“I Tolerate Technology—I Don't Embrace It”: Instructor Surprise and Sensemaking in a Technology-Rich Learning Environment

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Published: Aug 30, 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v16i4.19995
Keywords:
instructional technology, dialectics, sensemaking

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Jennifer Fairchild
Eric B. Meiners
Eastern Kentucky University
Jayne Violette

Abstract

Assuming a dialectical approach to technology and pedagogy, this study explores sensemaking processes for instructors teaching in a technologically enhanced college classroom environment. Through a series of semi-structured individual and group interviews, seven instructors provided narrative accounts of the problems encountered with progressive instructional technology and their emergent strategies to make sense of and manage it. Three primary dialectical tensions were described: freedom vs. confinement, connectedness vs. fragmentation, and change vs. stability. Two related modes of sensemaking in response to these tensions were also uncovered: adaptation, involving day-to-day adjustments to non-routine failures, and reframing, entailing gradual reflection upon the instructors’ roles in the classroom. Implications for the current findings are discussed.

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How to Cite
Fairchild, J., Meiners, E. B., & Violette, J. (2016). “I Tolerate Technology—I Don’t Embrace It”: Instructor Surprise and Sensemaking in a Technology-Rich Learning Environment. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 16(4), 92–108. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v16i4.19995
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Vol. 16 No. 4 (2016): Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
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Author Biography

Eric B. Meiners, Eastern Kentucky University

Department of Communication, Associate Professor

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