Exploring the impact of the Flipped Learning Model (FLM) on educators' teaching practices at a private school in Johannesburg
Date
2016
Authors
Gerassi, Joseph
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Abstract
This study investigates the impact of the Flipped Learning Model (FLM) on the teaching
practices of four educators in a private school in Johannesburg. It investigates the pedagogic
processes and experiences of these educators’ respective attempts to shift from their
standard educator-centered methodologies to the FLM’s highly collaborative and blended
methodology. In so doing, the study exposes the educators’ resistance to the primary
assumptions of constructivist epistemologically informed pedagogies. It also demonstrates
the extent to which epistemological assumptions underpinning the ‘official curriculum’ are
imbued within the dominant pedagogic discourse and aligned with educators’ beliefs and
professional identities. The study exposes the necessity for transformations in educators’
traditional thinking, epistemological assumptions, perceptions, attitudes and roles to occur
before any substantial attempts to introduce the FLM in ‘classrooms’ are made.
Furthermore, the FLM takes for granted the ease of embedding technology in the
teaching/learning process. This study exposes the relationship between a lack of
technological familiarity/ know-how and the strength of resistance to ‘flipping the classroom’.
South African educators work in an environment that promotes very strong boundaries
between: classroom/home; educator/learner; and schoolwork/homework. Flipping,
weakening or altering these, challenges educators’ strongly held notions of what it means to
be a professional educator. It is within this context that Bernstein’s work with respect to the
development of such seminal concepts as ‘pedagogic device’, ‘classification’ and ‘framing’
provided the language of description and analytical basis for this research study.
Description
Master of Education (MEd)
Research Report
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg, 2016
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Citation
Gerassi, Joseph (2016) Exploring the impact of the Flipped Learning Model (FLM) on educators' teaching practices at a private school in Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, <http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/22622>