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

Figure 8: OEPr Dial it Up

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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.
Contributions to OEPr
Contribution to the study of MDL in OEPr
This research adds to global conversations and the growing body of scholarship in the study of open educational practices (OEPr) by focusing on facets of understanding about MDL as revealed through the lived experiences of TEds (see Figure 22). This research contends that MDL within an OEPr is not contingent on the use or application of OER, as mentioned in research (Cronin, 2018; O’Neill, 2021; Paskevicius, 2018) but on mediations and negotiations within educative communication, creativity, connections, and criticality, as revealed in stories of the participating TEds’ teaching practices. From within these contested, situated, and contextual spaces, this dissertation research contributes to the growing awareness of how an open mindset in teacher education is not solely focused on overcoming ‘know-how’ in order to resolve technical obstacles, but in resolving to view teaching practices differently to support how learning can be achieved (Couros, 2006). The participants in this research continually negotiate and make critical decisions when dialing-it-up or dialing down (see Figure 8) their open educational practices, with awareness of media or digital engagements, as they design and work with students in their learning contexts. Similar to the findings of Paskevicius (2018), this research contributes insights into how the TEds who participated in this research infuse MDL into their OEPr; inviting learners to communicate, connect, create, and critically analyze process, products, and presentations within their learning practices. The participants come from diverse backgrounds in teaching and teacher education, with many holding years of experience as K-12 educators. These lived experiences with MDL are grounded in pedagogical and cognitive practices within the field of education in higher education contexts, but with deeply held connections to K-12 education. The collective expertise of the participants is not directly or explicitly tied to any field of study relating to media studies, media education, digital technologies, or open education.

The MDL within the participants’ OEPr support the findings of (Cronin, 2017), Paskevicius (2018), and Oddone (2019). Cronin (2017) identifies four elements of open educational practices including balancing privacy and openness, developing digital literacies, valuing social learning, and challenging traditional teaching roles and expectations. Paskevicius’ (2018) research identifies three categories of openness, which can be seen as sites where MDL contributes to OEPr, in explorations of open resources, engagements with open design tools and techniques, and open publications that engage in reflection, peer-review and contributions to knowledge building. Similar to Paskevicius’ findings, I see the lived experiences of the participants’ MDL in their OEPr as varied, responsive, complex, and not tied to the use of OER as primary teaching materials. The participants model a mindset and orientation toward radical flexibility and imaginative use of tools, teaching strategies, and technologies (Veletsianos & Houlden, 2020). Since “academics need to start from their teaching practices in order to find ways in which they can share and collaborate openly” (Inamorato dos Santos, 2019, p. 108) this shift in mindset contributes to clarifications necessary for understandings of the complexity of teaching in the open.

An additional contribution to the field of open education is the explicit distinction I make in the use of the abbreviation / acronym for OEPr. This provides a delineation between the current multiple meanings behind OEP – being applied to both open educational pedagogies and open educational practices. By creating the distinct abbreviation and applying the acronym OEPr to the concept of open educational practices, this contribution within the field highlights the distinctive difference between pedagogy and practice in the field of teaching, and contributes to a clarity to conceptualizations. Although pedagogy focuses on and relates to the act and actions of teaching and learning that usually occur in the classroom, I consider practices as a manifestation of everything educators are and do both in the classroom and beyond. Practices encompass and reflect the educators’ personality, persona, identity, and ethos in how they select, use, and integrate MDL into their OEPr. Educators reveal, both physically and virtually, their identity and selfhood in their pedagogies which are one component of the overall conception of a teaching practice. Thus, I define OEPr as the sum total of an educator’s internal ethos, acts of hospitality, and ways of being open, along with pedagogical decisions and shared scholarship.