For the last couple months, Bri, Erin, and I have been working toward implementing a digital-yet social justice-focus within our pedagogy. Recognizing that we were going to emphasize rehabbing current contradictions in our classrooms, I was struck by an issue that Erin raised about the differences in her students' access-therefore usage-of technology. We surmized the difficulties that students must have as they typed out full-length papers, not because they wanted to, but because they didn't have laptops or 24/7 access to a computer. Instead, they had smartphones with word-predictive technology, which must influence their composition and writing processes.
Our thrice-split conversation was my impetus to start critically considering the impact of technology inequality in the classroom. How ought educators work at providing a fair and just classroom with the knowledge that their students have varying levels of technology access? Are there ways that these classes can collaborate in discovering frameworks and mindsets that are necessary within digital spaces? But most importantly, shouldn't the educators in these classes also not just consider, but emphasize, technologic inequity by referencing and embodying the phenomenon in their coursework and teaching philosophy? These were my questions as I began my research.
As I knew I wanted to work in a digital-or quasi-digital-realm with my research, the social justice aspect seemed implicit or inherent in learning more about the issue itself. A social justice pedagogy also allowed me to seek out potential ways to improve pre-existing structures-or in CHAT terminology-"find solutions to the variety of contradictions within activity systems" (Engstrom). The possible contradiction that I found was educators not necessarily enacting social justice tendencies while teaching these same social justice issues. Not only would educators be less hypocritical by utilizing these social justice tendencies in their classes, but doing so would give them the opportunity to show students a variety of ways to apply social justice-and CHAT-behaviors to effect change.
I don't have a particularly strong background in social justice pedagogy personally, but the marginalized nature of technologic inequity and the drastic impact such scarcity has on local, national, and global populations offers a space for these two phenomena to inform one another. Despite being a purveyor of gatekeeping academia as an educator myself, there are methods best explained using a social justice pedagogy lens that can aid in dismantling power structures resembling those of technologic inequality. Or at least transgressing enough to aid student understanding of-and hopefully spark-revolting against the man.
Most of my research lead me in the direction of defining the phenomenon I had called and continue to call "technology inequity," the "digital divde." Technology is held to a golden standard among particular communities as a great equalizer. These groups often cite anonymity, the removal barriers, and quicker computations as areas of great technological improvement over the years. Yet, a variety of people worldwide are unable to access these resources due to this digital divide.
Familiarizing oneself-and students-with the digital divide is necessary to enact the social justice pedagogy within the classroom. By drafting lesson plans and assignment sequences that very seriously employ technologic inequity, educators embody these social justice concerns so that they are not just notions or ideologies with which are only talked about. This embodying is the cornerstone of the resources and suggestions hosted on this website.
Initially, my research had a fairly lofty goal: embody social justice pedagogy in the classroom by way of emphasizing technologic inequality. I thought that this connection could have been fostered by some common ground between composing in both analog and digital means. By not having technology at our disposal within the classroom, classes could take advantage of their self-imposed technologic inequality by looking criticaly at their own technology usage. It would be through the analog that the mental fortitude for digital composition would shine, as these skills would be heighten by the classroom recognition of technology's absent presence.
While I do believe digital dispositions-a proclivity toward thinking digitally, a cognition for navigating digital spaces, as well as a mindset that brings forth digital acuem-all exist, they did not play as big of a role as I had original anticipated. Or, at least thinking about their direct connection to analog composition may have not correlated as strongly as once hoped.
Instead, examining the possible areas where technology inequity and social justice pedagogy overlapped became the focus of the lesson plans I have developed.
Social justice pedagogy gave me a critical vantage point to identify contradictions within activity systems; the tension between embodying technologic inequity within the classroom was the circumstance I evaluated. I hypothesized that the absence of the digital-and therefore resurgance of the analog-would allow for students to recognize the connection between cognition and digital know-how. Unfortately, this quickly left me frustrated while developing my lesson plans; how ought I scaffold a course that doesn't simply not require a computer of some sort, but actively pushes against it to enact the social justice issue being taught?
Ultimately, my work guided me in the direction of bringing these two concepts-social justice pedagogy and technologic inequity-together through the scaffolding of assignment sequencing and lesson planning.