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Article
Publication date: 7 July 2020

Jillianne Code, Rachel Ralph and Kieran Forde

The disruption caused by the pandemic declaration and subsequent public health measures put in place have had a substantial effect on teachers’ abilities to support student…

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Abstract

Purpose

The disruption caused by the pandemic declaration and subsequent public health measures put in place have had a substantial effect on teachers’ abilities to support student engagement in technology education (TE). The purpose of this paper is to explore the following research question: How do TE teachers see emergency remote teaching (ERT) transitions to blended learning into the next academic year affecting their profession?

Design/methodology/approach

A snowball and convenience sampling design was used to recruit specialist teachers in TE through their professional organization and were asked to respond to the question: What are your concerns about the future of teaching TE remotely? The qualitative data collected from the participants (N = 42) was analyzed thematically (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

Findings

The analysis revealed that the switch to ERT impacted the teachers’ ability to support hands-on competency development owing to inequitable student access to tools, materials and resources, all of which affected student motivation and engagement. As a result, teachers raised questions about the overall effectiveness of online learning approaches and TE’s future and sustainability if offered completely online.

Originality/value

This research is the first of its kind exploring the experiences of TE teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In answer to the challenges identified by teachers, the authors offer a blended learning design framework informed by pandemic transformed pedagogy that can serve as a model for educators to use when designing blended instruction.

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