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• 1 2022-06-04T15:43:12+00:00 Glossary 19 alphabetic listing of glossary items with links to notes that describe each item plain 2023-06-28T15:29:30+00:00 Here is an alphabetic listing of the glossary items included in this dissertation document. Each item is linked to a note where the item is defined, described, and/or examples provided. These glossary items are also embedded throughout the document as notes within pages, where they provide 'just in time' clarification for you, the reader.
  • Actor Network Theory
  • Affinity Spaces
  • Alternative Dissertation
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Black Box technology
  • Block Chain
  • ChatGPT
  • Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS)
  • Creative Commons
  • Cynefin framework
  • Data Gathering
  • Digital Rights Management (DRM)
  • Educommunication
  • Emirec
  • Episteme / Phronesis
  • Faculty of Education (FoE)
  • #FemEdTech
  • Free and Open Software (FOSS)
  • Homo Faber
  • Hupomnemata
  • Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)
  • Learning Management Systems (LMS)
  • Makerspace
  • Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Media and Information Literacy (MIL)
  • Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
  • Open Educational Practices (OEPr)
  • Paywall
  • Platforms
  • PDF
  • Portable Graphics Network (PNG)
  • Post-Intentional Phenomenology (P-IP)
  • Practice - both noun and verb
  • Research Ethics Board (REB)
  • Safety, Security, Privacy, Permission (SSPP)
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada (SSHRC)
  • Teacher Candidates (TCs)
  • Teacher Educators (TEds)
  • Teacher Educator Technology Competencies (TETCs)
  • TPACK
  • Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans
  • UNESCO
  • Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
  • Universal Serial Bus (USB)
  • Visitors / Residents
  
   
• 1 2023-04-24T16:40:00+00:00 Dimension Four 12 discussion of dimension 4: criticality plain 316 2023-10-28T16:36:28+00:00

  Criticality

  “Critical thinking requires us to use our imagination, seeing things from perspectives other than our own and envisioning the likely consequences of our position.” bell hooks (1994)

  Drawing on the dimension of social justice from the previous section, the critical dimension of MDL is illuminated through this quote by bell hooks. I notice that MDL takes an intentional shift in critical and imaginary thinking to teach with an infusion of MDL within an OEPr for the TEds’ in this research. Criticality not only problematizes their use of technologies when applying MDL into teaching and learning, but is also foundational when problem-solving as new technologies are integrated into educational contexts within teacher education. This is suggested by Martinez-Bravo et al., (2022) when emphasizing criticality in digital literacy, since it “constitutes a great commitment to the construction of significant ecosystems and the development of an awareness and values connected with social and civic responsibility in a globalized world” (p. 11). The findings in this research support this conception of a social and civic responsibility exhibited by the participants, particularly when MDL is applied within their OEPr. This occurs through a critical examination of identity, emirec – the reception and emitting of media and digital productions – and, the participants’ decision-making about the circulation of learning artifacts. In this research criticality is evident as both cognitive and social dimensions of MDL and is defined as the practice of critique through close and careful examination and questioning of objects, actions, or ideas of decisive importance (OED online, 2022).

  From the frameworks

  Criticality is embedded in each the frameworks I explore for this discussion (see Table 4).
  • Hoechsmann and Poyntz (2012) mention criticality in media literacy as being essential for “critical engagement with mediated cultures … to engage with the technologies, literacies, and everyday cultural practices that can foster economic participation and social inclusion” (pg. 201).
  • MediaSmarts Canada uses the terms finding and verifying in a process of evaluation, authentication, and critiquing sources of information garnered from the internet (McAleese & Brisson-Boivin, 2022).
  • UNESCO (2013) includes the element of criticality within the definition of MIL whereby citizens “access, retrieve, understand, evaluate and use … media content in all formats, using various tools, in a critical, ethical, and effective way…” (p 29).
  • Belshaw (2011) identifies critical as one of the eight digital literacies, tying it closely to civic literacy, and examines semiotic domains for evidence of inclusion or exclusion, underlying power structures, and assumptions embedded in literacy practices.
  • In their examination of international digital literacy frameworks, Martinez-Bravo et al., (2022) identify criticality as a prominent dimension with implications “when faced with diverse situations, cultivating social and civic responsibility, as well as developing the judgment to assess and make effective decisions in the face of risks, and to develop attitudes of self-control, autonomy, and flexibility” (p. 5).
  • DigCompEDU (2017) places the focus of criticality on fostering learners’ digital problem solving, reflecting on teaching strategies that foster learners’ competencies with technology, and the critical evaluation of credible and reliable sources of information (Redecker, 2017).
  • The DQ global standards places critical thinking as one of twelve future-readiness skills connected to cyber security, digital empathy, digital footprint management, MIL, and privacy management.
  Criticality focuses on the participants’ careful, collaborative, and informed critique of technologies, structures, and participation. For the participants in this research criticality explicitly includes examinations of their own practice, and that of organizational decision-makers. From their lived experiences I notice when participants mention intentional actions to counter techno-deterministic educational technology sector narratives, particularly the notion of knowledge scarcity (Stewart, 2015a) and how they resist attentional economies with its focus on clicks and time on task. Participants shared their intentional decisions to oppose the academic surveillance of students (Kuhn & Raffaghelli, 2022) and how they combat the market logics of referencing students as consumers (Mirra et al., 2018). Dimensions that emerge from the findings and discussed here include criticality in the selection of tools, technologies, spaces, and places for MDL within an OEPr, critical examinations of boundaries relating to identity and power structures (Koseoglu, 2017; Stewart et al., 2021), criticality in data literacies and algorithmic bias (Nichols et al., 2021; Raffeghelli & Stewart, 2020), and a critical focus on intentionality applied to human↔︎technology↔︎world relationships (Ihde, 2015; Kallinikos, 2002).
  
   
• 1 2022-10-26T20:10:15+00:00 Facet 3.3: Criticality 5 generated theme of criticality - includes emirec, identity, and circulation plain 2023-06-18T15:20:35+00:00 In the process of examining and creating multimodal productions there is a process of deconstruction when “constructing meaning from graphic artifacts – there is a process of noticing” (research journal entry). This process involves criticality in media and digital production, as AT suggests, “media literacy is more of critiquing things. I mean, it is supposed to be productive. But I don't think it's been all that productive. The digital allows you to take it into that productive space with a critical perspective.” For ER, this is an active process “in my foundations course, we talk a lot about tackling utopianism, technical determinism, techno-progressivism, you know, thinking about the different ways that we can think about technology, but again, always having a deep base of media literacy.” From NK’s experiences criticality is an essential and core tenet to their MDL “because any instance in which we see technology as neutral as not having been socially constructed and not constructing us, I believe to be problematic”. PL ponders “I guess where the critical part comes, is partly about the tool, but really more about the content, right? And the kinds of ideas that are in there.” For participants, this criticality stems from both receiving and emitting, or producing and consuming, digital materials and artifacts. Criticality is applied to digital identity work, for themselves and their students. Participants shared their intentional and informed decisions about where to circulate and distribute media and digital productions.
   
  Emirec: Emitter and Receptor
  In reflecting on this facet, a bit of background from MDL research was necessary. The notion of individuals being consumers and producers of media, or a prosumer as Toffler suggested involves a fluid application of communicative roles from economic and capitalistic perspectives (Aparici & Garcia-Martin, 2018). This is also represented by the term emirec whereby individuals become both emitter and receptor of media and communication productions (Aparici & Garcia-Marin, 2018; Hoechsmann, 2019). For participants in this research, this meant making explicit, informed decisions within their knowledge networks and open educational spaces about where, when, how and with whom they wished to create and share.
            When considering MDL in an OEPr experience, there is intentional decision-making by participants relate to open publication of scholarly works and interactions with students. These decisions include limiting submissions or providing reviewer support to open access journals (BC, SH) to share on specific social media platforms (AT, FJ), to engage with students in open discourse spaces e.g. Discord or Twitter rather than within a closed learning management system (ER, LV, RB), or strategically using a course hashtag to send out notices and communications (CS, LV, RB). In PL’s digital artifact there is an explicit mention of the critical role of media literacy -  “proficient users can become more critical and can become media makers. I think media literacies has to include action beyond consumption/viewing”, which highlights shifting roles from consumer to producer of digital productions. For AT, there is awareness of “the skills, dispositions and practices, which enable you to critically read AND create multimodal digital texts. ER emphasises that MDL includes

  a huge interim information literacy fake news piece here because we have to decipher media, we have to make meaning from, you know, the media that we consume, but at the same time, we're not just consumers. We have to be able to critically consume and critically create new media.

  Identity
  Digital identity is one of the elements of MDL that was mentioned by many of the participants. Their lived experiences include not only developing their own identities as teacher educators in open, web-based spaces, but the development of their students’ digital identities as new teaching professionals. This involves experiences making proactive, explicit and intentional decisions about linguistic identity (NK), sedimented identities (AT) and scholarly identity (BC, SH, FJ). SH is explicit when sharing identity in their media productions, specifically their curriculum vitae: “I actually have the little open access symbol on my CV, and I put it beside every single publication on my CV; any of them that are open access, I ensure that that symbol is there.”
  
            Identity work also means finding your place within the faculty in which you work. For SH, this means “trying to offer something new, trying to kind of leverage my experiences in my networks to kind of build capacity”. For others, their lived experiences involve facing fears and accepting the risks of openly sharing professional identities, as exemplified in RB’s comment: “it's not just about I'm scared to share. It's I'm scared to share because of professional repercussions, which is very different.” This resonates in the experiences of participants with bilingual practices, and those working within Indigenous and international contexts. For RB, this includes a process of reflective practice, looking back at iterations and variations in identity work, stating “it took me this whole reflective activity to remember where this all started, and how my identity formed, it was like I'd forgotten it, but it was there all along”.
  
            Participants shared MDL related experiences with identity work when teaching their teacher candidates to share their professional identities in open web-based spaces. Consideration for “this practice of helping teachers to sort of grow into their digital public persona through, you know, open writing” was mentioned by ER, LV, OW, RB, SH, and UF. An understanding that digital identity is fluid and iterative is mentioned by AT: “they're like Cummins’ identity texts, except it is their digital identity texts - this is who I am, this is what I care about … but you can shift that, of course, into whatever space you want” (Cummins & Early, 2010). Identity work also involves conversations and negotiations with teacher candidates, as exemplified in RB’s comment “many of my students are international, and they're really frightened of their identities and what they could say online. So like, they share that back with me and we negotiate what things will look like”.
  
            MDL within identity work with students involves explicit instruction, as indicated by UF:

  I often do the visitors versus residents grid with my students, just so that they can acknowledge where all of their identities are making footprints and who owns that as a way of talking about the challenges of technology, which I think like that's this big elephant in the room that we don't often get to really talk about.

  These tensions and challenges were echoed in other participants’ experiences when working to develop teacher candidates’ digital identities as exemplified by SH’s comment:

  there's a lot of emergence happening … with young adults growing into their professional identities. But there are, I think, really profound intersections that I think we've got a lot more to learn there, you know. We're asking for openness, but I think we also recognize that openness for this generation of young professionals comes with some baggage.

  For the participants in this study, digital identity is one of the critical components of MDL in their OEPr, as they circulate and distribute media and messages within their open, web-based communication ecosystems.
   
  Circulation
  When circulating and distributing openly shared materials, participants critically consider both visibility and sustainability. This is applied to their own materials and identities, but also the circulation of student work-product from course content and assignments. Circulating materials that are identifiable and attached to professional identity involves risk and vulnerability, as well as benefits. For NK, the risks are evident in this lived experience: “I've never been too nervous to share a polished piece. But our teaching resources in real time are not always that polished. And so, it was grappling with, you know, as I say, how to do so openly”.
  Sustainability is a concern from OW’s lived experiences with an ongoing media and digital project: “I'm hopeful that the project will live beyond me, and that maybe that's part of the open practices thing is ushering others into practices so that they can be sustainable and enduring, too”. Sustainability issues emerged from SH’s experiences, but this led to a rethink and recalibration of digital networks and collaborations since it is:

  really sort of in those conversations grounded, situated, you know, like bricolage if you will, that we start to kind of uncover the nuances of the questions that come up in our practice, and then when we're with others, we can get through. So, I continue to believe in that model. … I started to develop networks with people who are working in digital literacies across Canada, finding different solutions.

  For circulation of student coursework, AT identifies one challenge since “a lot of my students are very hesitant to share openly, even within our, the classroom space, their assignments, their productions. It makes them feel vulnerable”. BC’s experiences, as echoed in those of LL, OW, and RB, mentions encouraging students to publicly sharing their work:

  either through mechanisms I provide in the course, or mechanisms I teach students about and encourage them to use. You know, so for example, if we're playing around with Scratch, and you know, the purpose is to give student teachers firsthand experiences with programming that they can then take into their practice. I encourage them to grab examples of existing code, published their codes, compare codes, share codes, you know, share their work at different kinds of events.

  AT asks students to “critically review global education programs and share their reviews online as digital flyers, for an audience of educators … Students share with classmates and are also encouraged to share on social media”. When circulating student work to wider audiences, one challenge is the sustainability of this practice, as AT indicates:

  I would say that most of their things could be found, but they're not in public spaces. But it is something to think about, I think whether they should be more visible. It's always hard to organize those things, you know, to think about what is the best way, and where to put it? Where should it live?

  ER provides one suggestion for involving students in making critical decisions about circulating their media productions online:

  I just share examples of what's happened to me, what’s happened to others. And you know, the reality of sharing online and some of the repercussions that can occur. And then from that point, they have informed enough consent, I think, to take this on, or not take it on, and most still do. But I think because they're already doing this elsewhere, as well. They like to hear the cautions, but at the same time, they're going to continue doing what they're doing.

  
            In summary, the generated themes from the focus on facets of MDL in the lived experiences of the participants results in a closer reflection on communication, creativity, and criticality. Communication includes an exploration of audience, ethical practice, and data management with a focus on safety, security, privacy and permissions. Creativity is evident in experiences with multimodal media productions and performances as a teacher educator. Criticality is a factor in the emirec nature of media engagements, in identity work for themselves and their students, and in nuanced decisions when circulating media productions.