Background: Flexible learning in digital environments, as one of the manifestations of transformation in contemporary education, enables shifts in the time, place, path, and pace of learning and emphasizes learners’ agency, active participation, and self-regulation. However, previous studies have mainly examined this phenomenon at the level of implementation mechanisms and have paid less attention to students’ inner experiences and meaning-making processes. Therefore, exploring students’ lived experiences of flexibility in their everyday academic lives is ضروری.



Objective: The present study aimed to investigate students’ lived experiences of flexible learning in digital environments.



Method: This study was conducted using a qualitative approach and interpretive phenomenological method during the 2025–2026 academic year. The participants were 12 lower secondary school students in Shiraz who were selected through criterion-based purposive sampling. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews and analyzed based on the model of Smith, Flowers, and Larkin (2009). To ensure the trustworthiness of the findings, the four criteria of Guba and Lincoln, including credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability, were applied.



Findings: Data analysis led to the extraction of four main themes and 12 subthemes. The main themes included experiencing limitation alongside flexibility, the formation of a sense of control and choice in learning, active agency and adaptation in the digital learning environment, and transformation in the meaning of learning and learner identity. The findings showed that flexible learning was a multidimensional and context-bound experience for students, in which unequal digital access, reduced human interaction, and cognitive pressure were perceived as limiting dimensions, while freedom in time and place of learning, control over learning pace, growth of self-regulation, use of diverse resources, and support from teachers and family were perceived as facilitating dimensions.Conclusion: Flexible learning in digital environments is not merely a technology-based instructional approach; rather, it is an educational-human experience shaped through the interaction of educational conditions, technological affordances, the teacher’s role, and students’ individual characteristics. Therefore, its effectiveness requires simultaneous attention to technical infrastructure, meaningful human interaction, continuous educational support, and the strengthening of self-regulation skills.