CHALLENGES AND COPING STRATEGIES OF DIGITAL IMMIGRANT ENGLISH TEACHERS IN TEACHING DIGITAL NATIVE LEANERS: A QUALITATIVE CASE STUDY

Abstract

The use of technology as a medium of instruction necessary in the 21st century classroom. However, there exists an inter-generational digital divide between students, who are digital natives being more adept with the use of technology and teachers who are digital immigrants. This qualitative case study explored the challenges of digital immigrant English teachers in teaching digital native learners. Specifically, it answered the following research questions: (a) What are the challenges of digital immigrant English teachers in teaching digital native learners? (b) How do digital immigrant English teachers cope with the challenges in teaching digital native learners? The purposively chosen participants were three private and three public school digital immigrant English teachers with ages ranging from 30-50 years old. The findings of this study showed that digital immigrant English teachers considered social media as a distraction in learners’ studies and they also experienced with their students the copy-and-paste phenomenon. The coping strategy preferred by the participants was the combination of both the traditional and modern strategies. However, in dealing with digital native learners, private school digital immigrant English teachers cope with the challenges of teaching digital native learners through encouraging the use traditional strategy in teaching. On the other hand, public school digital immigrant English teachers cope with the challenges of teaching digital native learners through increasing the use of modern strategy in teaching, i.e., with the use of technology including social media. All participants aim to balance the use of modern and traditional strategies in teaching digital native learners.