Resisting Curricula Control in the Current Reign of Technoform and the Push for Online Pre-K-20 Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: Alternative Learning: Deschooling, Homeschooling, and Online Education

Abstract

The authors present a conceptual analysis to explore how Illichian conviviality provides communities with a techno-practice of critical public pedagogies and sites of resistance. The analysis presented is two-fold: (1) to uncover and consider hegemonic curricula norms, i.e., techno-form. Using Nigel Thrift’s (2004) work, we suggested that Computer Mediated Instruction has gradually standardized instructional space and normalized formal instruction delivered on the computer: positioning learning as ‘student and curriculum.’ This has served to further blackbox the assumptions and values inherent in the corporate-centric forms of instruction. (2) We share examples and make suggestions for how Illichian conviviality can help communities to retain what they value and reappropriate, recreate and humanize Information Communication Technologies in powerful ways to serve various publics.

Authors

• Sandra Beth Schneider, Radford University

• Dianne Smith, University of Missouri - Kansas City