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• 1 2022-06-08T18:22:01+00:00 Background 36 describing confluence of fields of study and influences of the lived experiences of the research plain 2023-10-27T15:36:50+00:00 I design and teach about teaching and learning in a teacher education program in Canada. I am a life-long practitioner of the art and science of teaching and learning. It is through this research that I aim to understand the lived experiences of teacher educators as they apply media and digital literacies (MDL) within Canadian teacher education, as evidenced within their open educational practices. This is of interest because I am a Canadian teacher by profession and a teacher educator by choice.
  
            Critical literacies is an important research focus, as evident from the growing political and public demands for literacies in all areas of education (CMEC, 2020b; OECD, 2018; Zimmer, 2018). Calls for educational responses to ‘fake news’ (Gallagher & Rowsell, 2017) and the teaching of digital citizenship to combat cyberbullying (Choi et al., 2018; Jones & Mitchell, 2016) increasingly influence educational landscapes in Canada (DeWaard & Hoechsmann, 2021; Hoechsmann & DeWaard, 2015).
  
            Digital literacy and competency frameworks have been developed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), where the notion of education as a common good(s) is amplified, and shifts from previous notions of education as individualistic and economically entangled good(s). UNESCO promotes a focus on open educational practices and networks as mechanisms for change (Daviet, 2016; Law et al., 2018). Common good(s) and contributing to societal well-being are undergirded with a humanistic and holistic belief system (Daviet, 2016). This is echoed in the European Union (EU) documents where efforts enhance education for citizenship (Carretero Gomez et al., 2017; Law et al., 2018).
  
            Although research focuses on MDL in the K-12 education sector (Buss et al., 2018; Gallagher & Rowsell, 2017), on teachers in the classroom (Choi et al., 2018), teaching and learning in higher education contexts (Castañeda & Selwyn, 2018); and, teacher candidates being prepared for a career in teaching (Cam & Kiyici, 2017; Cantabrana et al., 2019; Cervetti et al., 2006; Gretter & Yadav, 2018), there is little research studying the media and digital literacies or the open educational practices of teacher educators (Foulger et al., 2017; Knezek et al., 2019; Krumsvik, 2014; Petrarca & Kitchen, 2017). From this preliminary review of the literature, I generated a direction for my research study.
  
            The Canadian Council of Ministers of Education (CMEC) and the National Council of Teachers of English emphasizes the need for enhanced literacy development in conjunction with technology competencies in education for all provincial education jurisdictions (Gallagher & Rowsell, 2017). The Canadians for 21st Century Learning & Innovation document Shifting minds: A 21st century vision of public education in Canada (C21, 2012), identified key skills and competencies learners should possess, which suggests that teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher educators should also possess these skills and competencies. In the United States, the development of a set of technology competencies for teacher educators (Foulger et al., 2017) indicated the need for a reconceptualization of current faculty of education (FoE) structures and teacher educators’ practices.
  
            Since a “teacher’s knowledge is an essential component in improving educational practice” (Connelly et al., 1997, p. 674), this research explored the lived experiences of teacher educators who openly share experiences and applications with a consideration toward MDL as part of their teaching practice. Sharing openness in educational practices “does not require overcoming huge technical obstacles, but rather, requires a change in mindset and a differing view of practice, and of how learning can be achieved” (Couros, 2006, p. 188). A better understanding of the contexts of MDL within FoE can emerge when teacher educators’ voices and stories are represented. A better understanding of the contexts of MDL within FoE can emerge when teacher educators’ voices and stories are represented. This investigation adds to the limited research addressing the needs of teacher educators or how teacher educators infuse MDL into their teaching practice (Lohnes Watulak, 2016; Phuong et al., 2018; Seward & Nguyen, 2019; Stokes-Beverley & Simoy, 2016).
  
            Because I espouse to be an open educational practitioner, promoting open educational practices in the courses I design and teach, I aim to further understand the role of OEPr within teacher education in general, and within the lived experiences of others who work openly as teacher educators. Through this research I aim to explore, revise, and add to current definitions of OEPr (Couros, 2006; Cronin & MacLaren, 2018; Nascimbeni & Burgos, 2016; Paskevicius, 2017; Tur et al., 2020). In this research, I aim to uncover connections between current conceptualizations of OEPr with understandings of MDL (Buckingham, 2020; Gee, 2015; Hoechsmann, 2019; Stordy, 2015) and living literacies. (Pahl et al., 2020).
  
            This research responds to a call from Zawacki-Richter et al., (2020) to “re-explore the benefits of openness in education to respond to emerging needs, advance the field, and envision a better world” (p. 329). Cronin (2017) reveals connections between OEPr and digital literacies which I believe to be essential to the work of open educators. Through this research I endeavour to find connections between MDL and OEPr within the lived experiences of teacher educators (TEds) as they navigate and negotiate their teaching practice into the open.
  
            This research not only adds to rapidly evolving discussions about OEPr but also contributes a focus on teacher educators (Zawacki-Richter et al., 2020). I believe that teacher educators bring experience in educational teaching practice to the nexus between OEPr, teaching, and MDL. Teacher educators from diverse Canadian FoE sites were invited to participate in interviews to “story” (Clandinin, 2015) their OEPr, and reflect on their MDL negotiations. The ubiquity of electronic technologies in the functional milieu of today’s educational environments, particularly in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic, suggested that digital tools are both field and method for research studies (Burrell, 2009; Markham, 2016).
  
   
• 1 2022-06-04T15:52:21+00:00 Alternative Dissertation Design 24 defending an alt-diss format for the dissertation production plain 2023-10-02T11:40:06+00:00

  What is the reading of a text, in fact, except the recording of certain thematic recurrences, certain inconsistencies of forms and meanings? (Calvino, 1979)

  To honour the topic of media and digital literacies, and to authentically share and reveal the MDL under investigation, the results of my research is presented in an openly accessible, alternatively created, digitally enabled format. This document is presented as an interactive text to explore thematic recurrences and inconsistent forms or meanings, as suggested by Calvino (1979). Although I use and apply a variety of media and digital strategies and techniques, this “open-ended, problematic, critical, polyphonic” text (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p. 1124) is my attempt to bend and circumvent the boundaries imposed by traditional alpha/numeric dissertation representations. In this dissertation format I reflect and create a non-linear, hyper-textually linked, dialogic, conceptually and topically interconnected and networked rendering of my research, thus mirroring the nature of this qualitative research. By reading this text, as Calvino suggests in the quote above, you will undoubtedly become aware of and possibly record occasions of thematic recurrences, inconsistencies, and shifting meanings.
  
            Idhe and Malafouris (2019) referenced the notion of homo faber, which connected to the writing by Thomas and Seely Brown (2009) who positioned humans as maker and emphasized our ability to create. This is grounded in the words of Arendt (1998/ 1958) who suggested that the "implements and tools of homo faber, from which the most fundamental experience of instrumentality arises, determine all work and fabrication" (p. 153). This suggests that humanity is evolutionarily constituted and shaped by the technologies we use. New materialities and digital ecospheres encompass all aspects of living and learning (Pahl et al., 2020; Sameshima et al., 2019). We are thus constructed by the tools that we've constructed and by which we engage in relationships and construct our learning (Ihde & Malafouris, 2019). I am constructed as an academic and researcher in this PhD process while creating the dissertation as product. This dissertation echoes McLuhan's position that the medium is the message (McLuhan, 1964).
  
            My dissertation process and product look beyond what may be obvious and common, seeking the hidden “changes or effects that are enabled, enhanced, accelerated or extended by the new thing” (Federman, 2004). This alternative dissertation will ”suit the style as much as possible to the matter” (McLuhan & McLuhan, 1992, p. xi). In this way, my research and this resulting dissertation can be seen to critically analyze the privilege of representation, voice, and academy.
  
            Deciding to shift my research process and product into a fully interactive and digital environment fits with the ontological and epistemological frameworks within which I study. Pockley, the creator of the first electronic dissertation in 1995, described texts as “mutable streams of thought, open to annotation, revision, re-presentation and part of the very fabric of their community of interest” (Jacobs, 2008, p. 245). By preparing and presenting my research and dissertation in an alternative dissertation (ALT-DISS) format, I contribute to the breaking open of “calcified conventions” sustaining the linear privilege of print text (Covey, 2013) as traditionally found in electronic dissertation and theses formats relying on static portable document format (PDF) manuscripts. With my experiences in producing and sharing media texts, I recognize the “cultural agoraphobia, the cognitive bias that leads us to underestimate the potential of openness” (Covey, 2013, p. 550) and will push open the structure, media, notions of authorship, and methods of assessment in the process and products in research and dissertations.
  
            As evidenced in this dissertation, I have designed paths through the research information, but it is YOU, the reader of this interactive web created document, who will control the serendipitous navigation through the content. YOU control the reading experience. YOU determine the strategic use of hyperlinks, embedded media, graphic organizers, taxonomic features, and visualization options and affordances in the Scalar software. These elements reflect a media filled, rich, thick description, and exemplifies the open nature of this dissertation. 
  
            Scalar software was strategically and intentionally selected to present the research results within a fluid, editable, elastic format that is “open to annotation and responsive to change” (Jacobs, 2008, p. 237). Previously published Scalar dissertations model the use of this digital tool and Dixon (2014) provide the opportunity to explore, experience and understand the digital mechanisms available in this form of digital publication (Dixon, 2014).
  
            Since my research and dissertation are not without political considerations, and to meet institutional requirements for a ‘frozen in time’ document as a representation of my research capabilities (Barrett, 2014; Jacobs, 2008), a secondary linear PDF version was also be produced. Dissemination of research results will be pursued through traditional, peer reviewed Canadian and international journals, conference presentations, and through open social media and web publications.
  
            In rendering this dissertation differently, I heed Denzin's (2017) call to "unsettle traditional concepts of what counts as research, as evidence, as legitimate inquiry" (p. 8). There may be elements here that reflect postmodernist compositions, such as those found within Italo Calvino's novel If on a Winter's Night A Traveler (Calvino, 1979) and Luigi Serafini's (1981) Codex Seraphinianus which is described as an illustrated encyclopedia of an imaginary world using an imaginary language and code. This dissertation is alternatively both creator and created. It is both dispositio, described as a remix or mashup, a composition and arrangement of an academic argument, and inventio, described as being traditional, original, and sole authorship production (Hoechsmann in Mackenzie et al., 2022).
   
• 1 2022-06-08T18:24:54+00:00 Rationale 18 key elements that led me to this research plain 2023-10-30T14:38:54+00:00 Educational issues resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic heightened awareness of the need for literate and digitally proficient individuals within every facet of the education sector. In my role as a learning designer and teacher educator in Canadian faculties of education (FoE), my lived experience is immersed into my work designing logistical and navigational elements for teaching within digitally enabled learning environments. Rapid emergency online instruction (Hodges et al., 2020), around the clock media consumption focusing on educational deficit narratives, and ongoing changes in digital technologies and expectation are shaping the push for the development of global competencies (CMEC, 2020). 
  
            Prior to, and emerging from the global pandemic, the need for an informed and technologically prepared teaching workforce is identified in policy and position papers nationally and globally:
  • the United Nations Leading Sustainable Development Goals - Education 2030 (United Nations, 2015) report establishes teacher education as one of the priorities in the achievement of sustainable development goals;
  • the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) continues to examine policies and practices for media and information literacies (Singh et al., 2016), digital citizenship (Law et al., 2018), and open educational resources (Sobe, 2022; UNESCO, 2019), and information and communication technology competencies in teacher development (UNESCO, 2022, 2023);
  • the push for open educational resources (UNESCO, 2019) and open access extends through the open consultation process by an international commission from UNESCO on the Futures of Education which highlights the need to "mobilize the many rich ways of being and knowing in order to leverage humanity’s collective intelligence" (UNESCO, 2019, paragraph "The aim ...");
  • the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) researches and documents the need for teachers to be “high-level knowledge workers who constantly advance their own professional knowledge as well as that of their profession” (Schleicher, 2012, p. 108) noting that the demands on teachers are continuing to increase (Schleicher, 2018); 
  • a position paper from the European Literacy Policy Network indicates that teachers may “lack competence, confidence and knowledge of effective strategies to harness the potential of diverse technologies to enhance digital literacy teaching and learning” (Lemos & Nascimbeni, 2016, p. 3); 
  • the U.S. Department of Educational Technology released the document Advancing Educational Technology in Teacher Preparation: Policy Brief (Stokes-Beverley & Simoy, 2016); and,
  • in Canada, the Canadian government report Democracy Under Threat (Zimmer, 2018) outlines the need to address education of digital literacies. The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (2020) provides a systems-level framework for global competencies which further drives the transformation of the educational agenda in Canada (CMEC, 2020a). The Digital Learning in Canada in 2022 report identifies digital literacies as a pressing issue (Irhouma & Johnson, 2022).
  These identified needs from global and national levels are ever more pressing during current priorities for online and remote educational instruction. I suggest that pressures resulting from the pandemic will continue to push the field of teacher education and the application of media and digital literacies (MDL ) within FoE into the forefront. Yet the field of teacher education, and more specifically the MDL of those who teach in FoE from an open educational stance, remains a misunderstood and ignored field of endeavour. This research will add insights into the impact of these influences and pressures on teaching and learning within teacher education programs since these are rarely researched.
  
            These are not new issues, despite the many changes that occurred in the light of the response of educational systems, particularly in FoE, to the global health crises precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, these are not new issues. Along with a public outcry for media literacies in the face of fake news (Singh et al., 2016) and increasing demands for technologically and digitally literate populations, there is a push to change teacher education generally and the teaching practices of those who teach in teacher educator programs more specifically (Beck, 2016; Ellis & McNicholl, 2015; Foulger et al., 2017; Stillman et al., 2019). Connected to this issue is the revitalization of teacher education programs in order to “prepare teachers who will teach in transformative ways and leverage technology as a problem-solving tool” (Schmidt-Crawford et al., 2018, p. 132). The paucity of research relating to the MDL work of teacher educators practicing in open educational spaces is a disadvantage when evidence for the effectiveness of educational practices is increasingly demanded (Beck, 2016). 
  
            It is in this context, from my lived experiences as a teacher educator and learning designer in Canadian faculties of education that my investigations were shaped. My purpose for this research was to add to the corpus of research focusing on teacher educators and aims to expand understanding of open educational practices (OEPr) from teacher educator's contexts by examining the lived experiences of teacher educators who reveal their teaching practices openly, with a specific focus on their understanding and practice of media and digital literacies. I intentionally selected Canadian FoE since this was contextually familiar and where I engaged and share materials openly within my professional learning networks. I initially considered conducting the research to only include Ontario FoE but realized I may not find enough participants that fit the established criteria within that limited context. Limiting the participant pool would also exclude some of the voices in Canadian open educational contexts that I hoped to include in the research. Although I understood that each FoE in Canada is unique, it was this dissimilarity that I hoped would add nuance and richness to the lived experiences of the participants. I also considered global FoE contexts but determined that this wider scope would hinder the research; the extent of the dissimilarities would interfere with finding commonalities in the stories of lived experiences within MDL in the OEPr of TEds in FoE. These delimiting factors helped me frame the research questions.
• 1 2022-06-08T19:57:48+00:00 Phenomenology 15 defines and describes the literature for the conceptual framework of phenomenology plain 2023-10-02T17:36:25+00:00 ​​​​​Phenomenology was both philosophy and methodology for this research (Creely et al., 2020). As the primary locus and topic of this study, phenomenological research aimed to reveal and describe lived experiences in order to gain understanding of the meaning of phenomena (Cilesiz, 2011). Thus my research focused on “richly describing the experiential essence of human experiences” (Tracy, 2020, p. 65) as this related to MDL and OEPr in teacher education. 
  
            I created a remixed graphic rendering of the conceptual framework of phenomenology in order to gain understanding (see Figure 1 below).
  
            Two central concepts in phenomenology were the notions of lifeworlds and intentionality. Lifeworlds are described as the immediate experiences of what already exists, emerging from the world in its natural and emerging state (Tracy, 2020). The lifeworld is where the phenomena were experienced and lived (Vagle, 2018). In this research, this lifeworld included both the physical world of the participants' geographic localized ecologies but also their digital and electronic spaces described through I-Technology-World relationships (Idhe, 1990; Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015). Intentionality was described as the meaning and “connections that emerge in relations, contexts, and across time” (Valentine et al., 2018, p. 463). This use of the word intentionality was not to be confused with the intent, purpose, aim, or plan to do something. For phenomenologists, intentionality described “the way humans are connected meaningfully with the world” (Vagle, 2018, p. 126). Phenomenological researchers were aware of how “words, language, concepts, and theories distort, mediate, and shape raw experience” (Tracy, 2020, p. 65). Criticality and self-reflection were imperative considerations in phenomenological research (Tracy, 2020).
  
            In order to fully understand the post-intentional phenomenological (P-IP) paradigm (Clifden & Vagle, 2020; Vagle & Hofsess, 2016) within which this research was framed, I first explored the differences between the transcendental phenomenology and the hermeneutic, existential phenomenological research paradigms, since these two paradigms were more often applied to phenomenological research. I then uncovered the third phenomenological paradigm and explained why post-intentional phenomenology (Vagle, 2018; Valentine et al., 2018) provided the best fit for this research.

  Transcendental Phenomenology

  Transcendental, or descriptive phenomenology, was inspired by Husserl’s philosophy of consciousness (Tracy, 2020; Valentine, 2018). How the research participant knows, or is consciously aware of some object, real or imagined, thus holding a ‘consciousness of something’, was foundational when describing the “essence of a phenomenon or experience” (Valentine et al., 2018, p. 464). The researcher must set aside their biases or habits of seeing while conducting the research and data analysis. This was done through a process of bracketing or transcending previously conceived theory, experiences, and understandings. This removed the researcher’s influence from the interpretation of the phenomenon (Valentine et al., 2018; Tracy, 2020). Since meaning was derived from the “intentional relation between subject and object” the research studied the “of-ness” of the phenomenon (Vagle, 2018, p. 39). The focus was on accurate and rich descriptions of the phenomenon as it was understood or known by the research participants.
  
            For this research, the phenomenon under scrutiny was the MDL within OEPr. This research shifted away from transcendental phenomenology since I did not ‘bracket’ or suspend my “habits of seeing” (Tracy, 2020, p. 65). It was not just the knowing or understanding of the phenomenon of MDL within an OEPr, as seen through a teacher educator’s experiences that interested me. It was the phenomenon of how participants' MDL shaped micro-practices in becoming open educational practitioners that is the aim of this research.
  
  Interpretive Phenomenology
  
  Interpretive or hermeneutic phenomenology focused on embodiment and being in the lifeworlds and intentions relating to a phenomenon and was grounded in the philosophies of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Gadamer (Valentine et al., 2018). This shift in phenomenology from knowing to being resulted from Heidegger’s ontological interest in how people gave subjective meaning to phenomena. Interpretive phenomenology was not just concerned with consciousness, but in how lifeworlds constituted intelligible structures (Vagle, 2018) and how these meanings were revealed through language and discourse, thus emphasizing the intentionalities within people’s stories as a form of sense-making (Tracy, 2020). Vagle (2018) applied the preposition ‘in’ to describe the ‘in-ness’ of intentionality whereby the human subject is ‘in’ “intersubjective, contextual relationships” (p. 42). Bracketing was replaced by reflective and reflexive practices that ‘bridle’ or restrain the researcher’s positionality and perspectives on the phenomenon (Valentine et al., 2018). In this way, the researcher was not removed from the research, but openly acknowledged their assumptions and positionality while they shared their reflexive understandings of the phenomenon (Valentine et al., 2018).
  
            Although a fuller presentation of interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) as outlined by Smith (2004) was beyond the purposes of this  research, it was important to reveal three characteristic features of IPA – idiography, inductivity, and interrogation – that influence post-intentional phenomenological research. IPA followed an idiographic research sequence, meaning that the researcher collected one case or participant’s story at a time, bringing it to a degree of closure, before moving on to subsequent cases or conducting a cross-case analysis of themes for convergence or divergence (Smith, 2004). Since I conducted interviews and storying events simultaneously and interwoven in time and space, this excluded IPA as a research method.
  
            Researchers following an IPA strategy inductively analyzed data and are open to unanticipated and emergent themes or topics as well as continuing to interrogate extant literature (Smith, 2004). While these characteristics may be evident in the research, since my process included a fluidity to the coding and analysis that deductively generated themes and categories. I explored patterns within the whole-part-whole descriptions of the phenomena in conjunction with the interview process and the reading of literature.
  
            Although transcendental and interpretive forms of phenomenological theory were of interest, it was post-intentional phenomenology (P-IP) that provided the best fit for this research since I posit that the MDL of teacher educators fluent in OEPr will be gathered in a fluid, liminal, boundary crossing, and dynamic praxis that continually shifted toward an ideal of becoming open, becoming literate, and becoming teacher-educator. The next section explores P-IP as it related to this research.
   
• 1 2022-06-08T18:26:22+00:00 Research Questions 12 the questions that frame this research plain 2023-10-29T21:50:49+00:00 The primary question for this research is: “What lived experiences of media and digital literacies are evident in the open educational practices of teacher educators in Canadian faculties of education?
  
  These sub-questions help frame the research:
  • What are the lived experiences with media and digital literacies of teacher educators? What does it mean to be media literate and digitally literate as a teacher educator?
  • How do media and digital literacies inform or shape practices of teacher educators immersed in OEPr? As a teacher educator, what is it like to be an open educator and how might media and digital literacies shape your practice?
  • What are the lived MDL experiences of teacher educators in Canada, as evidenced in the ethos and stories of their OEPr?
  Research defines OEPr as collaborative pedagogies utilizing digital technologies and authentic learning encounters for “interaction, peer-learning, knowledge creation, and empowerment of learners” (Cronin, 2017, p. 18). In other words, teacher educators will individually or collaboratively select OEPr to support their ways of knowing, designing, planning, and assessing teaching and learning events (Cronin, 2017; Nascimbeni, 2018; Paskevicius, 2018; Paskevicius & Irvine, 2019).
  
            Through this research I capture the teacher educators’ storied enactment of MDL within OEPr as shared through their experiences (what people feel); practices (what people do); things (the objects that are part of our lives); relationships (our intimate social environments); social worlds (the groups and wider social configurations through which people relate to each other); localities (the actual physically shared contexts that we inhabit); and events (the coming together of diverse things in public contexts) (Pink et al., 2015). When gathering these stories, I bring my own lived experiences with MDL in my OEPr as a teacher educator to provide both background and a catalyst through which these stories will reflect and refract.
  
            This post-intentional phenomenological (P-IP) research (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015; Tracy, 2020; Vagle, 2018; Valentine et al., 2018) is explained in the next sections of this dissertation where I bring critical subjectivity, collaborative action, a pragmatic reality, and an epistemology of experience (Guba & Lincoln, 2005). I apply a crystallizing methodology (Ellingson, 2009) to share my voice, reflexivity and media infused textual representations, described as traditional alpha-numeric texts incorporated within images and graphic designs. In this way, I will be interrogated as I locate my ‘self’ as researcher-participant, both within and outside the research field of study (Guba & Lincoln, 2005).
   
• 1 2022-06-08T18:53:33+00:00 Philosophy of Technology 10 plain 2023-10-28T13:53:05+00:00 This research was influenced by the philosophy of technology and material engagement theory (Ihde, 2011; Ihde & Malafouris, 2019) in an effort to better understand the human–technology relationship. Although the conception of open education does not absolutely require the use of technology, for this research and its focus on digital literacies, the integration of technology was an essential consideration. Ihde and Malafouris (2019) suggested that "the difference that makes the difference is the recursive effect that the things we make and our skills in making seem to have on human becoming" (p. 195). I recognized that the everyday use of technology in education does not take place in a vacuum nor embody a neutral stance (Van Den Eede et al., 2015). Mediations of reality, as experienced and practiced, are shaped by the tools we use since “artifacts are able to exert influence as material things, not only as signs or carriers of meaning” (Verbeek, 2011, p. 10).
  
            Although not foundational to this research, some understanding of actor network theory (ANT) was necessary (Blok et al., (2019) for this research since it offered some comparison to a philosophy of technology. Similarities included an inter-relational ontology, a material sensitivity, and a rejection of subject-object dichotomy (Ihde, 2015). Both were considerations for this research. However, it was the appeal of the philosophy of technology, which focused on the human action and perception as embodied with/through technology, rather than the linguistic-textual semiotics of engagement offered by ANT, upon which I based this research (Ihde, 2015). My interest focused on understanding how technological mediations and artifacts influenced MDL considerations, and how the individual and socially negotiated actions lead to a teacher educator’s enacted OEPr.
   
• 1 2022-06-08T18:52:41+00:00 Connectivism 8 brief description and influence of this theory on the research plain 2023-06-24T14:43:23+00:00 Since my field of study is cognition and learning, the theory of connectivism (Siemens, 2018) was foundational to this research. Connectivism related to the role of cognition in generating connections and networks, both internally and externally to the human brain. Siemens (2012) described the principles of connectivism as a “response to a perceived increasing need to derive and express meaning, and gain and share knowledge. This is pro­moted through externalization and the recognition and interpretation of patterns are shaped by complex networks” (Tschofen & Mackness, 2012, p. 125).
  
            The four key principles of connectivism – autonomy, connectedness, diversity, and openness – (Siemens, 2012; Tschofen & Mackness, 2012) are supported by emerging technologies that are shaping human cognition in the way we “create, store, and distribute knowledge” (Couros, 2010, p. 114). For this research, the cognitive and metacognitive processes, the thinking about thinking with technology, and the thinking with others within connectivist structures enabled by technology as an expression of the lived experiences of teacher educators, were explored in the stories of the teacher educators' teaching and scholarship as they navigated and made sense of complex MDL and OEPr amalgamations.
   
• 1 2022-06-08T18:32:47+00:00 Constructivism 7 brief description of constructivism from a sociological position plain 2023-09-30T18:07:50+00:00 This research is grounded in the theoretical landscapes of constructivism outlined by John Dewey and Jean Piaget (DeVries, 2008) who suggested that teaching and learning should be an active, experiential process. Social-constructivism, as advocated by Lev Vygotzky (Burkitt, 2006) extended constructivist theory to include social and historical context into the learning equation. I believe that learning occurs through the active construction and engagement with others, through objects which can be manipulated in time and space (Papert & Harel, 1991). Dewey, Vygotzky and Papert are theorists who ground this research since I believe that MDL and OEPr occur within active, experiential, engaging, constructions, not bound by time or space, while interacting with others.
  
            Further to this, situated cognition theory, that builds on Vygotzky’s work (Burkitt, 2006), proposed that learning is constructed through interactions within social settings, engaging with semiotics, and interacting with material artifacts (Seely Brown et al., 1989). Situated cognition theory adds to this research since the practice of teaching and learning simultaneously occurs in mind, body, and activity, as well as through relationships, bounded in communities of practice. Paying attention to the cultural, situational, and logistical signs and signifiers will impacted my understanding of the phenomena being researched and how teacher educators navigated into MDL infused and digital enabled OEPr spaces.