Digital Platforms and Online Discussions: Teachers' Participation in Digital Discussions About Literature

• In Event: Critical Literacies With, Within, and Against Digital Platforms

Abstract

Even as educators are becoming increasingly ‘connected’ in their pedagogical practices (Garcia et al., 2014), researchers have not yet adequately examined the ways that digital tools and platforms are shaping those practices. While online platforms -- from Google Classroom to Edmodo -- are ubiquitous in education (Watters, 2017), we need to recognize, as Ching and Wittstock (2019) argue, that these “different tools come with their own agendas and ideologies” (p. 162). This paper examines how platforms used in English classrooms serve as ‘intermediaries’ (Gillespie, 2010) that seem at first glance to be transparent/neutral ‘connectors’ of content but in fact shape teaching/learning practices through their algorithms, histories, and socio-technical arrangements. We focus on 12 secondary English teachers who participated in online discussions across a range of platforms (e.g., Youth Voices, NowComment, Hypothesis, Flipgrid, Zoom, YellowDig) and engaged in collaborative inquiry to probe how the different tools/platforms shaped their digital discussions about literature (in anticipation of connecting their students in such activity).

Data for this qualitative study included transcripts (and artifacts) from seven audio-recorded inquiry group meetings of digitally-experienced teachers in Denver and Philadelphia over 15 weeks. We collected text and screen capture of five online discussions between teachers, related pre-post collaboration on Slack, and individual interviews. We engaged in mediated discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) of multimodal transcripts and the platforms. We found that some platforms facilitated back-and-forth interchange between many voices while others invited longer/deeper/sustained exchanges between fewer interlocutors. Such differences mattered in teachers’ experiences discussing sensitive topics in literature. This paper explores the significance of teachers’ choices about these ‘intermediaries’ in classrooms -- as political acts that (a) are tied to teachers’ broader goals for the discussion; (b) invite/constrain participation in different measure; and (c) can elide/elucidate tensions (around datafication, privacy, commercialism). Such considerations profoundly shape digital “collaboration for impact” in classrooms.

Authors

• Amy Stornaiuolo, University of Pennsylvania

• Bethany Monea, University of Pennsylvania

• Rabani Garg

• Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Autumn Adia Griffin

• Barrett Rosser, The University of Pennsylvania