A Feminist Poststructuralist and Psychoanalytic Study of High School Students' Engagement in Online Learning Contexts

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 31
  In Roundtable Session: Identities at the Intersections of Praxis and Politics

Abstract

This narrative study explored high school students’ discursive and subjective negotiations of engagement within online learning contexts. Feminist poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theories help articulate engagement as an emotional experience of subjective reconstruction. A narrative case study methodology was employed to elicit meanings given to experiences of engagement. Participants’ overall engagement while learning online demonstrated (a) experiences of difference, (b) experiences of enjoyment, and (c) experiences of difficulty. Experiences of difference elicited narratives of engagement, experiences of enjoyment facilitated compliance to disciplinary practices within the online learning environment, and difficult experiences were framed within narratives of struggle and failure to comply with disciplinary demands. Students did demonstrate agency, surfacing both unconscious and conscious modes of resistance, within the disciplinary online space.

Author

• Marilyn Hillarious, The George Washington University