Understanding Distance Education Challenges of Educational Psychology During the Pandemic: A Qualitative Study

Educational psychology plays an essential role in teacher education.Through a phenomenological case study, we strive to learn and understand the teaching practice, course design, challenges, and opportunities resulting from the transition of instructional modalities during the pandemic from Educational Psychology faculty members who serve at land-grant institutions. From their experiences, we aim to identify design and delivery strategies to address learner differences, needs, engagement, and accessibility, for moving forward in a setting that faculty can be proficient and flexible in both face-to-face and distance teaching modalities. We are currently in the process of conducting one-on-one interviews with 5 to 10 educational psychology faculty; the data collection stage projects to complete by the end of January. This study will provide empirical evidence of educational psychology faculty’s teaching practice, course design, challenges, and opportunities resulting from the transition of instructional modalities during the pandemic period. These lived experiences will serve as a basis for identifying adaptive and evolving strategies faculty used to address learner differences and needs, and create engaging courses leveraging the affordances of available technologies. In this conference session, we will present the preliminary findings of the case study, and provide examples of sustainable instructional delivery that have evolved out of the coronavirus pandemic.