Conclusion
Toffler reminds me of the substantial impact of change in our current and modern times, particularly in the field of teacher education. If those who are teaching others to teach reading, writing, and a multitude of other skills, fluencies, competencies and literacies are not prepared to unlearn and relearn, we will fail future generations. It is through communicating, connecting, creating, and critically analyzing the process, products, and presentations of our teaching practices as teacher educators, and in striving to become media and digitally literate within open educational contexts, that the field of teacher education can honour our past while moving into the future.“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Alvin Toffler
At the end of this dissertation process and production, I reflect that I engage in the heteroglossia (diverse voices within creative constructions), polyphony (unison of multiple elements including media constructions), and dialogism (dialogue required for change to occur) (Hoechsmann, 2019) that are embedded within, and has shaped the construction of this research. The diverse voices and creative constructions, as artifacts of this research, are symbolic and evidential elements of MDL in the lived experiences of the participants, captured within and capturing a moment in time. It is through closer examination of the polyphony of elements of the media constructions – the interview recordings, transcripts, word cloud collection, media artifacts, and coding iterations - that a unifying harmony emerges. I consider this dissertation as an opportunity for ongoing and open disputatio and dialogism to occur (Hoechsmann in Mackenzie et al., 2023).
Bakhtin's (1981) notion of "unfinalisability" reminds me that the research results, as well as the lived experiences of the participants, are entities in transition, changed and changing through this process of writing, feedback, and active reflection. It is through communication, connection, creativity and criticality that this transitional and liminal work continues to evolve.
While the path is set for this concluding section of this dissertation, it is up to you, the reader, to determine your way through this chapter. In the next section I share summaries of the information that I have already shared, in an effort to refocus and crystallize this dissertation. I then share some contributions this dissertation makes to the fields of media and digital literacies, open educational practice, teacher education, and qualitative studies in education. This is followed by implications and limitations of this research, and concludes with some recommendations and final thoughts.