Dissertation Research Proposal
Title
Critical media and digital literacies in Canadian teacher educators’ open educational practices: A post-intentional phenomenology
Link to Artifact: DeWaard, H. J. (2021). Critical media and digital literacies in Canadian teacher educators’ open educational practices: A post-intentional phenomenology.
Description and Purpose of this Document:
This dissertation research proposal is a required submission for partial completion of my PhD in the Joint PhD programme for Lakehead University in the Faculty of Education in the field of cognition and learning. This research proposal will guide the next steps in my research and support the application for research ethics board approval. This document will also provide foundational information that can be applied to the final dissertation.
This dissertation research proposal outlines my intention to explore how teacher educators in Canadian faculties of education (FoE) describe their lived experiences of media and digital literacies within an openly shared teaching practice. Because I stand within the confluence of three fields of study, this research emerges from my own lived experiences as a teacher educator, open educator, and explorer of critical media and digital literacies. For me, this research answers my burning need to bring teacher education into the open, and to bring teacher educator’s voices into prominence within the field of education, while examining the living literacies (Pahl & Rowsell, 2020) found within the field of media and digital literacy. This research supports the growing demand for digitally and media literate educators demonstrating global competencies (CMEC, 2020) and is a response to global calls for open educational practices (Bates, 2019; Montoya, 2018).
For this research, I propose to apply a post-intentional phenomenological methodology to explore media and digital literacies (MDL) within open educational practices (OEPr) through teacher educators’ stories of their lived experiences within their participatory, collaborative, networked, shared, and public-facing educational practices (Cronin & MacLaren, 2018; Lohnes Watulak, 2018; Lohnes Watulak et al., 2018; Tur et al., 2020). Current research in the field of OEPr has limited exploration in the field of teacher education and has yet to explicitly examine the critical role played by media and digital literacies (Bozkurt et al., 2019; Cronin, 2017), which prompts my wonderings about how teacher educators’ OEPr are impacted by the application or absence of media and digital literacies?
As suggested, this research is positioned at the confluence of three fields of study:
- literacy – it’s many definitions, forms, and trends as reflected in the field of education with specific attention to media and digital literacies as applied to, and studied within, the field of education;
- teacher education, particularly from a teacher educator’s perspective, examining practices and trends in digitally enabled teaching and learning; and
- open educational practices – the definitions and conceptions of the term ‘open’ in the field of education, specifically teacher education, and its impact on teaching practices, pedagogies, and resources.
NOTE: see the dissertation research proposal for references.
Alternatively, I have also posted the research proposal on this blog site, in smaller posts that are linked together here. The purpose of posting them here is so I can once again use Voyant Tools to analyze the text for trends and insights. Here are the sections of the research proposal.
Chapter 1. Background
1.1. Introduction. 1
1.2. Rationale. 4
1.3. Research questions 6
1.4. Researcher Positionality. 8
Chapter 2. Literature Review
2.1. Theoretical Frameworks
2.1.1. Constructivism
2.1.2. Connectivism
2.1.3. Philosophy of Technology
2.1.4. Pragmatism
2.2. Conceptual Frameworks
2.2.1. Teacher Educators in Faculties of Education
2.3. Crystallizing Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks
Chapter 3. Research Design
3.1. Methodology
3.1.1. Post-Intentional Phenomenology as Methodology
3.1.2. Crystallization Framework
3.2. Methods
3.2.1. The Gathering
3.2.2. Timeline
3.2.3. Participants
3.2.4. Field notes and visualizations
3.2.5. Interview planning and design
3.2.6. Data: Coding, Analysis, Interpretation
3.3. Validity = Credibility + Trustworthiness
3.4. Ethics
3.5. Implications for the proposed research
Chapter 4. An Alternative Dissertation
4.1. Defence for an alt-diss format
