Atherton, P (2023) Enacting the chasm: how can educational technology help Secondary teacher educators reflect creatively and reflexively? Doctoral thesis, Liverpool John Moores University.

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Abstract

This thesis fuses a portfolio of four peer-reviewed papers, two conference papers and one book with a peer-reviewed chapter. The portfolio examines the act of a teacher educator investigating and writing about educational technology (edtech). The trajectory of the papers develops from studies of specific edtech platforms in the context of teacher education, to positioning the author at the centre of the edtech research. As the focus shifted towards the act of researching and writing about edtech, the later papers became autoethnographic. The portfolio of papers employed mixed methods. There was some quantitative data but the research would later narrow the focus onto qualitative methods of data collection with grounded theory, then thematic analysis as research methodologies. This statement develops the autoethnographic style adopted by the later papers in the portfolio and the autoethnographic account of the process of retrospective PHD by Published Works (O’Keeffe, 2019; Chong & Johnson, 2022). In terms of a theoretical framework, connectivism has been a consistent thread from the practitioner book that precipitated the portfolio to the later autoethnographic work. Connectivism was initially selected to highlight the development of theoretical models in edtech on either side of the pandemic. In this portfolio, I re-examine the overall evidence to progress from critiquing the notion of connectivist learning by writing autoethnographically. This progression leads me to an enactivist process of embodied action (Li, 2012; Van den Berg, 2018). The original contribution to knowledge that the portfolio and its findings makes is to place the researcher at the centre of a study of edtech in the context of Initial Teacher Education (I.T.E). The conclusions’ originality arise from the creation of a model to frame the paradigmatic pluralism identified in recent literature. The SPACESHIP model draws on Kimmons and Johnstun’s (2019) notion of the multihyphenate researcher and crystallises how a research journey may be informed by an openness to multiple paradigms while still being mindful of potential contradictions (Kimmons and Johnstun, 2019).

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	edtech; autoethnography; enactivism; connectivism; teaching; teacher education
Subjects:	L Education > LB Theory and practice of education L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB1603 Secondary Education. High schools T Technology > T Technology (General)
Divisions:	Education
SWORD Depositor:	A Symplectic
Date Deposited:	01 Dec 2023 16:19
Last Modified:	01 Dec 2023 16:21
DOI or ID number:	10.24377/LJMU.t.00021955
Supervisors:	Enriquez, J, Mallaburn, A and Smith, AM
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/21955

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