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

Figure 10: Spirals to Literacies

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Crystallizing Some Final Thoughts
"For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning" (T. S. Elliot, 1942,p. 24).
In this research, I focus on the lived experiences of teacher educators in Canadian faculties of education in an effort to clarify facets of their media and digital literacies that impact their open educational practices. As the T. S. Elliot quote reminds me, this ending is but the beginning, where the words and stories shared by the participants are becoming new stories. In unique ways the stories shared in this research are shaped by my focus on facets and dimensions found in the generated findings. In other ways, these stories share a moment out of time. New stories by the participants in this research are already being written.

In the literature review section I explore theoretical and conceptual foundations to teacher education, media and digital literacies, open educational practices and phenomenology. In the research design section I share the application of post-intentional phenomenology and crystallization methodology to my research. I reveal details of the methods including participant selection, timelines, interview procedures, and data gathering strategies. In the findings, I hold up facets of the stories shared by the participants and in the discussion section I re-examine the findings through selected lenses and dimensions of MDL frameworks. In this conclusion I draw upon the previous sections to present implications of this research, limitations to consider, and the potential for future research emerging from this work.

Lived experiences are storied and as stories do, they contain heroes and protagonists. These stories include sites of struggle, loss of innocence, a heroic quest, companions along the way, trials and tribulation, with insight and transformations along the routes taken toward resolution (Brown & Moffett, 1999). The lived experiences of the participants in this research are no less heroic for their efforts to bring media and digitally enabled educational practices into the open. It is through these efforts to communicate, connect, teach creatively, and enact criticality that MDL are becoming evident in the OEPr of TEds in Canadian FoE and beyond. The global push for OEPr and the importance of MDL are increasingly emphasized (UNESCO, 2018, 2019b, 2023). Within teacher education, as evident in the lived experiences of the participants, awareness of OEPr is key, re-visioning is essential, and re-imagining futures have yet to emerge.

Although some may advocate for separation of media from digital, I petition for a combinatorial view of MDL as a wholistic response to what is a complex and often chaotic concept. By sharing these lived experiences, as captured within the gyroscopic navigational imagine crafted from the findings (see Figure 22), the individual facets and dimensions come into focus, thus enhancing understanding that complexity surrounds each individual’s practice of teaching in the open. The participants’ lived experiences with MDL in their OEPr is shaped by a “base level of digital competence, defined as the confident, critical and responsible use of, and engagement with, digital technologies for learning, at work, and for participation in society” (Redecker, 2017, p. 107). What has become clearer through this research is the continuum(s) along which participants dial up or dial down their focus on specific facets of MDL as they design student learning and engage in scholarship as open educators (see Figure 8). The participants actively negotiate elements of knowledge production and dissemination, for themselves and their students, in order to “become consciously inclusive, socially and culturally diverse, interdisciplinary and inter-professional, and are able to foster communication, collaboration, ownership and mutual learning” (UNESCO, 2021, p. 127).

I suggest that although the findings and discussion do not reveal anything dramatically new in terms of media or digital literacies for teaching and learning in a faculty of education, this research presents an opportunity to refocus from the wide range of foundational frameworks for MDL that are globally available. It is also an opportunity to redefine literacies as this concept spirals from media and digital skills, fluencies and competencies (see Figure 10). What is revealed in this research is a broader understanding of the social and constructive nature of MDL and OEPr within FoE, when TEds practice from mindsets of media and digitally enable communications, connections, creativity and criticality. The transitory, destabilizing, and emergent nature of MDL within an OEPr, particularly as it responds to changes in the field of teacher education, can be chaotic and complex. Suggesting the use of a navigational device such as a gyroscope as a metaphor for lived experiences of MDL in OEPr can help TEds in FoE keep their eye on the horizon, maintain some balance in their practice, and manage the complexities of the work being done.

One solution to this complexity is the open sharing of collaborative approaches to teaching and learning. Since “openness has certainly made teaching and learning resources and practices more accessible and reusable, and those affordances have encouraged the sharing and reflection of practice among communities” (Paskevecius, 2018, p. 170) it is increasingly more important for TEds to share with/in cross-disciplinary fields in all higher education contexts around the world.

Media and digital literacies are an ideal, as I suggest in the Spirals to Literacies graphic (see Figure 10), as an unobtainable condition characterized by liminality, fluidity, partiality, and liveliness. Yet it is toward such an ideal we must all strive in today’s modern, technologically enabled world. It is through this quest for literacies, as we journey toward becoming literate in aspects of media and digital technologies, that we acquire skills, fluencies, and competencies that can be measured and achieved, thresholds over which we can cross to demonstrate proficiency. Although many frameworks suggest literacies are attainable, the acquisition of MDL is not a threshold event, it is determined by cognitive and contextual factors. This research reveals how MDL and OEPr are co-dependent and reciprocal in process, production, and presentations. As evidenced in this research, it is via the purpose and passion of the teacher educators working toward an ethos of openness in their educational practice (OEPr) through which the vision and acquisition of media and digital literacies can become world-making.
Literacies Literacy is a human process of making sense of our world, binding our understanding and relationships to each other and our contexts. Literacy is found in the “relationship between human practices and the production, distribution, exchange, refinement, negotiation and contestation of meaning” (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007, p. 2). Within this relationship building process there is a reciprocity between practice and meaning-making, between context and language, and between reading and writing (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007).

Stordy (2015) examined literacy/ literacies to create a taxonomy that encompassed a multitude of definitions and variations of relevant terms. This taxonomy included both an autonomous perspective outlining psychological cognitive definitions and an ideological perspective relating to socio-cultural approaches that define literacy/literacies. Stordy (2015) differentiated these into those literacies that integrated no-or-few digital technologies (conventional), those that incorporated new technical elements (peripheral), and those literacies that assimilated new technical stuff with new ‘ethos stuff’ (paradigm), as further described in the Taxonomy of Literacies (see Figure 9).

The taxonomy was grounded in literacy research and provided a working definition of literacies that “captures the complementary nature of literacy as a cognitive ability and a social practice” (Stordy, 2015, p. 472). Although Stordy (2015) acknowledged the challenges and limitations of this framework, and recognized that the borders between these concepts are fuzzy and permeable, this taxonomy supported the reframing of literacies in a way that clarified understanding necessary for this research. Missing in this definition of literacies is the entanglement of practices with cultural capital or cultural awareness. I recognize and acknowledge my intentional omission of conceptions of neutrality or power structures inherent within the social and political values often attached to literacy/literacies practices (Frau-Meigs, 2017) as these are beyond the scope of this research and would further complicate the intended focus on the lived experiences of teacher educators' media and digital literacies in their open educational practice.

Literacy terminology was frequently confused or conflated with notions of skills, fluency and competency. For this research, I regarded these as different conceptions (see Figure 10). Fluencies encompassed the ability to speak, read, and write in a given language quickly and easily. Competency was defined by having skills and abilities to do a job (“Competency,” OED Online; “Fluency,” OED Online). These definitions are not the same thing, but can be considered to be subsumed within the broader term of literacy. This clarification is made here since research applied these terms interchangeably. For this research there is a clear spiraling distinction between conceptions of skills, fluencies, competencies and literacies (see Figure 10 below).
Untangling Literacies Surrounding these definitions of media and digital literacies there exists a veritable Pandora’s box of literacy terminology (Belshaw, 2012). Although each of these terms has a focus and purpose that may be bounded by specific moments in time, by removing these terminologies from their discourse locations and specific contexts as I have done here, can add to or illuminate the confusion. Literacies are entangled within conceptions transliteracies (Sukovic, 2016); cosmopolitan literacy (Zaidi & Rowsell, 2017); cultural literacies (Halbert & Chigeza, 2015); place based literacies (Harwood & Collier, 2017; Mills & Comber, 2013); artefactual literacies (Pahl & Rowsell, 2011); information communication literacies (Forkosh-Baruch & Avidov-Ungar, 2019; Horton, 2008); internet or web literacies (Moz://a, n.d.); technological literacy; multiliteracies (The New London Group, 1996); multimodal; multicultural; visual literacy (Collier, 2018), transmedia literacies (Jenkins, 2010), re/mix literacies (Hoechsmann, 2019), and living literacies (Pahl et al., 2020). While this literature review does not specifically examine this tangle of terminologies, they are mentioned here to acknowledge the confusion and recognize potential misconceptions resulting from the conflation of terminology (Belshaw, 2012; Spante et al., 2018).

When untangling these conceptions of literacies, I was influenced by Allen Luke’s conception of critical literacies described as “historical works in progress" as a "process of naming and renaming the world, seeing its patterns, designs, and complexities, and developing the capacity to redesign and reshape it” (Luke, 2012, p. 9). This connected to Freire's (2018/1985) notion of reading the word and reading the world. This conception of critical literacy rang true for my research since I wondered how TEds used and applied their contingent attitudes and technologies since their MDL and OEPr “depends upon students’ and teachers’ everyday relations of power, their lived problems and struggles, and … on educators’ professional ingenuity in navigating the enabling and disenabling local contexts of policy” (Luke, 2012, p. 9).

As part of this untangling of concepts, I was further influenced by the conception of living literacies posited by Pahl et al. (2020) since “literacy flows through people’s rites and practices, and it’s dynamism and vitality rest firmly on thoughts, emotions, movements, materials, spaces and places” (p. 1). My work was influenced by Street’s notion of a “utopian conception of literacy as always to come” (as cited in Pahl et al., 2020, p. 164) and gained understanding that literacy practices are embodied, bounded within contexts, and ideological rather than solely autonomous. Literacy was conceived as both noun and verb, revealed through the TEds actions and endeavours of striving to find the ephemeral, half-glimpsed spaces of the ‘not-yet’ (Pahl et al., 2020). As reflective of a P-IP research design, it was this living literacy practice within the OEPr of TEds that I suspected would be revealed through their lived experiences and intentionalities with MDL. This will be further described in the research methodology section.

For this research, the primary conceptualization for literacy/literacies recognizes that literacies are both an internal, cognitive ability and a social practice, with each requiring action and reflection. Although Stordy’s (2015) taxonomies of literacies was particularly helpful as a starting point, there was potential for generating a combinatorial representation of an integrated conception of media AND digital literacies. Although such a framework may be forthcoming from this research, I admit to a state of ‘not-yetness’ and deferred this work to a later date. My future efforts may continue to make explicit links to established origin stories of literacy terminology or integrate definitional information about inherited characteristics of the range of research foci of literacies that are evident in the field of education.

I acknowledged efforts to bring together understandings of the separated concepts of media literacy and digital literacy, recognized 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 was 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 commonly seen as separate and distinct concepts, it is through a process of combination that perhaps clarity can be gained. Bringing transparency to the distinctions between skills, fluencies, competencies, and literacies as outlined in Spirals to Literacies graphic rendering (see Figure 10) may be a starting point. For this research, I remixed MDL frameworks that included the individual cognitive components (what participants know and think), to their actions within social contexts (what they say and do) (Gee, 2015). Although I am not minimizing the complexity of MDL as a concept, something that may be as challenging to understand as the inner workings of the Hubble telescope sent into space, I endeavour to clarify the facets of MDL and OEPr in this research.
Crystallizing the discussion Media and digital literacies reside in the intentionality between human and world, shifting how humans interact through technologies with/in the world, impacting how they read the word and read the world (Freire, 2018/1970). The presence or absence of skills, fluencies, competencies and literacies with media-based technologies and digital/electronic devices will impact communications, creativity, connections and criticality when building and maintaining relationships and intentions emerging from human↔︎technology↔︎world interactions (Ihde, 2015). In this discussion, the dimensions selected shine light on the participants' shared stories of struggles with knowing enough and finding time to learn more, about technology integrations that would benefit their MDL within their OEPr with/for their students in order to collaborate and co-construct learning. This struggle was particularly evident in Andromeda, Lyra, and Orion's interviews.

Through this discussion, I make sense of these lived experiences within the broader fields of media and digital literacy, open education, and teacher education. What emerges is a story of MDL relevant to communication, creativity, connecting, and criticality. Although I juxtapose and merge ideas to shape my understanding, I recognize that this discussion is a liminal space, shifting through and between what is known and unknown as evidenced in the findings, 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).

As I crystallize the findings of this research in this discussion, I focus through the dimensions evident within the participants’ ethos and stories. I revisit the entangled conceptions of MDL as remixed within this research. I expose the confusion emerging between the conceptions of media and digital skills, fluencies, competencies and literacies (see Figure 10) and examine understandings of what is encompassed in the notion of teaching practice (see Figure 3). As I crystallize conceptions, what becomes clear is the complex and sometimes chaotic nature of assemblages gathered from this exploration.
Contributions to MDL
Contributions to the study of media and digital literacies
This dissertation research makes an original contribution to knowledge in the field of media and digital literacies in distinctive ways. The conceptual analysis of media and digital skills, fluencies, competencies and literacies (see Literacies section; see Figure 9; see Figure 10) supports the shifting conceptions of what being literate means in current educational contexts and adds to conceptual clarity. The spirals toward literacy that I illuminate in this research may bring some bearing on the ongoing calls for literacies in multiple and varied fields of endeavour within education and beyond.

This research contributes to knowledge about media and digital literacy research by examining the lived experiences of how TEds infuse MDL into their teaching practice. Just as McLuhan’s tetrad proposes, and evidenced in the lived experiences of the participants in this research, with every medium and message for media production within their OEPr, there is not only enhancement and retrieval, there is also reversal and obsolescence (McLuhan & McLuhan, 1992). Knowing and recognizing where and how this tetradracic process occurs can add criticality to the endeavours TEds make when teaching with an MDL focus.

This research confirms what (Buckingham, 2020) suggests - that media in education is shaped by “purposeful, critical use … of communication” (p. 115). This is less about learning technical skills and fluencies, and more about deeper awareness of critical aspects of media – “media language, representation, production, and audience” (Buckingham, 2019, p. 58).