Troublesome Knowledge: Identifying Barriers To Innovate For Breakthroughs In Learning To Teach Online

Abstract

Embedded within advice for starting simple with online, blended, or technology-enhanced teaching are practices that can be troublesome for some faculty who are learning to teach this way. For example, embedded within the principle of a clear, organized, navigable course can be the concept of chunking content into modules, the skills associated with screen casting and posting a course tour, and the practice of socializing students to the course organization through demonstration, explanation, and reinforcement. This empirical-qualitative study collected 123 cases of troublesome knowledge from 41 participants and analyzed them through Perkins’ troublesome knowledge framework. Results include subcategories and common themes across cases of inert, ritual, conceptually difficult, tacit, and foreign/alien knowledge. From these results, we recommend that faculty development approaches should take specific aspects and cases of troublesome knowledge into consideration for online teaching preparation.

Keywords

• online teaching
• troublesome knowledge
• faculty development
• online teaching preparation