Teacher Roles in the Blended Classroom – Swedish Lower Secondary School Teachers’ Boundary Management between Physical and Virtual Learning Spaces

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to explore how Swedish lower secondary school teachers manage blended learning environments, established through using a specific learning management system (LMS) application. In the study, four teachers were followed during a four-month (n)ethnographic fieldwork. Based on analyses of data from video-recordings and observations in physical and virtual classrooms, the study examines teachers’ practices of integrating and segmenting the two classroom domains. In order to unpack the realms of these practices, the study employs affordance and boundary theories. Through the analysis of participants’ boundary practices and their use of communicative affordances in and across space and time, four teacher roles, enacted and emerging through teaching practices, are presented. The paper concludes with a discussion of how participants’ engagement with virtual and physical learning environment compels teachers to reflect upon their preferred teacher role in the new multidimensional classrooms.