University of Western Sydney

Keywords: Online learning, Internet, www, tertiary teaching, pedagogy, democratic space, racism, postcolonialism.

Article style and source: Peer Reviewed. Original ultiBASE publication. A version of this paper has been presented at the '6th International Literacy & Education Research Network Conference on Learning' Bayview Beach Resort, Penang, Malaysia on the 27-30 September 1999.

Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Data Collection and Analysis
• Teaching 'about' diversity
• The local turf
• 'The Other Side of the Argument'
• The Pedagogy of 'Voice'
• Conclusion: Towards an ethic of difference
• Bibliography

Abstract

Teaching 'about' cultural diversity to teacher education students involves an unsettling of strongly held presuppositions about society. In the subject discussed in this paper, there was a shift in process to reflecting on the cultural constitution of the 'self' while attempting to integrate the use of technology into teaching and learning experiences. Drawing on a 'thread' from a Discussion Board the paper firstly analyses the ideological discourses that students reproduced in cyberspace. It then critiques pedagogical assumptions underlying discussion based learning or what has become known as 'the pedagogy of voice'. The paper concludes that the transferral of this type of pedagogy into cyberspace reveals the limited democratic nature of web-based discussion boards.

Introduction

Among radical educators who have been concerned with cultural diversity and inequality there has been an emphasis placed on student 'voice' (Jones, 1998). Pedagogical models based on this approach have attempted to create democratic classrooms that provide 'space' for multiple voices. This dialogic approach is meant to be liberating for those who have been previously silenced, an approach pioneered by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. But what happens to this so-called democratic 'space' when it is cyber? In particular, what pedagogical relations are produced and reproduced in the 'discussion' genre of teaching and learning when it is on-line? This paper explores these questions through a discussion of a teaching experience in the western area of Sydney.

Drawing on a 'thread'¹ from a Discussion Board called The Other Side of the Argument, the paper will provide snapshots of moments when the changing demographics of a student population intersect with conservative ideological discourses. These moments are then used to analyse the limitations and ethical problems associated with pedagogical theories informing 'discussion' based learning as a regime of practice on the WWW. top

Data Collection and Analysis

Conducting research in electronic collaborative environments presents a unique class of ethical issues. These issues include protecting the students and staff and maintaining professional competence. The very nature of the medium opens up possibilities of representing and misrepresenting individual and organisational characteristics (Vanek, 1998). Miskevich (1996) suggests the need to place limits on the ethical use of data from Internet discussion groups. Issues include potential harm to subjects, anonymity preservation and evaluation of potential value of the data for society. In this paper, the anonymity of all participants is maintained, although I cannot guarantee that I have the only copy of this thread. This is an additional ethical issue that needs taking up in another paper. The focus in this instance is on the pedagogical implications of the new technologies when attending to issues of difference and inequality.

The 'thread' was analysed as a series of ideological discourses. In the subject under discussion - 'Cultural Diversity and Learning' - we sought to refocus issues of diversity onto the cultural constitution of the self in terms of the ideological discourses that had helped students make sense of the world and inequality. The subject looked at constructions of nation and the place of policy towards immigrants and indigenous peoples, the changing constructions of gender and sexuality, as well as representation in various textual forms. This 'content' was to enable students to write theorised autobiographies² that would reveal the contingent nature of identity through the changing constructions of difference. That is, that cultural difference is not static and that it has more to do with conflict over the distribution of power and resources in society than the innate characteristics of individuals.

The term ideological discourse is borrowed from Purvis and Hunt (1993) who argue against the opposition of ideology and discourse. By using the 'directionality of ideology theory' - i.e. the effects - an attendance to the production and reproduction of dominant social relations is kept visible (ibid, p.457). Ideology in this sense can mask inequality (Solomos and Back, 1996, p.8). Discourse then becomes the process through which understandings are produced and reproduced. Such understandings operate as 'common sense' which is "both a medium of social action and constitutive of the social relations that they reproduce" (Purvis and Hunt, 1993, p.405).

The ideological discourses students used in The Other Side of the Argument echoes those found in the work of Solomon (1995), and Grundy and Hatton (1995). Drawing on research from three countries Solomon argued that teachers' perspectives on education for cultural diversity could be summarised as mainly conservative and liberal but rarely radical. The conservative perspective posits racial and ethnic inequalities as a "result of individual potential and effort", while liberal perspectives "posit race and culture as relevant to the curriculum, especially in areas of interpersonal relations that help students understand each other better" (1995, p.2). The radical perspective on the other hand is concerned with exploring structural arrangements in society that privileges particular groups. Solomon found that in general teachers "largely ignored or resisted in-service sessions that moved beyond pedagogical strategies and skill development to address broader social issues" (op.cit).

Grundy and Hatton's study of student teachers' ideological discourses outlined three types of discursive practices that reflect much the same tendencies as those outlined by Solomon. One was the discourse of social agnosticism, where there is a tendency not to problematise structures (Grundy and Hatton, 1995, p. 13). Another was a discourse of social fulfilment, which suggests openness to questioning the status quo. Social fulfilment is the idea that individuals have the right to develop all their capacities in the way they see fit (ibid, p. 22). Grundy and Hatton suggested a discourse of social transformation leading to social justice might be useful and would be demonstrated through a language of "critique, challenging and changing the status quo" (ibid, p. 12). top

Teaching 'about' diversity

A number of authors in Australia and overseas have pointed to the way in which 'studying' or focussing on minority group differences contributes to reproducing cultural stereotypes (Nicholls et al, 1996; Rizvi, 1987; Troyna, 1992; Solomon, 1995). In the subject 'Cultural Diversity and Learning' we attempted to shift this 'anthropological gaze' with first semester, first year undergraduate teacher education students. Understanding and dealing with difference in this manner - a focus on the peculiarities of the 'Other' - tends to obscure the external referent culture and thus normalising practices are the outcome (Nakata, 1997). That is, difference is seen as something to be harnessed and used in compensatory programs (Wizer and Beck, p.6) where culture is co-opted and incorporated to achieve cultural compatibility. The pedagogy of bringing into the centre - 'us' - reveals the essential paradox of liberalism. That is, it "tolerates diversity only as an instrumental quality and not as something valuable in itself" (Griffiths, 1993, p.309). In addition, the 'gaze' produces a static concept of culture rather than exploring how it is continually constituted. The following student's contribution to the Other Side of the Argument reflects the dominant pedagogical approach to understanding issues of diversity in teacher education. It also reflects the liberal ideological discourse of social agnosticism.

When I was at school the other day, the teacher told me that you can't touch Chinese kids on the head. Why don't we learn about those sort of things? They would be more useful than this stuff.

The joyous "anticipation at the mining of other/s cultures" (Jones, 1998, p15) effectively "removes the focus from the social production of difference to the management of racialised identities " (Singh, 1998, p.6). Culture becomes a kind of resource to put in your kit bag for future use. Attempting to approach issues of cultural diversity and inequality sociologically - that is the intersection of history and biography - produced some interesting responses.

A group of students found this approach and the general content of the subject threatening. All the lecturers had experienced the rejection by students of sociological analyses many times. What was of concern in this particular situation was the use of new technologies, which provided an opportunity for the unfettered use of 'flames' by disaffected students. In addition, it became clear that changing demographics in the region were creating a sense of alienation. top

The local turf

Question: Why is this church not a church? Answer: Because it's a mosque. (Marsh, Jon 29.10.98)

Students who attend the University of Western Sydney Macarthur, like all others students in metropolitan Sydney, favour the local area. More than 51% of students in the region attend UWS, the highest local representation by far of any university in metropolitan Sydney (Jacobsen, 1999). This geographic 'tribalism' means that we have an increasingly diverse student population because the region has the highest number of Aboriginal people living in urban areas and is the area in which newly arrived immigrants settle. If we add to this the 'traditional' working class and the 'newer' professional classes, we have a mix quite unlike anywhere else in Sydney. The campus on which the teacher education faculty is situated is Bankstown, an area marked by one of the most diverse ethnic concentrations in Sydney.

The Local Government Area (LGA) of Bankstown is approximately 20 km south west of the CBD and incorporates 24 suburbs. The area is the site of major facilities and infrastructure in the Western suburbs of Sydney with a major metropolitan shopping centre and a small-craft airport. Prior to the Second World War, Bankstown was largely a working class, Anglo-Celtic area. Italians and Greeks moved into the area in the 1950s, establishing their own churches and schools. The Lebanese community settled into the area in the 1970s and the Vietnamese in the 1980s. Newer arrivals include groups such as Indonesians and refugees from Eritrea, Somalia and Ghana. The overseas-born population increased from 19.7 per cent in 1971 to 33.2 per cent in 1996 and the number of those born in NESC has increased by 8.2 percentage points. The fastest growing group is the Vietnamese followed by the Lebanese (ABS, 1994).

The largest group of overseas born in Bankstown LGA were born in Lebanon who comprise 18 per cent of the overseas born in the LGA. Furthermore, of all the Lebanon born in N.S.W., 18 per cent live in Bankstown. The largest language group in Bankstown is English speaking but there are also over 60 different language groups in Bankstown: more than 40 per cent of the population speak a language other than English at home. Arabic, Vietnamese, Greek, Italian and Cantonese are the next most common languages spoken. In the '91 Census, the Arabic Lebanese speaking population was the largest Non-English Speaking Background (NESB) group in Bankstown and continues to grow. The Vietnamese, Yugoslav, Italian and Greek communities follow them. (Collins et al, forthcoming).

Suburbs that were once working class and predominately Anglo-Celtic, have therefore been transformed. We have seen some resentment of these changes in the recent refusal of Bankstown Council to accept that Anglican churches are now operating as mosques or Buddhist temples (Marsh, 1998, 1999). Indeed, the impact of the changing religious profile of the local area on students was reflected in the somewhat aggressive declaration of Christian fundamentalist beliefs by several of the disaffected students during the discussion.

These rapidly changing demographics have only recently begun to impact on the teacher education program at UWSM. At the same time, there has been an increase in the conservative anti-immigrant and anti-multiculturalism discourses that have been given legitimacy by Prime Minister John Howard and various sections of the media (Millett, 1996). top

'The Other Side of the Argument'

What inspired students to begin the thread - The Other Side of the Argument - was the rejection by a number of students of the focus on the social production of difference - because it is 'negative' - in favour of 'safe' can-do recipe style approaches that do not question normative practices nor implicate the teacher in reform. The following example from the 'thread' expresses this tendency and ideologically it can be located as conservative and socially agnostic.

Where in the classroom do we need to teach our children how mean white people were centuries ago? Or how hard done by Aborigines were? By saying this we will START prejudice in the classroom not withhold it. All we need to teach is the facts and that it is wrong to treat someone with injustice.

It is conservative and socially agnostic because, like Prime Minister John Howard's attack on historical explanations for indigenous inequality as the 'black armband view of history' (Millett, 1996), it fails to consider socially created forms of inequality. The harnessing of John Howard's rhetoric which purports to speak to 'us Australians', has found fertile ground among those with a 'white racial identity' (Lawrence, 1997). The ideological discourse of 'us' and 'them' has provided voice for the politics of resentment (Singh, 1998).

How do we understand this resentment? Resentment appears to arise from a process of 'disintegration' (Lawrence, 1997, p.2) of the old ways of seeing the world plus a thwarting of the desire to 'know the Other' (Jones, 1998). Pedagogically, the politics of resentment reveals the hegemony of the anthropological gaze and the thin veneer of understanding of the politics of difference (Singh, 1998) in the liberal progressivist approach to issues of cultural diversity. Most of the angry student comments on the discussion site masked their grief at a 'loss of innocence' and the desire to 'know the Other' by attacking the lecturers and the content of the subject. The following is an example.

Mary had a little lamb its fleece was like trodden snow and everywhere that Mary went she took an oven and a butchers knife. We are here to learn how to teach and enhance students ability. Not to ponder and focus on past hurts and wrongs of PAST generations. The lecturers have similar characteristics to the creator of this rhyme.

If we consider an oven and a butcher's knife to be a metaphor for the destruction of the writer's epistemological foundations, then we have some insight into this loss. The following comments reveal even more clearly the ideological discourses that are being challenged. The intersection of religious fundamentalism and Hansonism³ (Millett and Seccombe, 1996) is striking.

People really hate to admit to concepts of right and wrong, and don't like to see things as black and white. Shades of grey are much less confronting, and life is so much easier when you are open-minded. I do not devalue people of different opinions to my self, even if such opinions contradict my moral beliefs. However, just because society is open-minded to the point of ridicule, does not mean everyone has traded in their morality.

These rather simplistic and moralistic views of the world and social relations which are extremely conservative, have been repeated by many in powerful positions within the media. In the following piece from the thread we can see another particularly strong example of populist discourse which can be attributed to radio talkback star, John Laws.

I am female, but I am forced to admit that the femo-nazi attitude some of these lecturers have adopted is both dangerous and irrelevant. Come to think of it, this entire subject is irrelevant is it not?? Why do we need to adopt an attitude which will 'fuel the fire' in regard to the racial debate and multiculturalism in schools. We should be leaving it well alone and allowing children to form their own opinions as they develop and progress through school.

These 'dittoheads' (Kalantzis and Cope, 1997, p.21) were by far the noisy minority in lectures but they dominated the web-based discussion. It is hard to tell how many were involved since the contributors hid behind a veil of anonymity. In the above example, it is possible to see how the ideology of childhood innocence sits within the framework of naturalistic pedagogical processes. Such processes not only mask the normative practices in schooling which favour the privileged but in these instances, also mask the resentful students' privilege. When the on-line discussion began silencing 'others' in tutorials, we decided we had to act. The hegemony of the ideologies they were circulating led them to believe they spoke for all: a key attribute of ideology - presenting the interests of the dominant as given (Poynting, 1995).

One option was to remove the angry, racist and sexist discussion from the site. A copy of the 'Netiquette' was firstly placed in the thread to alert students to appropriate language. I also suggested they focus on the issues raised in the readings and the lecture. Of the two choices of action general opinion among my colleagues was that the Netiquette was the best course of action in the interests of 'freedom of speech' and because a few (two) other students had countered some comments, it was considered 'self-correcting'. Importantly, had this occurred in a socially embodied space, the students would have been disciplined.

In addition, I was given articles on 'the best way to handle discussion sites'. The ethical issues were much more complex than this however and intensely difficult. Since the subject was being presented in mixed-mode students using the Internet discussion where able to speculate about the gender, sexuality and ethnicity of not only the lecturers but also the other students in their tutorial groups. This merely stoked the flames.

In a democratic society majority rule is a key concept… I sometimes think that the will of the majority is lost in the louder voices of special interest groups

What does the notion of 'freedom of speech' in an on-line environment mean and what particular notion of democracy is at work? It would seem that the disaffected students were "confronted by listening to other voices" (Singh, 1998, p.14) and found the anonymity of the web a chance to express their resentment. This type of 'teledemocracy' replaces 'deliberative democracy' (London, 1995). 'Teledemocracy' is democracy at a distance and that it is underpinned by the notion that "electronic discourse can remedy many of the shortcomings of representative democracy in contemporary mass society "(ibid, p.33). London argues that this is consistent with 'rational choice' or a 'market place' conception of the world in which interests conflict and compete (ibid. p.34). Deliberative democracy on the other hand, "is rooted in the ideal of self-governance in which political truths emerge not from the clash of pre-established interests and preferences but from reasoned discussion about issues involving the common good (op.cit.)

The identification by the above students with conservative ideological discourses positions other students as 'them' and in so doing, colonises their speaking space. There is evidence also, that there is lower penetration of the Net by those from non-English speaking background or those born overseas (Sydney Morning Herald, 29.6.99, p.3c, ABS, 1999) and a class dimension to access. For example, 47% of households in the top income quintile had a computer, compared with only 5% of those in the lowest quintile in 1996 (Australia Now, 1997). The Net therefore has the power to reproduce inequalities in everyday life (Kellner, 1997).

Inequalities in relation to access to the Net combined with the politics of resentment related to changing student demographics creates conditions for the circulation of dominant conservative ideological discourses. I now want to briefly turn to the notion of 'voice' because it is the progressivist pedagogical framework of 'voice' transposed to the web that needs some examination in this context. As a naturalistic pedagogical process, it has the potential to mask normative practices and reproduce inequalities. top

The Pedagogy of 'Voice'

"We live in confessional times" says Frank McCourt, when explaining the success of Angela's Ashes - his latest book which largely has a focus on ethnicity narrative (Slattery, 1999). It is a travelling pedagogy found in the global politics of reconciliation in many nation-states across the world (South Africa, Australia, Canada, England). Through sharing our differences in open dialogue we are giving 'voice' to those who were previously silenced.

'Voice' however, presumes that people want to, or indeed in the case of the Net can, speak. There is also the assumption that people will actually listen (Jones, 1998). By listen, I mean engage with the ideas of others in reasoned dialogue. That didn't happen in the case of The Other Side of the Argument, because as the examples above demonstrate, voice became a defiant 'talking back' (Ellsworth, 1994) because students felt a sense of loss of control. Importantly, the desire 'to know' the other had been removed (Jones, 1998).

The space for 'talking back' was made possible through a pedagogy that has an obsession with allowing 'talk' or "writing ad nauseam" at "the expense of disciplined and systematic approaches to handling a defined body of content" (Kalantzis et al, 1989, p. 35). The very nature of interactions in computer-mediated environments leans toward one-dimensional transactions that detach users from political or social responsibilities. Marxist analyses suggest "that the virtual class is aggressive and predatory…"and that "…the unchecked pursuit of the virtual world could destroy currently realized social advances, and lead to the abuses and inequalities characteristic of the colonial era." (Kroker, 1996, p. 169; Kellner, 1997).

Post-modern embodiment theorist Willson (1997) argues that virtual communities tend to distance individuals from their embodied selves and from their political and ethical obligations to others. With this tendency already inherent in computerised communication, we need to make sure that the medium does not become the message particularly with increased marketisation of education. The pedagogy of 'voice' has been shown to have a colonising demand for narrative (Jones, 1998) when attending to cultural diversity, along with a tendency for unstructured talk. When this pedagogy is transferred to the environment of the WWW there is real potential to reproduce inequalities in reality into cyberspace: which is of course, part of reality. top

Conclusion: Towards an ethic of difference

There are a number of ethical considerations in creating a 'safe' learning environment for students on the Internet. Some of the ethical concerns highlighted in the literature include, power, access, control, privacy and equity (Holt, 1998; Babbie 1996). In addition, the pursuit of technology without attendance to pedagogical assumptions can easily mean that we bypass "personal ethics or any concern regarding the possibility for aesthetic creativity, social solidarity, democratic discourse, or economic justice." (Kroker, 1996, p.178).

In terms of teaching about diversity in an increasingly globalised world it becomes difficult to speak of "identity…as two histories, one over here, one over there, never having spoken to one another" (Hall cited in Rizvi and Walsh, 1998, p. 11). Rizvi and Walsh (1998) suggest an ethic of difference as opposed to attempting to 'read difference' might hold possibilities. It would mean living with "disappointment, uncertainty and ignorance and productively 'going with the territory' of the 'postcolonial' classroom" (Jones, 1998, p.26).

Pedagogically this would mean moving the loci of control. Instead of spending time in surveillance of student activity on the WWW - as in the pedagogy of 'voice' - which creates borders, we need to use the medium as a site for the critique of knowledge production, as well as information retrieval. This cannot happen without an engagement with theory. Only then can students learn how to negotiate and struggle for meaning. This would mean learning within an ethic of difference while deliberately working towards the common good.

Thanks to Jane Breen for research assistance for this paper and Scott Poynting for comments. In addition, I would like to thank the anonymous referees for very helpful suggestions. top

Footnotes.

1. A thread is a continuous discussion on-line. It may or may not be continuous in the sense that it is based on one topic. Often it is a seamless exchange.
2. Sociologist C. Wright Mills declared that a sociologist's proper subject was the intersection of biography and history. "…he hammered home again and again the notion that people lived lives that were not only bounded by social circumstance but deeply shaped by social forces not of their own making" (Gitlin, 2000).
3. Hansonism is named after Pauline Hanson who led a party called 'One Nation' which gained seats in the 1996 federal election. Its platform was built on assimilation, the discontinuation of welfare and Aboriginal rights, and to wind back immigration. The policies they put forward were largely inward looking and extremely conservative. The One Nation Party was reported to have links with people in far right wing organisations. Pauline Hanson claimed to speak to the 'real' Australians who were sick of the 'noisy minorities'.

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Appendix 1: Overseas born in Bankstown (Slide generated from data.)

Appendix 2: Religious profile of Bankstown (slide generated from data)

About the author

Carol Reid
Lecturer in Cross-cultural studies
Faculty of Education and Languages
University of Western Sydney
Macarthur Australia

E-mal: c.reid@uws.edu.au