Abstract
In visions of education and communication in a post-pandemic world, techno-utopian ideologies and discourse have been fuelled by the affordances and especially the economics of remote delivery. Indeed, such visions regard recovery as dependent on a comprehensive technological integration of all dimensions of civic life. In this aspirational mix, education is foundational, and as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt urges, we should “accelerate the trend toward remote learning” where proximity is neither required nor necessary. This is an unambiguous articulation of a “no touch future” to borrow Naomi Klein’s phrase, a decisive prevalence of capitalized technology, and a contactless education driven by a faith in the ameliorative capacities of technology. While technology has understandably dominated responses to the vicissitudes for the pandemic, we have rather neglected critical issues of educational philosophy and practice that must inform and direct our future-facing educational priorities. The trepidatious return to pre-pandemic educational conventions should in fact be a critical moment for bold educational revision driven by the urgencies and pedagogies of “consequential” education. How do we activate students to be protagonists in their own education, and more broadly, their own civic lives? How do we develop and sustain learning motivated and animated by social change? As technology continues to be privileged as an educational “solution’, the principles of embodied and democratic education become ever more urgent. This paper explores these questions and posits that communication studies are. key in the achievement of consequential education.
Presenters
Martin LabaAssociate Professor, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Consequential Education, Techno-Utopian, Educational Revision, Social Change
