exercise reflexivity and transform pedagogy by including new roles, modes of interaction, and authentic practice to increase connectivity with students. The study was conducted with a small convenience group of university teachers in a private university in the south of Ecuador. Data was triangulated through individual and group interviews, a specifically designed blog, and participation in three learning-teaching modules. Certain dialogic characteristics in the data demonstrate epistemological and pedagogical transformations. Short-term results show that the complexity of teaching in virtual spaces indicates more research is necessary on the role of professional development that focuses on both pedagogy, effective communication, and technical abilities with discipline content.
TopIntroduction
The title of this paper involves the concept and practice of reflexivity, that is, the examination of university teachers’ own beliefs, judgments and practices involving the questioning of their own taken for granted assumptions. Can the shift to online teaching be a potential opportunity for teachers to develop new ideas about teaching and learning to restructure traditional roles and relationships in the virtual classroom?
Faculty ranked redesign and rethinking of teacher roles as the most important aspect of professional development for online teaching as well as relatively difficult concept shifts regarding outcomes expected from learning and the directionality of teaching or content control (Samuelowicz, 2001). In a review of the adult education and faculty development literature and research to discover what is known about changes or transformation in teaching assumptions and beliefs when faculty prepare to teach online or when they are engaged in online teaching, McQuiggan (2009) identified framing faculty development within adult education and faculty development models as most important.
Borup and Evmenova (2019) identify two sets of barriers for professional development to achieve effective online teaching: the first is concerned with issues that are external to the teacher, such as the professional development available; and the second are internal such as teacher beliefs and attitudes. Teachers’ perceptions of their roles may also impact their willingness to engage in professional development, “persons who saw their role as guides to learning were more likely to complete all of the faculty development modules than faculty who saw their role as providers of content” (Meyer, 2013, p.11). Baran and Correia (2014) highlighted that the lack of technology skills can impact teachers’ ability to engage with aspects of online teaching such as student engagement. They suggest that technology support is required, particularly when they are transitioning from face-to face to online. Teachers with experience in using technology due to past practice had no difficulty in creating digital artefacts (Adnan, 2018). This was also reflected in the use of the VLE (Virtual Learning Environments) during a training program where those unfamiliar with Moodle took some time to grasp it (Adnan et al., 2017). Borup and Evmenova (2019) found that those teachers who were not ready with the technological skills had a deep learning curve and may not have benefited from the exposure to new tools as much as teachers who had prior experience. In addition, evaluating the impact of professional development Brinkley-Etzkorn (2018) noted that there are many ways to approach the evaluation of the impact of professional development but that they fall into two broad categories: 1. Beliefs, confidence, and attitudes; and 2. Teaching behaviors, abilities, and effectiveness. Using teacher perceptions of changes in knowledge and attitudes when evaluating the impact of a professional development program, Borup and Evmenova (2019) acknowledge the need to take observable measures of those changes.
Teacher professional development focuses on adult education which puts all the theory, research and literature in the field of adult education and its various principles, practices, strategies, and applications in the hands of developers. However, regarding technological infrastructure, some critique that online platforms that are often presented as “empty spaces for others to interact on” when as textually mediated literacies they are actually political and increasingly can “gain control and governance over the rules of the game” (Selwyn, 2015, p.47). For education, the collection of digital data through online education platforms has “raised concerns over power, control and performativity.…reinforcing and intensifying the culture of managerialism within education” (p.72) with the potential risk of reducing teachers, students and their interactions to measurable data sets that increasingly shape educational processes, for example, standardization and competitiveness.
We were curious if an action research professional development model could intentionally provide activities to integrate what and how teachers were learning about online teaching to inform their teaching practice and how these activities might transform their assumptions and beliefs about teaching both online and face to face. The answers to these questions could inform university administrators and specialists in developing programs within an adult learning framework that support change opportunities to go beyond standardized plans.
The research questions that guided this research study included:
Key Terms in this Chapter
Transformative Learning: Learners who are getting new information are also evaluating.
Epistemic Technologies: Information providing and gathering increasingly involve technologies like search engines which actively shape their epistemic surroundings but there is no account of the associated epistemic responsibilities.
Critical Literacy: Critically analyze and evaluate the meaning of texts as they relate to topics on equity, power and social justice.
Self-Reflexivity: Examination of one’s own beliefs, judgments and practices during the research process and how these may have influenced the research. If positionality refers to what we know and believe then reflexivity is about what we do with this knowledge.
Global Citizenship Education: Aims to empower learners of all ages to assume active roles, both locally and globally, in building more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and secure societies. GCED is based on the three domains of learning - cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioral.
Rubric: An assessment tool that clearly indicates achievement criteria across all the components of any kind of student work, from written to oral to visual. It can be used for marking assignments, class participation, or overall grades. There are two types of rubrics: holistic and analytical.
Adult Learning: A specific philosophy about learning and teaching based on the assumption that adults can and want to learn, that they are able and willing to take responsibility for the learning, and that the learning itself should respond to their need.
Managerialism in Education: Digital technologies subtle reinforcement of wider trends that local enactments of such governance can be shaped by schools’ relatively unsophisticated data processing technologies and techniques.