This is an interesting article:
Buhl-Wiggers, J., la Cour, L. & Kjærgaard, A.L. Insights from a randomized controlled trial of flipped classroom on academic achievement: the challenge of student resistance. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 20, 41 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-023-00413-6
What the authors found was that flipping the classroom did have a positive impact on student academic achievement but that the effect was insignificant until they controlled for student attendance. Those who attended class benefited from flipping the classroom relative to those students who attended a traditional lecture class.
The study tried to understand the impact on attendance and what they found in the qualitative portion of the study was that some students in the flipped classroom relative to the traditional class skipped class as a means of resisting the non-traditional approach to teaching and learning. Student interviews indicated that reasons for not attending the flipped class were because they were reticent to engage with peers that they did not know and resented the apparent decreased contact with their instructor. In a traditional class there is the apparent sense that the instructor is speaking to you even though they are really speaking to a mass and not you individually. I have read of this response to active learning before in the SoTL literature.
So, flipping the classroom does improve student academic achievement, but only if students attend class. This makes sense as the benefits of flipping the classroom can only be realized if students are in class. What is more interesting for me is the reasons for students not attending class. It seems to me that the primary reasons students give for resisting a flipped classroom approach are addressed by Team-Based Learning. The key is to have stable teams such that students develop a learning community in which they feel safe to risk learning. In addition, I think it is key that instructors well-explain the reasons for flipping the classroom and applying active learning in the classroom at the very start of the term and then reiterate those reasons throughout the term. It is critical that students understand our rationale for why we teach the way we teach so that they realize that we have their best interests at heart.
I know I sound like a broken record but many of the issues that instructors and students face with active learning strategies such as the flipped classroom, seem to me to be addressed by Team-Based Learning.
