A phenomenological study of first-grade teachers’ lived experiences of major challenges facing online education

Recruiting a qualitative phenomenological approach, the present study aimed to reflect on the first-grade teachers’ lived experiences of the major challenges facing online education in Iran’s primary schools in the academic year 2020-21. The total number of participants was 10 first-grade teachers working in primary schools in the city of Yazd, Iran, selected using the purposive sampling method. The data collection tool was also a semi-structured interview, whose outcomes were analyzed via the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) developed by Smith et al. (1997). To determine the validity of the data obtained, the opinions of some qualitative researchers and participants, were exploited. Coding was further performed and then compared by the researcher and one other expert in qualitative research. Ultimately, the first-grade teachers’ lived experiences of online education were delineated and developed into 7 main themes and 30 sub-themes. Accordingly, the main themes of “evaluation”, “uncertainties and limitations”, “emerging issues”, and “interactions”, were established with reference to the first research question, focused on the online education challenges perceived by these teachers. Then, the main themes of “creative adaptability” and “production and exploitation” were created in response to the second research question about teachers’ strategies adopted to cope with online education challenges. The main theme of “experience formation grounds”, comprised of the sub-themes of “specific grounds” and “general grounds”, was further achieved concerning the third research question, namely, the grounds of teachers’ experience formation.