Navigating the Flipped Learning Approach: Opportunities, Challenges, and Implications in Teacher Education

Navigating the Flipped Learning Approach: Opportunities, Challenges, and Implications in Teacher Education: Comparison

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Please note this is a comparison between Version 2 by Perry Fu and Version 1 by Benjamin Dr. Aidoo.

Over the past decade, educators have utilized flipped learning to augment students’ learning outside of the classroom. The COVID-19 pandemic disruptions in regular classroom teaching and learning activities intensified the use of the approach. This entry examines teacher educators’ and pre-service teachers’ perspectives of flipped learning, highlighting the opportunities and challenges during and after the pandemic. This entry also examines how flipped learning impacted educators’ work and pre-service teachers’ learning, which necessitated its continuous development and use in teacher education. A critical analysis of the literature and illustrations from other perspectives highlights the implication of adopting flipped learning and how educators, pre-service teachers, and universities can support the integration of the approach in the curriculum. While the approach provides substantial benefits to both educators and pre-service teachers, integrating digital technologies to adopt the approach presents challenges to practitioners, which need to be addressed with more support for professional development training. This entry contributes to the existing valuable information for policymaking for technological integration in the transformation of teacher education.

ICT-based education
higher education
flipped learning
digital competences

The proliferation of digital technologies has enable the continuity of teaching and learning in the digital age ^[1], making digital technology an agent for change. The inclusion of technology has improved educators’ competence for teaching ^[2]. Kormakova et al. ^[3] stressed the importance of teacher educators’ proficiency in using technology to transform classroom practices to benefit student learning. Educators invest considerable time and resources to mentor students to facilitate the attainment of valuable experiences and the development of technological learning competences ^[4]. Likewise, educator’s technological skills enable their students, particularly pre-service teachers (i.e., students undergoing training to become educators), to develop interests and actively participate in technology-mediated learning activities required in their future classroom ^[3]. This indicates that educators’ technological skills in mastering and using technology to teach and engage students are critical. Notwithstanding, some educators have positive aspirations for technology integration [5,6]^[5][6] but still lack the required knowledge and skills to put this into practice, indicating gaps in educators’ actual technological aspirations, competences, and classroom practices ^[6]. This discrepancy led to the reassessment of how technology has been integrated into the curricula, particularly considering the changes necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic ^[7]. Interestingly, the pandemic opened opportunities for the adoption of technology-driven teaching and learning pedagogies to support students’ continuous online learning activities. Notably, one of the most adopted approaches globally during the pandemic was flipped learning. Flipped learning (FL) served as a measure to continuously engage students in independent learning and collaborative learning experiences [8,9]^[8][9], which somehow brought some form of relief to educators and students.

This entry aims to highlight the perspectives of educators and pre-service teachers (i.e., students undergoing training to become educators) on FL, focusing on the opportunities and challenges that encompassed the approach during and after the pandemic and the need for the continuous exploration of the approach. This entry adds to the existing knowledge covering critical research carried out during and after the pandemic to understand the extent to which the FL approach is utilized in higher education.

References

Seeletso, M.K. Teacher Education in the Digital Age: Opportunities and Challenges. In Perspectives on Teacher Education in the Digital Age; Olivier, J., Oojorah, A., Udhin, W., Eds.; Springer: Singapore, 2022; pp. 11–23.
Ertmer, P.A. Teacher pedagogical beliefs: The final frontier in our quest for technology integration? Educ. Technol. Res. Dev. 2005, 53, 25–39.
Kormakova, V.; Klepikova, A.; Lapina, M.; Rugelj, J. ICT competence of a teacher in the context of digital transformation of education. CEUR Workshop Proc. 2021, 2914, 138–150.
Brewer, R.; Movahedazarhouligh, S. Successful stories and conflicts: A literature review on the effectiveness of flipped learning in higher education. J. Comput. Assist. Learn. 2018, 34, 409–416.
Quaicoe, J.S.; Pata, K. Teachers’ digital literacy and digital activity as digital divide components among basic schools in Ghana. Educ. Inf. Technol. 2020, 25, 4077–4095.
Agyei, D.D. Integrating ICT into schools in Sub-Saharan Africa: From teachers’ capacity building to classroom implementation. Educ. Inf. Technol. 2021, 26, 125–144.
Abedi, E.A. Tensions between technology integration practices of teachers and ICT in education policy expectations: Implications for change in teacher knowledge, beliefs and teaching practices. J. Comput. Educ. 2024, 11, 1215–1234.
Edumadze, J.; Owusu, A.K. Use of information and communication technology for teaching and learning in Ghanaian universities: Case of University of Cape Coast. Int. J. Comput. Acad. Res. 2013, 2, 266–277.
Luo, S.; Zou, D. K-12 teacher readiness for flipped foreign language teaching: Scale development and validation. J. Res. Technol. Educ. 2024, 56, 674–690.