Flipped Learning: Understanding the Flipped Classroom through the student experience

The overall purpose of this project is to build a better understanding for what Flipped Learning means and create an awareness for what it means in practice. Flipped Learning is a relatively new teaching style and learning model that is explained as, ‘events that have traditionally taken place inside the classroom now take place outside the classroom and vice versa’ (Lage, et al., 2000, p. 32). Flipped Learning entails using the affordances of digital technology to support teachers in creating virtual lessons. This is done in an effort to open up class time for interactive peer activities for the students to engage in while a teacher is present (FlippedLearningNetwork, 2014). To gain a better understanding for what Flipped Learning, often referred to as the Flipped Classroom, is in practice, I have conducted a qualitative phenomenological case study of a 10th grade Social Studies class. As research on Flipped Learning is minimal, the aim of this study is to contribute to the growing area of research and shed light on this phenomenon. In order to accomplish this, narratives of the students’ experiences were collected through semi-structured interviews. Secondary data was collected through in-class observations. This study takes a specific focus in understanding the students’ experiences by looking at how the students experience these swap of learning activities, happening in their different worlds, or environments. A sociocultural learning perspective has been used as a basis for this study. This has been used to understand the pedagogical framework supporting Flipped Learning. Related concepts within the sociocultural approach to learning have been used to understand the activity that occurs while the students are engaged in a classroom ‘flip’. A thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the interview data as a method for extracting themes from the students’ experiences. My core findings show that the students are able to make connections between their experience with Flipped Classroom at home and how that translates to their experiences in the classroom. What this study has seen is how the bridging of the of two social worlds, home and school, of the participating students has learning potential. Yet, the students experienced a disconnection when it came to connecting the videos and the in-class activities. Atlhough the students experience a connection between their home and school experience in a Flipped Classroom, conscious design of how to connect the video lectures and the in-class activities needs to be taken into consideration