Exploring Perezhivanie: A New Tool for Teacher Development in the Digital Transformation in Education

This book uses the notion of perezhivanie, a psychological response to an issue that an individual cannot solve using their habitual actions, to describe why and how teachers make decisions and act the way they do, and develop professionally in the push to digital transformation, which is shaping teaching and learning. Unlike earlier work in teacher development, where cognition predominantly served the thinking and decision making processes, here the focus is on the emotion, cognition, and context, united in the notion of perezhivanie. To demonstrate the work of perezhivanie as a unit, the author applies a conceptual framework to the data from qualitative interviews with ten university language teachers about their experience of using technology in their teaching. While teachers responded to issues of technology integration in various ways, a broad pattern emerged, when teachers could not do what they had planned for the lesson due to struggles with technology. Additionally, since perezhivanie exists in several forms, here the author defi nes them as perezhivanie-experiencing, perezhivanie apprehension, and perezhivanie-reflection. The author exemplifies how these forms can provide a theoretically powerful frame for understanding and researching teacher development and, more broadly, human consciousness.