Abstract:

This paper presents an overview of the ‘Circuits of Higher Education (HE) Teaching Power’ framework (CHETP) that explains the process a teacher engages in when undertaking innovative online teaching.

Educational technology literature presents reasons why HE teachers may have chosen to use (or not use) online applications in their teaching. These are often provided as lists of factors impacting use, rather than suggesting systemic, context-based explanations of patterns of use or non-use and how they are instantiated, and shift over time. This framework aims to provide a more integrated perspective of this phenomenon.

The framework developed is based on a qualitative South African case study that consisted of semi-structured, conversational interviews with 18 HE teachers who used social computing features in their teaching. Participants represented the exception rather than the rule as continual changes in institutional, operational circumstances provided sufficient reasons for teachers in this institution to choose not to innovate in teaching. Although data production occurred prior to the COVID-19 pandemic the institution had existed in a state of systemic flux over an extended period: Eight years earlier the institution had experienced an institutional merger; a year prior, it underwent reorganisation into a college structure; and was plagued by annual student protests related to student access.

A critical realist approach and inductive analysis resulted in the CHETP framework that represents both the individual teacher processes and those within the teaching arena. An innovation reinforcement process of Commitment[C] and Effort[E], which produces Results[R], is used to explain teachers’ implementation of social computing. This C-E-R process consists of Mechanisms which act as micro-points of interaction but can also represent points where delays or blockages occur. HE teacher agency is articulated through the use of individual tactics and processes, based on teachers’ social capital. Processes, represented by causal system loops, illustrate the dynamics within the teaching (and learning) (T&L) arena and interactions with the institutional structures and processes.

The CHETP framework represents the flow of power through the system, involving: Institutional standing conditions e.g. policies, rules and structures; processes of systemic integration or the control of physical and social space through technology, tools and skills; and social integration that is based on a shared understanding of common goals. These integration processes are the enactment of institutional, academic social norms that are reinforced through obligatory passage points (OPPs) or predetermined ways of doing things. Together, these influence the arenas of negotiation in which teachers and other actors exercise their agency. The circuit is completed when teacher agency influences standing conditions. This circuit of HE teaching power can both influence, and be influenced by, external forces.

This framework provides an explanation of processes at both the individual and systemic levels, indicating its relevance at the operational-, tactical/management- and strategic/policy-level. As an example, its usefulness as an explanatory and methodological framing device has been illustrated in a publication on the impact of COVID-19 on processes related to the teaching of an Information Systems and Technology, second-year module (2020).

Keywords:

Online teaching, innovation, social media, higher education, systemic, processes, power, agency, faculty.