ABSTRACT
Understanding how learners’ individual differences (IDs) can facilitate or hinder learning is essential for creating optimal learning conditions and providing quality instruction. Learners’ IDs are greatly affected by stimuli coming from their micro- and macro-environment. Research has pointed out that learners’ IDs are constantly interacting with one another and the environment; therefore, they should not be examined in isolation but as a complex and dynamic system (CDS) that changes over time and in response to environmental stimuli. With the introduction of online education, learners’ learning environment drastically changed, triggering uncharted psychological responses in them.
This mixed methods study drawing on complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) examines the changes in 27 English teacher trainees’ motivation, anxiety, and willingness to communicate (WTC) in English in online education. First, the participants’ answers to a qualitative questionnaire were analyzed using content analysis to detect emerging themes and subtle details. Then, descriptive statistics was employed to compute frequencies characterizing behavioral patterns. Finally, qualitative data were used again to explain the numerical results.
The findings of the study point out unfavorable psychological states characterizing leaner behaviors in online education, the challenges of online learning, and a distinction between display and real communication and WTC. Furthermore, new types of anxiety that did not emerge in offline education were detected such as technology anxiety, camera and microphone anxiety, fatigue anxiety, personal interaction deprivation, invasion of privacy, lack of feedback from peers, and lack of communicative success.
