Limitations
Study Participation
I acknowledge the generosity of the participants in this research who shared their lived experiences with MDL within their OEPr as TEds. One consideration of the time gifted by the study participants was the challenge of conducting the interviews during the latter part of an academic year, in the second year of pandemic impacted teaching and learning constraints. Participants shared their passion and interest in teaching, while revealing many challenges and barriers in their efforts to infuse MDL into teaching and learning practices which was influenced by factors specific to the constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.While a limitation number of participant interviews were conducted, this in no way reduces the generated findings and analysis. issues with coding practices; lenses of both participants and the researcher – errors and omissions are mine, moments when my focus shifted away from the phenomenon under investigation; issues of bias in binary thinking when fluidity and impermanence is the lived reality in MDL within an OEPr; “blurry rather than rigid boundaries” (Cronin, 2017, p. 171).
One limitation of this research is that the narrow scope of participant criteria may render this research not applicable to other contexts such as higher education in general or TEds in other FoE contexts. Additionally, the limitation of data gathering methods to one interview and one artifact may not reveal the potential depth of the MDL that could be found in the OEPr of TEds, not could it uncover the breadth of MDL that TEds may apply to their OEPr over time. One caution and potential limitation for me as a new researcher is to maintain a clear focus on the research questions. While the intended focus for this P-IP research is on the becoming (becoming media and digitally literate, becoming an open educational practitioner) this research may inadvertently result in discovering what has been.
An additional limitation is that the limited participation numbers in this research, precludes the potential for generalizability or theory building. While I hope this research opens new avenues of thought relative to MDL within the OEPr in faculties of education, it will require further study in broader categories and crossing boundaries between fields of study beyond the field of teacher education, for extensive confirmation and extended conversation. This hinders the potential implications but does not negate the importance of this proposed research.
I understand that my research may be impacted by conceptions of the participants’ self-efficacy (Bandura, 2012; Taimalu & Luik, 2019) and their pedagogical beliefs about the importance of MDL, or perceptions about OEPr. While investigations into the use of technology among teacher educators (Taimalu & Luik, 2019) may lead to some understanding, teacher educators’ perceptions and lived experiences of MDL within their OEPr may be influenced by their confidence in their abilities to create and model media and digital literacies (McDonagh et al., 2021), their perceived skills, fluencies, and competencies with MDL and OEPr, as well as their positive mindsets when using technologies within their teaching practice (Falloon, 2020).
Open educational resources and practices, created and share by experienced practitioners of the art and science of teaching, can potentially improve access to educationally focused media and networks, extend the adaptability of educational practices and resources, provide exemplars of rich digital artifacts of educational information, and lead to the transformation of faculties of education to collaborative and creative learning spaces (Couros, 2006). Since teacher educators’ voices are currently absent from OEPr conversations and discourses, it is through this research that I will “make public the knowledge and everyday lived experiences of the oppressed, the silenced, and the lost and forgotten in the service of social justice” (St. Pierre, 2013, p. 648).
Limitations in methodological suitability for solitary, novice researchers
The limitation for the application of crystallization as a methodology is that it can be a complex and sometimes chaotic approach that may complicate the efforts of a novice researcher working in isolation. Ellingson (2009) identifies this limitation as: requiring “the capacity to be fluent in multiple genres and forms of analysis”; exploring the “trade-off between breadth and depth”; dealing with a “lack of recognition of crystallization as a viable methodological framework”; and, a willingness to adjust “beliefs about the rightness or correctness of any given method or genre” (p. 16-17). In reflection, as I navigate and make sense of the fluidity and instability in the materials, data, codes, concepts, contexts, histories, textualities, discourses, and experiences that constitute this doctoral inquiry, I am all at once exhilarated and invigorated, but also confounded, frustrated, and confused (Ellingson, 2009; Snowden, 2011).As a novice researcher, the challenge is knowing what to do, and then, what to do next. The limitations of this methodological approach can be mitigated by consistently stepping back to pause and reflect, requiring a strength of will and confidence in a scholarly self, which may not be the case for others in the early stages of their academic life. For me, this limitation was further mitigated by my scholarly practice of openly blogging and sharing my thoughts throughout the doctoral program. This helped bridge the silent and gravid pauses in my research work. A similar practice, for novice researchers in a solo endeavour of scholarly inquiry, can attenuate the limitations of crystallization as a methodology, particularly if seeking feedback from scholarly networks is applied as a standard practice throughout the dissertation process. Using crystallization, with its inherently chaotic and complex methodological approach, can be forestalled by the practice of hupomnemata (Weisgerber & Butler, 2016) and supported by Mitchell & Clark (2021) four principles of writing as inquiry. Ellingson (2009) suggests that, rather than apologizing for the crystallization approach being partial and challenging, “scholars using crystallization can celebrate multiple points of view with a phenomenon across the methodological continuum” (p. 22).
One challenge in the findings and discussion of this research is the conception of intentionality as it relates to the participants’ relationships with/through technology. P-IP research recognizes these intentionalities within the relationships that humans have with the technologies they use, as well as how these technologies shape the relationships humans have with each other (Ihde, 2015; Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015). One constraint in this research hinges on my inability to acquire explicit clarity or transparency in the intentionalities of the participants’ lived experiences within their human↔︎technology↔︎world relationships. Their stories stand proxy for the actions and events that make up the participants’ MDL in an OEPr. Additionally, intentionality and practices within human↔︎technology↔︎world relationships can be shadowed and opaque, often happening through black-boxed technologies (Kallinikos, 2002; Lloyd, 2019), within password protected spaces such as learning management systems, or behind paywalled secure sites where research publications are warehoused.
Limitations in data generation and analysis
I recognize the limitation of the data gathering methods. Using one interview and one artifact may not reveal the depth of the MDL that could be found in the OEPr of TEds, nor could it uncover the breadth of MDL that TEds may apply to their OEPr over time. While the data gathering occurs over time, one caution and potential limitation in the data gathering and analysis phases is to maintain a clear focus on the research questions. While the intended focus for this P-IP research is on the becoming (becoming media and digitally literate, becoming an open educational practitioner) this research may inadvertently lose focus and result in discovering what has been.Data analysis in P-IP research, particularly when applying a crystallization methodology, is shaped by the research’s positionality, perspectives, and biases. The data analysis and findings from this research is to be considered partial and selective. These processes occur through the lens of the researcher and framed by the crystallizations created. While my data analysis and findings focus on elements from within the stories and meaningful events, and practices as shared through the participants’ lived experiences, these should be considered as fragmented and timebound. It is possible that “those with different viewpoints or more significant research experience may interpret the data differently” (Paskevicius, 2017, pg. 171) and crystallize findings that are unlike those shared here. While my crystallizations may resonate with some elements of truth, I invite others to focus on other facets to reveal new and different interpretations from these findings (Paskevicius, 2017).