Review of reading materials and links to my personal learning journey

Please check this Prezi presentation of my self-reflection on my learning progress.

This Padlet contains my comments to various online forum postings of my colleagues at the IMAESC II516 course.

This section below presents my review of five selected articles (four academic, one blog post). These were recommended reading materials by Dr. Andreas Kollias, my professor for IMAESCII516: Teaching Adult Education Online, a course I took as part of my master’s program in adult education for social change.

Nelson, T.D. (2011). Ageism: The strange case of prejudice against the older you. In R.L. Wiener & S.L. Willborn (eds.), Disability and Aging Discrimination. (pp. 37–47). New York: Springer.

This paper conducted a literature review of the researches made about ageism. The author hoped that by highlighting the emerging themes on these studies, we have a clear basis on devising ways to improve attitude towards the elderly.

It was pointed out that ageism is a relatively new topic of research and that the conclusions made call attention to the multifaceted nature of this phenomenon. One this is for sure, however, that ageism is acknowledged as real, and that people have conflicting attitudes toward older individuals.

Historically speaking, older people are regarded as “sages” who possess power and respect in the community, by virtue of their knowledge and memory. However, the advent of printing took away that special status. Also, pop culture created cultural bias in favor of youth.

I agree with this paper that there is much we have yet to understand about our attitude towards old age. Nonetheless, we can start somewhere to better comprehend the sources of prejudice, such as the social-cognitive processes that support them. For instance, the “terror management theory” explains the psychological conflict resulting from the realization that one cannot escape death.

By understanding this source, we can better design educational programs that can impart to people that our own mortality should not be feared. Putting a halt to this mindset can also eliminate stereotypes about the elderly in the process.

Garrison, D.R. & J.B. Arbaugh (2007). “Researching the Community of Inquiry framework: Review, issues and future direction.” The Internet and Higher Education 10(3): 157–72.

This paper provides an overview of the Community of Inquiry (COI) framework by reviewing the researches examining social, cognitive, and teaching presence in online learning environments.

It concluded that much research focus was invested on one particular presence rather than on the nature of relationship between types of presence.

Cognitive presence, the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through reflection and discourse, is the most challenging to study in online courses guided by COI. It was also observed that most researches were interpretivist in nature, which attempted to understand interactions through text analysis.

A clearer expectation of the nature of critical discourse is one that is able to marry these considerable emphases on social presence with possible implication to the cognitive dimension of the learning experience. The findings may suggest some idea about how course content, structure, and educator leadership can have impact to how learners engage the learning process.

We cannot discount the social elements because these are critical to support a suitable academic environment for critical discourse, as envisioned by the proponents of COI. Nonetheless, I believe that these researches provide a groundwork for deeper quantitative analyses that intersect social and cognitive presence.

Phirangee, K. & A. Malec, Alesia (2017). “Othering in online learning: An examination of social presence, identity, and sense of community.” Distance Education 38(2): 160–72.

This is a qualitative study in which the authors explored how graduate students from different institutions experienced “othering”. It identified professional, academic, and ethnic categories that contributed to feelings of disconnection during online learning.

The literature review pointed out the high dropout rates in online learning where the instructors opted to focus on the “social nature of learning.” Students equate online courses with a lower quality of teaching, ineffective instructors, and poor instructional materials. It also explored the concept of otherness using the colonial lens, which explains that such othering occurs when those who differ from dominant ideas are devalued and set apart.

The three distinct categories of the other are as follows: (1) professional other is the difficulty in navigating relationship, (2) academic other is the feeling that approach and engagement differ with peers, (3) ethnic other is the hesitation in sharing personal experiences relating to ethnicity.

My comment is related to its ability of the study to produce generalizable findings, which has been acknowledged by the authors. Also, I am not sure if referencing postcolonialist scholars like Spivak and Saïd will in any way justify that the interviewees were overwhelmingly Canadian. It makes me curious if the same themes will emerge if one duplicates it in a different context, like a developing country. How the “ethnic other” is a distinct source of hesitation and struggle is not thoroughly established.

Zevallos, Z. (nd). What is otherness? [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://othersociologist.com/otherness-resources/.

This piece is neither a critical paper nor a research but a reference material for understanding the concept. Having said that, I am just going to summarize it and not provide a critical review.

She started by saying that while identities are often thought as natural or innate, this is not always the case. Social identities reflect how individuals and groups internalize established social categories within their societies (i.e. ethnicity, gender, class, etc.).

Referencing George Herbert Mead, these are created through our continuous interaction with other people and our self-reflection of ourselves. Reinforcing otherness is essential to the way in which societies establish identity categories, as a product of agreement, disagreement, and negotiation. Identities are set up as dichotomies as it is crucial for sustaining the social order.

Societies create a sense of belonging and social status by constructing social categories as binary opposition. In the case of gender, this is the socially constructed dichotomy of man versus woman, which discounts alternative gender expressions.

Social institutions hold the balance of power by exemplifying and demonstrating what must be accepted as the norm. In doing so, dichotomies of otherness are being set up as just the way things are.

The concept of otherness will help us to continue challenge identities in society. As a tool for social change, this can be utilized to break down the ideologies and resources that groups use to maintain their social status.

Knox, J. (2013). “Five critiques of the open educational resources movement.” Teaching in Higher Education 18(8): 821–32.

The paper examined the theories which underpin the promotion of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education. By banking the concepts of positive and negative liberty, he suggested that the term ‘open’ is being under-theorized. Finally, highlighted a diminishing of the role of pedagogy within the OER vision and the promotion of a learner-centred model for education.

Knox has illustrated how the Western individualist values are only privileged in the discussion for emphasizing education as a mere enhancement of human life. He provided a compelling critique of existing OER research by pointing out the failure to effectively address the pedagogical implications of openness, i.e. “by promoting ‘openness’ in terms akin to negative liberty, […] there is a distinct lack of consideration for how learning might take place once these obstacles are overcome.”

He did not to say that OER cannot drive substantial change in the current pedagogical system, but he thinks that only through a grounded interaction of researchers and advocates with students, teachers, platforms, and materials is a better critical approach, rather than derive directly from their idealized notions.

I enjoin Knox in suggesting that it is very important for the OER advocates to unequivocally engage in a critique of learner autonomy and interrogate their underlying ideology. These discussions should not exclude students and educators and limit the discussion to the academics who theorize and idealize OER.