Media and digital literacies in Canadian teacher educators’ open educational practices: A post-intentional phenomenology

Discussion

In this chapter I review the findings to explore the complexities of MDL within OEPr reflected in the participants’ lived experiences as TEds. I make sense of these lived experiences within the broader field of media and digital literacy, and teacher education. This section of the dissertation is a liminal space, sifting through what is known and unknown, becoming as it is written. In this way, I generate “knowledge that is partial and prismatic. Knowledge that admits its failures and opens up new ways of thinking” (Cannon, 2018, p. 572).

          In order to stay true to the P-IP approach and the crystallization methodologies that are foundational to this research, this discussion section is offered as a kaleidoscope of ideas – both noesis (mode of experiencing) and noema (what is experienced) (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015). For this discussion, I remix from MDL frameworks that include the individual cognitive components — what participants know and think — and their actions within social contexts — what they say and do (Gee, 2015) within their OEPr. I explore where data gatherings from the lived experiences, interviews, observations, and media productions stand proxy for the MDL within the participants’ offerings (Rocha, 2015). Through these crystallizing moments, I reflexively open myself to possibilities as I turn to wonder (Rocha, 2015; Vagle, 2018).

          I appreciate that the intertwined concepts of media literacy and digital literacy are recognized in literature as complex concepts (Martinez-Bravo et al., 2022; Nichols & Stornaiuolo, 2019; Stordy, 2015). The extent to which global efforts attempt to bring media literacy and digital literacy into focus is evident in documents such as the Common Framework for Digital Literacy, Skills and Readiness (DQ Institute, n.d.) and the Media and information literacy Country analysis (UNESCO, 2013). While media literacy and digital literacy are more frequently seen as separate and distinct concepts, it is through a process of combination that I bring some clarity (see Figure 8) to my thinking. While I am not minimizing the complexity of teaching and learning with MDL within an OEPr as a TEd, which may be as challenging and complex to understand as the inner workings and systems of practice responsible for sending the Hubble telescope into space, I endeavour to focus on individual facets of MDL and OEPr as generated by the participants and identified in the findings.

          For this discussion, I revisit the research question and sub-questions in order to frame the findings: What lived experiences of media and digital literacies are evident in the open educational practices of teacher educators in Canadian faculties of education?
These sub-questions will help reframe the findings for this discussion:I re-examine the concept map created from the findings, seeking to consolidate my understanding (see Figure 18). I analyze the navigational gyroscope graphic created from the findings (see Figure 19) and closely examine the layers and facets of the participants’ nuanced and complex lived experiences with MDL within an OEPr as TEds in Canadian FoE. I attempt to break out of the siloed thinking that exists in the fields of teacher education, media studies, digital literacies, communication and information literacies, and critical literacies (Leaning, 2019) to allow synergies to emerge. I create and revise a table where I compare and contrast assemblages of MDL frameworks (see Table 4). The map, the graphic and the table are analytic forms of ‘dispositio’, arrangements resulting from my “careful consideration of how component pieces should come together in a composition, both narratively and logically” (Hoechsmann, 2022, p. 295). These analytic arrangements are representative assemblages of the participants’ MDL in their OEPr.

          While I share these crystallizations of media constructions in order to make sense of the lived experiences of MDL in the OEPr of the TEds, my P-IP approach recognizes the impermanence and imperfection in these offerings. I acknowledge that this writing and the graphic renderings are dependent on language and that semiotics may shift meanings. The words I chose to use to represent the ‘thing’ called MDL in the participants’ OEPr may fail me. MDL and OEPr understandings depend on language where I as author, and you the reader, rely on code breaking and meaning-making to understand the nuanced and tacit scripts presented in these multimodal formats.

          From these diverse formats (Figure 18, Figure 19; Table 4) my focus turns toward identifying terms from within the findings that are more likely to be referenced within frameworks describing MDL. I intentionally and critically select both media and digital literacies frameworks that are representative of Canadian and global perspectives, providing a range of dimensions and factors relevant to this research. Two of the selected frameworks are compilations and distillations of numerous international frameworks (Martinez-Bravo, 2022; DQ website, n.d.) with the DQ framework identified as being comprehensive (Park et al., 2020). From a comparison of these frameworks, specific facets of MDL emerge as being more likely to be associated with teaching practices, particularly within an OEPr. While these are not the only possible terms to explore, the ones I have selected as the facets on which to focus this discussion include the terms communication, creativity, connection, and criticality. As I examine these elements in this discussion, I reconnect to the research literature and reflect on the participants’ lived experiences as enacted within the autonomous and ideological conceptions of literacies, acknowledging MDL as cognitive and socially-contextual practices (Stordy, 2015).

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