A Disorienting Dilemma: Teaching and Learning in Technology Education During a Time of Crisis

Abstract The way individuals interpret and reinterpret their experience is central to meaning-making and, ultimately, to teaching learning. Grounded in Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory, this research explores whether pandemic-related emergency remote teaching manifested in a disorienting dilemma for technology educators. Educators negotiated curricular outcomes between physical aspects of making and doing and design and creative problem solving resulting in a pandemic transformed pedagogy. Thematic analysis revealed that making and doing was severely challenged due to decreased communication, student motivation and engagement. However, most concerning to educators was the heightened disparity in equity and access in their most vulnerable and at-risk students.