An Ethnographic Perspective on Teachers-as-Designers in Video Conference Pedagogy: A Matter of Craft, Ethics and Identity

This paper adopts an ethnographic perspective to explore teachers-as-designers in the use of Video Conferencing technology for the teaching of English as an additional (foreign) language. The research explores the practices of teachers based in England synchronously teaching learners in South America. These colleagues are ‘remote teachers’ working in England but teaching alongside teachers and pupils in Brazil and Uruguay. The research contributes to debates in the field by framing teachers ‘as designers’ as issues of identity and ethics as much as issues of the pragmatics of planning and the philosophy of pedagogy. With fieldwork lasting for a six-month period, the mixed-methods ethnography collated data from classroom observation, semi-structured interviews and focus groups. The position taken is that ‘designing’ technology-enhanced pedagogy is best understood as enacted and embodied (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) within broader teacher practice as a whole. The significance of this is that in exploring the design decisions of teachers this research creates an ethnographically driven space which addresses issues of ‘craft’, practice, ethics and identity as well as the professional development and support needed for new teachers-as-designers. In adopting a position of ‘teacher-as-designer’, in terms of the skilful and informed preparation of learning technology, this research re-frames ‘design’ as a matter of teachers as craft-practitioners. In this reframing, the research adopts the conceptual lens of Sennett (2008) and explores the notion of the pleasure and ethics inherent in craft/design practice. Through this lens, design work is both craft-work and identity-work. This positions teachers-as-designers as agents of global educational change – offering through their ‘craft’ practices a potential solution to problems of global teacher shortage.