Browsing by Author "Hunter, Natasha L., 1981-"

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Understanding the great divide : an instrumental single case study exploring how middle school master teachers perceived their self-efficacy for teaching in the virtual setting during the pandemic.
(2023-08) Hunter, Natasha L., 1981-; Foster, Marquita D.
The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) became a global pandemic drastically impacting the healthcare industry and education institutions worldwide. More specifically, K–12 schools abruptly closed their doors, forcing the teaching and learning process to transition to a virtual platform swiftly. Because the transition happened so quickly, teachers did not have sufficient time to receive training or properly prepare for how instruction would look in a virtual setting. This shift impacted how teachers planned, delivered content, and provided feedback to students and parents which directly impacted how teachers perceived their self-efficacy while teaching in the virtual setting. Selecting a qualitative study, more distinctively, choosing an instrumental single case study allowed me to better understand how four middle school master teachers experienced teaching in the virtual setting during the pandemic lockdown. Participants were purposefully selected based on content area, years of experience, their level of mastery before the pandemic, and generational birth era. Three themes and findings emerged from this study. The first theme highlighted teacher experiences and findings revealed that despite teachers not receiving sufficient training before shifting to the virtual setting, participants could still find some measures of success based on their mastery and vicarious experiences. The second theme focused on teachers’ feelings/well-being. Findings from this theme showed that teachers had positive and negative feelings for teaching in the virtual setting that could have been curtailed with more support and guidance from school leaders. The third theme centered around teacher performance. Findings from this theme indicated that although participants used technology regularly, they still needed time to learn how to effectively navigate the learning management system (LMS) platforms chosen by their districts to know how to plan, deliver content, and provide feedback. Based on these findings, implications from this study suggest that teachers need specific training on more advanced instructional technology tools and applications they can embed in their lessons. Another implication is that teachers should be encouraged to incorporate technology in their lessons daily to increase their self-efficacy with instructional technology programs, tools, and applications.