Sociological Imagination and Anti-Neoliberalism: Developing a Critical Online Service-Learning Pedagogy

• In Event: Decentering Whiteness and Recentering Equity in Critical Service-Learning

Abstract

With continued growth in online education, higher education institutions have worked to move community engagement further into virtual spaces through e-service learning courses. These courses have a history of being “consultative” or client-based, rather than transformational as critical perspectives on service-learning call for. I argue that this present conception of e-service learning stems from neoliberal foundations in both online education and service-learning pedagogies. In light of this, there is a need for a humanity-centered, anti-neoliberal pedagogical framework for e-service learning. Through a critical theoretical methodology of sociological imagination, I argue for critical online service-learning as a pedagogy that expands opportunities for access, equity, and solidarity through humanity-centered methods of engagement and instruction in the midst of higher education’s neoliberal turn.

Author

• Tyler Derreth, Johns Hopkins University