[Bibliography] Towards an Anti-Racist Pedagogy in Ed Tech
Welcome CSA 2015! Feel free to peruse the bibliography for Towards and Anti-Racist Pedagogy in Educational Technology.
Aslop, S. & Bencze, L. (2014). Activism! Toward a more radical science and technology education. In Bencze, L. and Alsop, S. (Eds.), Activist science and technology education (1-20). New York: Springer.
Bowen, G.M. (2014). Trajectories of socioscientific issues in new media: Looking into the future. In Bencze, L. and Alsop, S. (Eds.), Activist science and technology education (269-306). New York: Springer.
Dinerstein, J. (2006). Technology and its discontents: On the verge of the posthuman. American Quarterly, 58(3), 569-595.
Dewey, J. (1964a). Ethical principles underlying education. In Archambault, R.D. (Ed.), John Dewey on education (108-138). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Dewey, J. (1964b). My pedagogic creed. In Archambault, R.D. (Ed.), John Dewey on Education (427-439). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Fouche, R. (2012). From black inventors to one laptop per child: Exploring a racial politics of technology. In Nakamura, L. and Chow-White P.A. (Eds.), Race after the internet (61-83). New York: Routledge.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Fuhrman, S. (2015). Big data in education. Education Update.
Hedberg, J.G. (2011). Towards a disruptive pedagogy: changing classroom practice with technologies and digital content. Educational MEdia International, 48(1), 1-16.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.
Hui Kyong Chun, W. (2012). Race and/as technology or how to do thing to race. In Nakamura, L. and Chow-White P.A. (Eds.), Race after the internet (38-60). New York: Routledge.
Marri, Anand R. (2007). Working with blinders on: A critical race theory content analysis of research on technology and social studies education. Multicultural Education & Technology Journal, 1(3), 144-161.
Milberry, K. (2014). #OccupyTech. In Bencze, L. and Alsop, S. (Eds.), Activist science and technology education (255-268). New York: Springer.
Patton, D.U., Eschmann, R.D., Butler, D.A. (2013). Internet banging: New trends in social media, gang violence, masculinity and hip hop. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(5), 54-59.
Rodriguez, A. (2014). A critical pedagogy for STEM education. In Bencze, L. and Alsop, S. (Eds.), Activist science and technology education (55-66). New York: Springer.
Roth, W.M. (2014). From-within-the-event: A post-constructivist perspective on activism, ethics, and science education. In Bencze, L. and Alsop, S. (Eds.), Activist science and technology education (237-254). New York: Springer.
Sanchez-Casal, S. and Macdonald, A. A. (2002). Feminist reflections on the pedagogical relevance of identity. In Sanchez-Casal, S. and Macdonald, A. A. (Eds.), Twenty-first-century feminist classrooms: Pedagogies of identity and difference (1-28). New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Notes on J. Lave and Situated Learning Communities
Situated Learning Perspective, Ecological Theory for Learning, Networks, & Situating Learning Communities of Practice – (Barab, Lave) Barab, S. and M.W. Roth. (2006). “Curriculum-Based Ecosystems: Supporting Knowing from an Ecological Perspective” Educational Researcher, Vo. 35, No. 5, pp.3-13. June/July.
Lave, J. (1991). Situating learning in communities of practice. In L. Resnick & S. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 63-82). Washington, DC: APA.
Summary of Situated Learning Perspective, Ecology Theory for Learning, Networks, and Communities of Practice:
Barab and Roth’s analysis of networks situates the environment at the center of learning. The authors demonstrate “the role of the environment in distributing cognition” (pg. 6). They breakdown the simplistic idea of applied knowledge by deconstructing networks with discussions about the ways in which agents (or learners) engage and participate within the environment; the tools they use, how resourceful they are with the tools, the ways in which agents “wax and wane” (pg. 5) within a particular network depending upon targeted goals and understanding. The network, the authors argue, “is bounded by its function” (pg. 6). That is, how agents participate and contribute to the network itself determines its overall function. The authors believe in participation over acquisition. They state, “[i]ntegrating this theoretical conviction into our argument suggests that knowledge acquisition may be overrated and that a more important role of education is to stimulate meaningful participation” (pg. 6).
Jean Lave, a social anthropologist, puts a social (and to some extent, a human) face on cognitive science. Her article on situated learning asks us to rethink the idea of learning as a “emerging property of whole persons’ legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice.” She asks the question “why is learning problematic in the modern world?” and briefly outlines a historical perspective of Marxist social theory to explain 1) alienated conditions of contemporary life, and 2) how commoditize labor diminishes possibilities for “sustained development of identities and mastery” (pg. 65). From the onset, we understand Lave takes a social and cultural approach to cognitive science. As such, she critiques two genres of situated activity theory by introducing the theory of situative learning. The first, Cognition Plus View (CPV) locates situatedness in the individual, internal business of cognitive processing, representations, memory and problem solving, and cognitive theory. (This view has a fixed Cartesian view of the world). The second, Interpretive View (IV) locates situatedness in the use of language and/or social interaction. Meaning is negotiated [and] the use of language is a social activity rather than a matter of individual transmission of information, and situated cognition is always interest-relative. Unlike CPV and IV above, situated learning, according to Lave, “claims that learning, thinking, and knowing are relations among people engaged in activity in, with, and arising from the socially and culturally structured world” (pg. 67).
Lave discusses Jordan's 1989 ethnographic research on apprenticeship in the Yucatec Mayan Midwifery community (pg. 68). The apprentices in this community are peripheral participants, legitimate participants, and legitimately peripheral to the practice of midwifery. Community members of Yucatec Mayan Midwifery have access to broad knowledgeability of the practice of midwifery and to increasing participation in that practice (pg. 70). With this example, Lave argues against prior notions that teaching resources (in the Western sense) are necessary in order for effective apprenticeship. Though this community is impoverished, and despite a lack of identifiable teaching resources, Jordan’s ethnography shows that “learning activity is improvised” (pg. 7) and knowledgeability and an ongoing transfer of newcomers to oldtimes are established in this particular community. Lave’s discussion of Alcoholics Anonymous is also an example of a community of practice where newcomers gradually develop identities as nondrinking alcoholics—i.e. learning as legitimate peripheral participation (pg. 71). Both examples Lave mentions resonates with Jenkins' (2006) notion of affinity spaces (pg. 9) in a participatory culture, that is, spaces where informal learning communities acquire skills and knowledge through apprenticeship. These spaces, according to Jenkins, are powerful sites of generative learning where “aesthetic experiments and innovations emerge” (pg. 9).
Though Lave initially presents a “seamless whole” (pg. 74) of communities of practice, she also acknowledges that continuity and displacement (of oldtimers) are necessary for someone to become a full practitioner in a community of practice—a complex and muddy reality.
The crux of Lave’s article comes toward the end with further analysis on what Henning (2004) discusses of Lave as the commoditization of knowledge. That is, the commoditization of knowledge and learning results in the anthropomorphizing and objectification of people (Lave, 1991). People become products within an exchange system of learning (pg. 75). As a result, the learner, or agent “has little possibility of fashioning an identity that implies mastery [since] commodification of labor implies the detachment of the value of labor from the person” (pg. 76). In other words, personal identity, a significant factor in knowledgeability according to Lave “devolves elsewhere” or is lost.
Lave’s 1991 article as well as her work mentioned in Henning’s 2004 article, "Everyday Cognition and Situated Learning", establishes nicely the ways in which Lave puts a human face on cognitive science.
My NCA Statement on Feminism and Communications
Due to lack of travel funds I am unable to attend NCA (National Communication Association) Conference 2012 this year. Below is my official statement that will be presented on my behalf during Saturday morning’s roundtable session entitled “Critical Perspectives on Feminism and Activism in the Third Wave”. I’ve spent the last few years grappling with feminist identity. Despite over the years having performed so-called “feminist duties” as an academic and as a political activist, (i.e. earning a MA in Women’s Studies, caucusing for Hillary Clinton in 2008, and volunteering as a hotline operator for a women’s shelter), I realize that my feminism has less to do with declaring a feminist identity and more to do with how my feminism emerges through work and scholarship, both of which almost always reflect a feminist ethic grounded in an inquiry stance. That is, I’m always questioning my-self in relation to Other; always replaying Trinh T. Minh-ha’s mystifying question in my head, “If you can’t locate the other, how are you to locate your-self?”
I worry, however, that feminism as a discipline, as a politic, as a form of activism, and as an idea(l) has become institutionalized within a western moral, ethic, and capitalistic framework that looks more and more like hierarchy, chronology, and characterized by waves (eg. generations). I also wonder about feminism as a capital enterprise. The notion of “professional feminism” troubles me. I realize folks have to make a living off of their work, but the label “professional feminist” conjures up awkward emotions. And no, I’m not referring to the welcomed contradictions of personhood that Gloria Anzaldúa brilliantly theorizes in Borderlands La Frontera, but rather I’m talking about the idea of professional feminism that exist in conflict with how I understand feminist consciousness; that is, something as sacred. Something that cannot be bought or sold. Untouched.
That said, however, I’m happy to see and feel feminist ideas spread throughout our home lives, our governments, our schools, and disseminated by way communication technologies.
To see feminist activism travel throughout time and space has been incredible to witness. With technology we are able recognize the multivalent nature of our potential of doing feminism, and by extension being feminist. Feminists have been able to spread our advocacy projects across time and space, and organize our bodies to protests in cities and neighborhoods across the globe. We have brought together domestic and international partners as we strive for justice and relief. We have called out others and at times we have had to confront ourselves. We have moved our advocacy beyond stationary online and offline spaces.
As we move throughout these spaces and places, I hope we can approach third space consciousness where we fight as much for the preservation of our selves as we fight for the preservation of others. This movement toward consciousness—born of techno advocacy practices that span across computer mediated and non-computer mediated contexts, is a threshold space of place where we can (I hope!) see ourselves through the eyes of others and by way of panoramic views.
This kind of feminism spreads like sun rays and warms me up everytime I think about it.
Feminist theory and ethnography is peppered throughout the discipline of communications. I know of researchers at my institution who look towards feminist theory and ethnography to inform their work in communications and education, and of course, I have peers who see no use for feminist theory and ethnography. In fact, they may have never heard of feminist theory and feminist ethnography throughout their academic careers. The beauty of academia and research is that we can take multiple approaches to understanding the worlds around us. As a researcher and scholar of both education and communications, I carry with me an understanding of feminist theories and methodologies that I apply to my research on media, Internet/web 2.0, and youth culture. Feminist theory and ethnography are just a few of my lenses, and I don’t expect anyone else to wear them as I do when approaching research. I do, however, expect that the discipline of communications will continue to embrace interdisciplinary approaches. I expect communication scholars to acknowledge and embrace transdisciplinary analyses informed by theoretical approaches that take into account experiences and storytelling at the intersection of gender, class, sex, sexuality, ‘race’, dis/ability, religion, tribe, and ecology.
The Syllabus of My Dream Course
This week for class I was required to complete a syllabus for a course I would like to teach someday. My dream course, entitled "Exploring Perspectives of the Online-Offline Continuum" is a graduate level course that engages philosophical, methodological, and pedagogical perspectives to address meaning and function of the ONL-OFL Continuum. I suspect that the course will evolve as my understanding of the ONL-OFL Continuum evolves. Nonetheless, I thought I'd post the syllabus here for the world to see and critique. Exploring Perspectives of the ONL-OFL Continuum Syllabus [.pdf]
Included in the syllabus are a range of perspectives from some of the following writers, scholars, and educators I follow on Twitter.
I welcome your thoughts and comments.
Sandoval, Anzaldua, and DuBois: Recommended Works for My Columbia U. Kinfolk
Ever feel like screaming out book recommendations in the middle of class while your classmates one-up each other in the midst of talking about a seminal theory from an equally seminal theorist? And by seminal, I do mean "Western". That totally was my experience tonight as I sat muted during a discussion about Frederic Jameson and postmodernism in my "Readings in Communications Theory and Social Thought" class.
That said, however, I'm grateful to be a apart of an academic environment that encourages its grad students to take ownership of their education by co-creating the syllabus, thereby co-creating classroom culture. My classmates and I have been granted the task of suggesting readings and movies to be included during the second half of the semester.
I proposed the following readings for the second half of the semester to my Columbia University kinfolk tonight. Here's hoping they agree to at least one of these fine texts. Let me know what you think.
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Tara L. Conley proposes:
Hey all. I'd like to purpose that more critical perspectives from folk of color to be included in the mix, along with some oppositional/differential consciousness readings from women writers. I propose the following works, particularly as they relate to our discussions on Jameson and postmodernism, citizen-subjects, affective realties, and the rhetoric of progress:
- Methodology of the Oppressed by Chela Sandoval. I propose reading and examining Parts I-III (pg. 14-78). From the introduction, Sandoval writes, "Part I engages in a close textual analysis of Frederic Jameson's investigations of capitalist, socialist, repressive, and emancipatory developments as they occur within the transnational order known as postmodernism. The central problem encountered in Part I is Jameson's assertion that forms of resistance, oppositional consciousness, and social movement are no longer effective under the imperatives of the neo-colonizing mode of globalization he calls postmodernism. Part II . . . counters Jameson's assertion by tracking the U.S. women's social movement from 1968-1988, and identifying the oppositional practices adapted and utilized by U.S. feminists of color, who advanced one of the first essentially 'postmodern' resistance movements of the twentieth century, U.S. third world feminism" (pg. 1-2). The first portion of Part III, Sandoval writes, "lays out the primary inner and outer technologies that construct and enable the differential mode of social movement and consciousness" (pg. 2). Sandoval presents a critical perspective that I assume will spark a lively discussion about the relationship between resistance movements and postmodernism.
- Borderlands La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua. Considered one of the 100 best books of the twentieth century, Borderlands essentially illustrates through narrative what Sandoval argues through 'high' theory. Published in 1987, Borderands is Anzaldua's single-authored seminal text (her other text, This Bridge We Call Home, co-edited in 1981, is as prolific). She had since expanded on her theories of consciousness up until her untimely death in 2004 (see Interviews/Entrevistas, Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras, and This Bridge We Call Home). Be forewarned, some might find Borderlands difficult to navigate in terms of language-switching and in terms of content. It's a raw text that forces readers to embark on a different kind of theoretical journey.
- I propose reading and examining the following selected chapters:
- Chapter 3, "Entering into the Serpent" (pgs. 47-61)
- Chapter 4,, "La herencia de Coatlicue: The Coatlicue State" (pgs. 63-73)
- Chapter 6 "Tlilli Tlapalli: The Path of the Red and Black Ink" (pgs. 87-97)
- Chapter 7, "La conociencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness" (pg. 99-113).
- I propose reading and examining the following selected chapters:
- The Souls of Black Folks by WEB DuBois. If you haven't already read this book, (or perhaps you have but it's been a long time since you revisited the book), then I propose reading and examining the following chapters, particularly as they relate to differential (or double) consciousness and the rhetoric of progress:
- Chapter 1, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" (pg. 7-15)
- Chapter 4, "Of the Meaning of Progress" (pg. 49-58)