Abstract
This paper suggests formal education must take new approaches to meet the social opportunities and challenges brought about through the information revolution, in particular access to new information, capabilities for new types of communities that can challenge place-based agendas, and distributed power and voice. The tools of the Internet are unique in that they offer new types of individual agency capable of ameliorating injustice and oppression that thrives in the shadows, but also leading to unprecedented social dangers. Tools that open up new possibilities for especially marginalized and oppressed to join together as a community and common voice, impacting the trajectory of their own lives. Internet tools can also remove many of the social guardrails restricting social activity, few if any in place social boundaries, allowing for painful and destructive discourse without consequence. Society must find a way to teach about the power and responsibilities of these new technologies without controlling them or those that use them to create new arenas of social activity. Participatory Action research (PAR) is proposed as one possible framework to formal education that meets these uniquely twenty-first century needs. PAR emerged mid-twentieth century in response to decolonization, social oppression and the need to help marginalized populations find voice and meaning in a fast changing world in ways that preserve their identities. PAR may offer an important path for educators and learners struggling to adapt to the new demands of the twenty-first century.
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Notes
This article on Youtube algorithms recommending toxic videos https://hmmdaily.com/2018/12/12/youtube-already-knows-how-to-stop-serving-toxic-videos/is a prime example of why it is important not to confused the Internet with the large, aggressive platforms that can dominate the Internet. The use of the specific algorithm is a profit making decision that can be easily fixed, but many Youtube users are completely unaware of this or the control they can have in changing it.
The Internet is celebrated for expanding the information universe. Perhaps far more consequential for both individual psychological and social development is the ability to open up unlimited and uncontrolled intermental experience to even the most casual users through the development of What you see is what you get (WYSWYG) applications (Glassman 2016).
QAnon originated on 4han (which one could argue has a less diverse, less sophisticated user population).
See Glassman 2019 for an expanded discussion of these points.
There are different theoretical frameworks that use the phrase Participatory Action Research (Glassman and Burbidge 2014). The PAR in this paper, which some have referred to as Southern Participatory Action Research because of its development in South America is arguably the best known and the richest of these. Fals Borda, who gave PAR its name, was influenced by Lewin’s ideas on Action Research but there are some important differences. Paolo Freire whose ideas play a role in this paper was central to the development of Southern PAR but he never actually refers to himself as a Participatory Action Researcher. For reasons of space and simplification the paper merges PAR with Freire’s ideas of Educacion Popular.
It is arguable whether simply establishing forums and labeling them as important are serious attempts at developing participatory online communities.
Fals Borda seems to take the concept from the Uruguayan write Eduardo Galeano and his The Book of Embraces.
The concept of Praxis is one of the places where PAR moves beyond concepts such as social capital and strong/weak tie communities.
One of the most interesting studies done in Internet infused education was conducted in Singapore (within an activity theory framework) (Lim and Hang 2003). The researchers were attempting to get students to use the technology for activities resembling praxis. The students kept using the new tools to better their grades.
Democracy and Education was written as a text book for teachers ushering in a new human age.
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Glassman, M. The internet as a context for participatory action research. Educ Inf Technol 25, 1891–1911 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10033-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10033-1