Kalan and Troberg

Abstract:

This article reports aspects of a practitioner action research project conducted by the teachers of a large online English grammar course. The project was mobilized to create possibilities for developing online critical pedagogy. The online educators involved in this inquiry took measures to modify the syllabus they were working with in response to moments of dissonance while they were trying to comprehend students’ online identities as valuable resources to enrich the process of teaching and learning. The preliminary outcomes of the project, which is still in progress, suggest that critical pedagogy would be more accurately conceptualized by complexifying the traditional notions of (a) literacy as a sociocultural and political phenomenon, (b) power relations, (c) student identity, and (d) transformation. Imagining how digital technology can multiply instances of the above notions through online posting, reposting, linking, sharing, networking, collaging and multimodality will clear the way for the emergence of different forms of online critical pedagogy.

Keywords: action research, online critical pedagogy, online identity, online education