Abstract
Discussions and debates of theory in technology enhanced learning (TEL) within higher education (HE) are often characterised by instrumentalist motives, where theory is either juxtaposed somehow with reality or is used in expedited attempts to order, predict and monitor directly business-driven outcomes. The current paper instead examines and interprets scholarsâ experiences of their activities at a nexus of their research and practice; specifically, how participants conceive of their own scholarly interactions with theory in TEL. The paper summarises an interpretive study conducted in mid-2019 with teaching-focused lecturers at the Royal School of Military Engineering, a school providing HE in infrastructure engineering for defence personnel. The paper first describes problematic notions of scholarship, theory and TEL then analyses the related existing literature, to illustrate a dearth of studies which examine experiences, perceptions and conceptions of scholarly interactions with theory in TEL. A phenomenographic study is presented, with outcomes disclosing four parsimonious conceptions ranging in successive inclusivity and complexity. Participants conceive that scholarly interactions with theory in TEL enable them to: understand their own competence; exhibit their own competence; critique the change endeavours of others; and undertake their own change endeavours. The categories of description and dimensions of variation show how, to the studyâs participants, the status of theory in TEL is very much thriving and informs sociocultural perspectives of TELâs enhancement. The findings also expose important contradictory social conditions, which are beyond the scope of phenomenography and are lucrative for further research of an interventionist nature.Keywords: theory; scholarship; technology enhanced learning; TEL; phenomenography; higher educationPart of the Special Issue Debating the status of âtheoryâ in technology enhanced learning research <https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.dc494046>
Highlights
In this paper I set out to contribute to debating the status of theory by examining lecturers’ experiences, perceptions and conceptions of their scholarly interactions with theory in technology enhanced learning (TEL)
I examine their experiences at a similar nexus of “practice informed by theory and theory informed by practice” but in their scholarly interactions with theory in TEL
It is important to note that my phenomenographic findings in this paper present only one of many potential outcome spaces
Summary
In this paper I set out to contribute to debating the status of theory by examining lecturers’ experiences, perceptions and conceptions of their scholarly interactions with theory in technology enhanced learning (TEL). It is important at the outset to differentiate the content knowledge of engineering from the pedagogical knowledge being examined. In their disciplinary scholarship, the participants’ content knowledge can be described as a nexus of engineering theory and application (Christensen et al, 2015). It is important to note that the paper discusses second-order perspectives of scholarly interactions with theory in TEL. It does not scrutinise any particular theories in TEL
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