Blogging as public pedagogy: creating alternative educational futures

Dennis, Carol Azumah

Abstract

In this study, I explore ‘blogging’, the use of a regularly updated website or web page, authored and curated by an individual or small group, written in a conversational style, as a form of public pedagogy. I analyse blogs as pre-figurative spaces where people go to learn with/in a public sphere, through collaboration with interested others. However, my intention is not to conceptualize blogging spaces as such, but rather—having framed them in a particular way—to explore the extent to which they globalise dissent. My argument is that the blogs I explore, understood as public pedagogic spaces, cultivate voices of educational dissent. Positioning itself within the global research imagination, the study draws extensively on data generated by two blogging communities with a combined international readership in excess of 40,000 people; one of the blogs is based in the UK, written by a group of adult educators. The other is based in Canada written by a group of adult literacy practitioners. Whilst both blogs are authored, curated and carried by a named individual, as public pedagogic spaces, they are implicated in the creation of a dialogic self: a self which is developed collaboratively with/in the interests of and through a public that coalesces around them. The pedagogies associated with these spaces are argued as explicit and intentioned. The public that coalesces around them learns how to survive a global neoliberal policy nexus that is unsympathetic towards the ideals they pre-figuratively embody. In so doing, they call into being the creation of alternative educational understandings of themselves and each other in relation to policy, pedagogy and the purposes of education.

Citation

Dennis, C. A. (2015). Blogging as public pedagogy: creating alternative educational futures. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 34(3), 284-299. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2014.1000408

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 1, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Feb 12, 2015
• Publication Date: May 4, 2015
• Deposit Date: Mar 8, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 8, 2016
• Journal: International journal of lifelong education
• Print ISSN: 0260-1370
• Electronic ISSN: 1464-519X
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 34
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 284-299
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2014.1000408
• Keywords: Public pedagogy; Blogging; Adult literacy; Policy; Workers' education association
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/412471
• Publisher URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02601370.2014.1000408
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International journal of lifelong education on 12/02/2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02601370.2014.1000408.