Deepening Dialogue: How White Preservice Teachers Revised Assumptions in an Online Class About Linguistic Racism

• In Event: Critical Inquiry and Dialogic Space

Abstract

Objectives
How might teachers and students deepen dialogic space in online synchronous class discussions centered on race? This paper explores the challenges of creating shared spaces of collective inquiry online across audio/visual/written modes. In particular, we explore why participants in an online teacher education course switched modes–from audio/visual participation to written chat–during a synchronous class session about Black language and linguistic racism.
Perspectives
Application of dialogic space to theory and practice in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is not new (e.g., Wegerif, 2006). This context presents challenges because, “online dialogue is often multimodal, so a focus on talk [alone] is no longer possible” (Wegerif, 2020, p. 167). Moreover, online teaching often occurs across multiple platforms, from video calls to discussion forums. Sindoni (2011; 2021) has theorized mode-switching to describe practices/purposes whereby participants in video-mediated communication switch from audio/video to written chat. Mode-switching’s association with code-switching indicates online discourse can also be racially coded, such that seemingly “neutral” decisions, like switching from talk to writing, might actually reveal implicit hierarchies.
Methods
Our presentation features examples from a MA English-education course focused on dialogic pedagogies at a Southern US university. During the focal class, a group of White prospective/practicing teachers (n=6/14 students) mode-switched during dialogue about their responses to readings about Black language and linguistic racism (e.g., Baker-Bell, 2019), to which their professor (Author2, who also identifies as White) had replied before the meeting. This online synchronous session included the most chats (64), as well as the largest number of mode-switches (57), including a high proportion by students (51/57), compared to an average across eight synchronous sessions of 17 student mode-switches per 26 chats. Our analysis first identified these mode-switches’ context and function (e.g., Affirm, Explain, Elaborate, Disagree) in relation to prior and subsequent talk. These functions, when examined in sequence, helped to reveal White teachers’ revelations or resistances regarding oppressive language ideologies.
Findings
Our study identified common types of mode-switching through which participants resist, revise, and renegotiate dialogic space in online coursework. As in face-to-face classes, participants used mode-switching for side conversations and cheering section/peanut gallery comments. However, unlike face-to-face classes, all backchannel chats were publicly visible. In this public yet unofficial space, a mediating step between out-of-class writing and in-class discussion, the White teachers also used chat as a face-saving resource to share emerging understandings of linguistic racism that nevertheless carried traces of their past biases.
Significance
Dialogic space emerged or deepened when students’ writing “in the background”–both before and during class–was foregrounded, bringing prior assumptions and present perspectives into creative tension. Participants’ mode-switching revealed White fragility and sought White solidarity, but not as a silencing move. Instead, publicly visible backchannel chat became a space of shared vulnerability, as participants expressed new awareness of past biases. Teachers might consider how relationships among modes like writing and talk, across activities/platforms, can support dialogue, challenge assumptions, and invite exploration of identities-in-progress in face-to-face, as well as online spaces.

Authors

• Michael B. Sherry, University of South Florida

• Mandie Bevels Dunn, University of South Florida - Tampa

• Jessica O'Brien, University of South Florida