An exploration of educational technologists’ (EdTechs’) professional entanglement within the changing landscape of a higher educational organisation

Despite EdTechs’ evolving strategic importance as de-facto change agents in the design and operationalisation of educational provision, which has intensified since the pandemic, there is little research specifically focused on how and why EdTechs circumstantially intervene and enact change, and what the transformational consequences of that change might be. Moreover, empirical research has shown that EdTechs are increasingly repurposed, misrepresented, marginalised, unsupported, and excluded in Higher Education.

It is vital, therefore, to understand who EdTechs think they are, what they do and change, and what structural forces play a role in fashioning these perceptions and actions. This study uses Strong Structuration Theory (SST), with a combination of Bhaskarian Critical Realism (BCR), Social Identity Theory (SIT), and Self-Discrepancy Theory (SDT) to help theorise how participants consciously and unconsciously mediate their identities and practices through external structural influences.

These approaches also help theorise how choices were impacted by the circumstantial significance afforded to their social group status and self-standards discrepancies, along with their capacity and motivation to select between personally ideal and externally expected identity and practice during the implementation of a Learning Management System (LMS) in 2019, and the unfolding circumstances of the Covid-19 related pivot to online that followed.

Sixteen self-identified Educational Technologists were recruited, through purposeful email advertisements to take part in semi-structured interviews between April 2022 and August 2022.<br><i><br>This thesis is embargoed until 31st Dec 2026.</i>