Speculative Futures of Feminist Digital Pedagogy

• In Event: Critical Feminisms as Pedagogical Spaces for Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Objective

This proposal aims to provide a vision for what we hope feminist pedagogy will bring to digital learning experiences.

Perspective and Methods

Research on educational futures can provide a vision, a mission, or a trajectory for administrators, policymakers, and scholars to consider or follow. The lack or absence of educational futures can be detrimental or problematic for those wanting to push educational practices in new directions (Facer, 2021).

Data Source

Seven education scholars from around the world shared their insights on what we can envision as a future in which feminist digital learning experiences take place.

Results

We speculate that future online learning experiences infused with feminist pedagogy will consider advances in modality with embedded accessibility as the norm. Beyond modality, a key speculation related to online learning environments in the future influenced by feminist pedagogy tenets is the central role of learning networks that are distributed and global, hence leading to more equity, access, and decentralized knowledge hubs. A central theme among scholars’ speculative is the breakdown of power structures. This includes power structures in learning environment design, educational technology selection, and consumption of digital metadata. Scholars speculate an online learning future in which learners are involved as designers of learning ecosystems, giving them an essential role in the decision-making process of how their own learning experience will occur. In addition, we speculate that a feminist digital learning future will also breakdown of power structures in relation to the instructors’ selection and relationship with technology. As scholars, we speculate that instructors will be empowered, within their institutions, to implement critical intersectional approaches in educational technology use and integration.

Scholarly Significance

Our future will recognize all our learners as diverse individuals and equal contributors to the learning experience.

References

Facer, K. (2021). Futures in education: Towards an ethical practice. Paper commissioned for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Futures of Education report. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000375792

Authors

• Enilda J. Romero-Hall, University of Tennessee

• Aras Bozkurt, Anadolu University

• Catharyn Crane Shelton, Northern Arizona University

• Chloe Raub, Harvard University