Facing Radical Digitalization: Capturing Teachers’ Transition to Virtual Classrooms Through Ideal Type Experiences

Abstract

In 2020, a global pandemic changed the educational landscape overnight and caused an abrupt transition to virtual classrooms. This study aims to gain increased knowledge of teachers’ experiences of facing such radical digitalization through ideal types. The data include a teacher survey with 1109 respondents from 15 high schools in Sweden, containing both fixed and open-ended response types. Educational affordances and digital competence are used as analytical lenses. The results show distinct differences regarding teachers’ perception of how teaching in a virtual classroom has worked and whether they and their students have developed their digital competence during this period. We present four ideal types: a) the enthusiast, b) the skeptic, c) the pessimist, and d) the affirmative, which capture the essence of teachers’ multifaceted experiences, actions, and affordances perceived in the transition to virtual classrooms. Contributions include theorizing about teachers’ encounters with radical cases of digitalization.