Researcher Positionality
This research benefits from my years of experience teaching media and digital literacy courses in the FoE where I am both educator and student, as well as my extensive background as an elementary school educator. My engagement in global networks (Global OER Graduate Network (GO_GN); UNESCO Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW); Open/Education Technology, Society and Scholarship Association (OTESSA)), cross-border collaborations (Virtually Connecting; International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Inclusive Learning Network), and open educational spaces (Ontario Extend, Ontario Open Education Fellows, Creative Commons, Mozilla Open Leaders) will inform and shape this research. This research will provide direction to Canadian FoE to respond to the growing demand for digitally and media literate educators, and global calls for OEPr (Bates, 2019a; Montoya, 2018).
My position as researcher is supported by my academic persona as a scholarly writer and as a media-making educator. This supports my notion of becoming and being created through hupomnemata, as evidenced in this graphic Towards and Academic Self. When considering and coding the research data, my media making efforts will further crystallize the findings.