Browsing by Author "Mikkola, Meri"

This study aimed at finding out what kinds of views and experiences Finnish comprehensive and upper secondary school language teachers have on hybrid teaching and what kinds of challenges and benefits teachers have identified related to hybrid teaching. The target group of the study included foreign language teachers who taught in comprehensive school or in upper secondary school in Finland. The method of this study was survey, and an online questionnaire that was written in Finnish was used to collect data. The online questionnaire included three parts: background of teachers, 26 Likert-scale statements on hybrid teaching, and a voluntary questions section that focused on training and other aspects of hybrid teaching. In total, 56 respondents took part in the study. The collection of data took place during February 2022. Data was collected in Facebook groups for language teachers as well as via emails to language teachers. Content analysis was used to analyze and categorize open-ended question data. The findings show that language teachers found the implementation of hybrid teaching to be challenging in comprehensive and upper secondary schools. Especially, lack of training, lack of proper instructions for both teachers and pupils, increase in workload and time used to plan teaching, technical difficulties during the lessons and lack of proper devices in schools, as well as acknowledging both remote and on-site learners simultaneously caused issues. Teachers saw hybrid teaching as beneficial from the viewpoint of remote learners. Through hybrid teaching, remote learners could participate in the lesson, and this then allowed them to stay on track with schoolwork as well as stay in contact with the school. Teachers were of the opinion that hybrid teaching was not suitable for learners in comprehensive school, but that it could be used with older learners. Organizing training, having proper instructions for implementing teaching, having two teachers in the classroom, and having proper devices that function were mentioned as aspects that could make hybrid teaching easier. Further research could focus on university and adult education language teachers’ experiences, in order to compare whether the findings correlate with those of this study.