Joining "networks of power"
Subtitle: participation of graduate, nonnative English speaking students in academic networks.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 231
Subjects: Educational technology.; Computer-assisted instruction.; Education -- Study and teaching (Graduate).; Non-native English speakers; Universities and colleges -- Graduate work.; Minority graduate students.
Description: With the rise of computerization and the internationalization of graduate education, theory and research in education have been mostly focused on promoting computer technologies as a solution for the more equitable academic participation of nonnative English speaking students. A critical analysis of this trend, however, reveals the tendency to decontextualize and oversimplify the conditions under which the students' engagement with computer technologies develops, to assume that nonnative English speakers are dissatisfied with traditional educational contexts, and to accept a simplistic perspective of unproblematized computer technologies. To avoid such an instrumental vision of computing and to better explore the conditions under which technology, difference, and educational context intersect, I suggest that there is a need for other theoretical frameworks from which to look at students' engagement with computer technologies.This study suggests that, instead of thinking in terms of possible academic benefits that computer technologies might offer to nonnative English speakers, we should think of academic participation as deeply situated in the context of academic communities where the meaning of academic benefits, computer practices, and classroom participation is co-shaped by the complex web of academic ties and links that students constantly negotiate by moving along an academic trajectory.This study has a dual purpose. First, to develop an exploratory framework that weaves together multidisciplinary theories and research traditions (cultural studies, educational anthropology, critical theory, techno-culture, sociology of science and technology) aimed toward the understanding of the students' engagement with computer technologies in academic contexts as being co-shaped by social, cultural, and technological discourses and practices. A second purpose is to explore the ways in which nonnative English speaking graduate students negotiate their academic participation and computer-mediated academic practices. To this end, an open-ended interview study was conducted with eight nonnative English speaking graduate students of education, living and studying in Toronto, Canada. The results of this interview process brought forward some under-explored issues that emerged in the process of computer-mediated academic participation.
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Electronic version licensed for access by U. of T. users.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-06, Section: A, page: 2130.
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