03/28/2022
By Lizzie Casanave

The School of Education invites you to attend an Ed.D. Dissertation Defense by Ariana Kristen Arfanakis on “Variations in Perspectives of Blended Learning in a Predominantly Face-to-face Classroom: The Lived Experience of High School Science Teachers.”

Date: April 11, 2022
Time: 10 a.m.
Location: This will be a virtual dissertation defense via Zoom. Those interested in attending should contact Iman_Chahine@uml.edu to request access to the Zoom link.

Dissertation Chair: Iman Chahine Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Education, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Dissertation Committee:

  • Katherine Miller, Ph.D., Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Education, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Mariel Kolker, Ed.D.

Abstract:
The expansion of information and communication technology (ICT) has led to new pedagogical practices. Online education, blended learning environments, and flipped classrooms have also increased in recent years (Nakayama et al., 2014; Parks et al., 2016; de Araujo et al., 2017). This technology allows individuals to easily create their own videos (Bergmann & Sams, 2012) and this has led to instructional videos becoming prevalent in education (Ou et al., 2019). These technological advances provide new and enhanced learning opportunities for students but present challenges to educators. Changes to learning models in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID19 pandemic resulted in a widespread implementation of e-learning and remote e-learning specifically (Williamson, 2021). This phenomenographical study explored variations in the lived experience of high school science teachers who incorporated blended learning into their predominantly face-to-face classrooms. Four high school science teachers who expressed interest in blended learning were interviewed. The interviews as well as any accompanying artifacts were analyzed using Saldaña’s two-cycle coding method in order to categorize the differences between their lived experiences of blended learning as well as the relationship between these categories. Variations in teacher motivation for implemented blended learning affected the degree to which their pedagogy was transformed during the implementation and their overall experience during the implementation. A clear understanding of a specific desired pedagogical change prior to implementation was associated with the highest level of transformation while digitization was associated with the lowest.