A Disorienting Dilemma: Teaching and Learning in Technology Education During a Time of Crisis

The way individuals interpret and reinterpret their experience is central to meaning-making and impacts teaching and learning. Grounded in Mezirow’s transformative learning theory, this research explores whether pandemic-related emergency remote teaching manifested as a “disorienting dilemma” for technology educators. Teachers negotiated curricular outcomes between physical aspects of making and doing, as well as creative problem solving through design, resulting in a pandemic transformed pedagogy. Thematic analysis revealed that making and doing was severely challenged due to decreased communication, student motivation, and engagement. However, most concerning to educators was the heightened disparity in equity and access in their most vulnerable and at-risk students. In conditions of fear and trauma, little is known about the impact a chaotic way of being has on learners and educators. While we cannot predict what the “new normal” will look like for schools, and what the long-term effects of emergency remote teaching will be, our research demonstrates that the disorienting dilemma COVID-19 presents will continue to shape the pandemic transformed pedagogy of technology educators.