Teachers' Reflections on Pedagogies that Enhance Learning in an Online Course on Teaching for Equity and Social Justice.

This study investigated teachers’ reflective perspectives on pedagogies that enhance learning in an online course on “Teaching for equity and social justice” in a teacher education program. Data were collected from survey, alternative anonymous course assessment, interview, and document analysis. Participants identified threaded discussions, partner-shared learning, course 3Rs (rigor, relevance and relationships), pre-post narrative inquiries and writing reading response papers as critical pedagogies that enhanced their learning in the online course. In this paper, I analyze and discuss the teachers’ reflective perspectives and the construction and implementation of these pedagogies. Introduction and Purpose Increasingly, virtual and cyber universities are becoming a common phenomenon in the educational landscape. Program coordinators and department chairs at universities and colleges are encouraging, in some cases, demanding that online programs and courses be offered in order to attract students and increase enrollment. Imperatively, teacher education faculty feel compelled and challenged to develop and offer online courses. However, in many teacher education programs, online teaching/learning is still an underdeveloped frontier as teacher educators (myself included) fear that critical elements of the teaching and learning process will be compromised, especially the communal act of teaching and learning. Anyone familiar with the pedagogies used in many teacher education courses appreciates the learning interactions between instructor and students and among students. In these classes, the teaching/learning environment is designed to embrace and model a learning community where students engage in critical discussions and simulation activities that foster perspective consciousness and reflection. This is more so with diversity courses that are designed to foster critical dialogue, reflective thinking, collective learning, perspective consciousness, and transformative learning. Personally, I have struggled with the dilemma of teaching an online course on diversity and social justice to prospective and inservice teachers. However, in the fall semester of 2005, I challenged myself to develop and teach an online course entitled “Teaching for equity and social justice. ” Can students effectively learn discourses on critical multiculturalism and social justice and transform their perspectives in an online course? Would traditional pedagogies equally work effectively in an online course? In this paper, I discuss teachers’ reflective perspectives of their learning and pedagogies that enhanced and transformed their learning in the online course. Theoretical Perspectives Journal of Interactive Online Learning Ukpokodu 228 Can an online course effectively assist prospective and classroom teachers in learning critical discourse on issues of educational equity and social justice and foster their transformative learning? What pedagogies enhance learning in an online course especially transformative learning? Given these questions, this paper draws on the theoretical perspectives of multiculturalism, social justice, constructivism, transformative learning, and electronic pedagogy—constructs that place emphasis on critical discourse, communicative relationships, reflection, and collaborative learning environment (Bates, 1997; Dewey, 1933; Duffy & Cunningham, 1996; Greene, 1998; Mezirow, 2000). For the last three to four decades, the discourse of multiculturalism has permeated the educational landscape, providing a critique of the traditional approach to education that privileged some students while marginalizing others to the extent that there is a learning and achievement gap (Lee, 2006; Oakes & Lipton, 2007) as well as processes for transforming educational and schooling practices. Following the Civil Rights Movement, multicultural education evolved as a vehicle for addressing the educational inequities due to students’ racial, gender, class, linguistic, sexual orientation, and abilities (Banks & Banks, 2005). Since its inception, many definitions of multicultural education have evolved (Gay, 2003). Broadly, multicultural education has been defined as a concept, process, or movement aimed at transforming educational and schooling practices with the goal of promoting educational equity and social justice for all students (Banks & Banks, 2005; Gay, 2003; Nieto, 2000). Generally, multicultural education places emphasis on cultural pluralism, equity, power relations, and social justice (Banks, 2005; Nieto, 2000). Given the cultural encapsulation of predominantly White, middle-class, preservice and inservice teachers and the mismatch between them and the growing student population of color (Banks, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 2000; Zeichner, 1996; Zimpher, 1989), multicultural education has been advocated for preparing teachers to develop the knowledge (cultural awareness and understanding of self and others); skills by engaging in effective cross-cultural teaching (Banks, 2005; Gay, 1999) responding appropriately to learners’ strengths and learning styles, and designing and facilitating culturally responsive curricular and using pedagogical practices and appropriate communication and interactional style (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Manning & Baruth, 2005); and dispositions through communicating acceptance, respect, affirmation, dignity, humanization, empathy, sensitivity toward learners, and establishing high expectation for their learning (Gay, 2000; Hale, 2001). Most importantly, multicultural education is viewed as a humanizing alternative to the traditional, monocultural approach to education and a hopeful framework for confronting the widespread and entrenched inequality in schools (Banks, 2005; Nieto, 2000; Oakes, 2005). Consequently, in many teacher education programs, multicultural education has become a required course for preparing preservice and inservice teachers to develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for successfully working with students and families from diverse racial, cultural, ethnic, language, and socioceconomic backgrounds. Although the notion of multicultural education has become pervasive in many schools, the achievement gap remains persistent and problematic (Ladson-Billings, 2000; Nieto, 2000); structural inequities, racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, pedagogy of low expectations, and tracking continue to be prevalent (Ladson-Billings, 2000; Nieto, 2000; Oakes & Lipton, 2004). Hence, in recent years, some multicultural and transformative scholars contend that it is no longer sufficient for teachers to merely develop cultural awareness and sensitivity toward diverse students and their cultures. Instead, they argue that today’s teachers must engage in social justice teaching and cultivate the habits of transformative intellectualism and change agency (CochranJournal of Interactive Online Learning Ukpokodu 229 Smith, 2004; Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1988; Howard, 2006; McLaren, 1995; Nieto, 2000; Oakes, 1995; Oakes & Lipton, 2008) if they are to successfully maximize the learning potential and academic success of diverse students and to close the learning, achievement, and community gaps (Lee, 2005). Further, some multicultural scholars argue that the many forms of multicultural education currently implemented in schools are too soft and lack the framework that promotes educational equity and social justice for all students (Lee, 1998; Nieto, 2000). In particular, some social justice educators posit that many schools and classrooms which profess to engage in multicultural practice rarely reflect a social justice perspective (Ayers, 1998; Greene, 1998; Nieto, 2000; Oakes & Lipton, 2003; Shor, 1992). Given these concerns, some scholars have called for educating teachers to be prepared to become transformative intellectuals who view knowledge as a social construction (Giroux, 1988), understand teaching as a political activity (Cochran-Smith, 2004; McLaren, 1998), are aware of and act on their sense of social responsibility and agency (Giroux, 1988), and engage in socially just teaching (Ayers, 1998; McLaren, 1998; Nieto, 2000; Oakes & Lipton, 2004). Nieto (2000) defines social justice education as a perspective that involves looking critically at why and how schools are unjust for some students and analyzing school practices and policies—the curriculum, instructional materials and strategies, and tracking and discipline policies and practices. Ayers (1998) views education for social justice as a means of realizing the goal of democratic education and so defines it as teaching consciously for social change. Others have viewed social justice education as teaching for conscientization (Freire, 1970), arousing heightened social consciousness, and a wide-awakeness that might make injustice unendurable (Greene, 1998). Greene (1998) explains social justice education: Teaching for the sake of arousing the kinds of vivid, reflective, experiential responses that might move students to come together in serious efforts to understand what social justice actually means and what it might demand.that is, teaching to the end of arousing a consciousness of membership, active, and participant membership in a society of unfulfilled promises. (p. xxx) Cochran-Smith (2004) has outlined six principles of a social justice educator and pedagogy. These include (a) enabling significant work within communities of learners, (b) building on what students bring to school, (c) bridging gaps by teaching skills, (d) working with families and communities, (e) diversifying assessment, and (f) implementing curriculum with a social justice focus. Another framework that bears on this study is constructivism, which portrays the learner as an active conceptualizer within an interactive learning environment and describes ways of knowing in which learners collaborate and reflectively co-construct new understandings, especially in t