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HYPERPEDAGOGY: INTERSECTIONS AMONG POSTSTRUCTURALIST HYPERTEXT THEORY, CRITICAL INQUIRY, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE PEDAGOGIES. James S. Dwight III Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Curriculum and Instruction Megan Boler James Garrison Susan Magliaro Rebecca Scheckler Karen Swenson March 15, 2004 Blacksburg, VA Keywords: Educational Foundations; Hypertext; Poststructuralism; E-Learning; Internet; Progressive Education; Philosophy of Technology; Philosophy of Education; Instructional Technology; Progressive Education; Curriculum Reconceptualism; Dewey Studies; Critical Inquiry; Social Justice Pedagogy; Hyperpedagogy Hyperpedagogy: Intersections among poststructuralist hypertext theory, critical inquiry, and social justice pedagogies. James S. Dwight III ABSTRACT Hyperpedagogy seeks to actualize social justice pedagogies and poststructuralist theorizing in digitally enhanced and online learning environments. Hyperpedagogy offers ways to incorporate transactional pedagogies into digital curricula so that learners throughout the United States’ pluralistic culture can participate in e-learning. Much of the hyperbole promoting e-learning is founded on social-efficiency pedagogies (i.e. preparing tomorrow’s workers for the information-based, new global economy) that tend to homogenize culturally pluralistic learners. The premium placed on a strict adherence to rigid learning systems inculcated within standards- based reform movements typically, moreover, discriminate against historically marginalized learners. Hyperpedagogy seeks to elucidate the closeting of privilege in e-learning so that learners of color, female learners, and homosexual learners can be better represented in the literature than is currently practiced. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to thank Jim Garrison for his dedicated help these past few years. Jim helped to make sure I was funded so I could remain physically nourished while I studied and wrote this document. He also sparked my intellectual appetite providing me with another sort of nourishment. He never failed to open doors of inquiry for me, as he has done for many others. Second, I would like to thank Megan Boler for opening yet more doors for my curiosity and her patient tutelage. She also helped me find work that kept me at my studies and aided my project tremendously. For both my chairs, thank you for showing me just how important empathy, passion, and caring are for teaching. Thank you also for prompting me to think more critically and search for workable solutions. A reader should readily note their influence in this text. Finally, thank you for not giving up on me and being tireless readers. For Rebecca Scheckler, thank you for blazing a trail in Instructional Technology and Social Foundations for others to follow. Thank you also for pushing me to read Dewey more earnestly and for making strong connections among poststructuralist theory, feminism, and progressive pedagogies in your research that has greatly aided my efforts. For Sue Magliaro, thank you for your insistence of “keep going” with respect to curriculum theorizing and thinking about instructional design. For Karen Swenson, thank you for exhibiting instances of effective and affective online collaboration to this Luddite. Had you not shown me how digital technologies can promote thoughtful dialogue, I would never have started down this path. For all my committee members, I have truly enjoyed our conversations and only wish we could start this process over again so that I might continue to benefit from our dialogue. I will truly miss this. For my family, thank you for believing that I could accomplish this feat. Over the years, you have all shown me kindness and support – emotional and physical and financial. For my sister Dianne, thank you for your visits and the warm home to which I could turn to as my shelter. I feel a part of your family and that has salvaged me from myself on more than one occasion. For Janet, your strength and wisdom have been two pillars upon which I have relied and will continue to rely upon. For my mother and father, putting your aid to my efforts is difficult to encompass in words. Biologically, you two are the sine non qua of my efforts, but your love and inspiring are equally important. You invested quite a bit in my education and this text is the fruit in many respects, but certainly not all as this is yet another step in a long and continuing progression. For Stella, without your love and caring, I would never have had the emotional stamina to make this occur. You have guided me; you are as constant as the northern star; you are my Beatrice: “such was the virtue of her greeting that I seemed to experience the height of bliss”. You have inspired my La Vita Nuova; you are the embodiment of poetic creation. I love you: i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) CONTENTS Abstract i Acknowledgements ii List of Tables ix List of Figures vii Hyperpedagogy: Intersections among poststructuralist hypertext theory, critical inquiry, and social justice pedagogies. 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Hyperpedagogy’s relationship to hypertext theories 12 Defining hypertext 17 Lemke’s vision for hypertext 29 Landow’s hypertext theory 32 Hypertext and Derrida’s decentered semiotics 34 Hypertext and Barthes’ poststructuralist semiotics 39 Pluralistic properties in hypertext 49 Reconfiguring text and thought 53 Hypertechne 56 Hypertext and cultural institutions 58 What are we to do? 62 An example of hypertext in practice 63 Chapter summary 75 Chapter 2: Towards a poststructuralist theory for e-learning 77 Philosophical controversies concerning epistemology and pedagogy 79 An amplification: epistemology and pedagogy in the Renaissance and Enlightenment 81 The modern era and objectivity applied to education 85 No child left behind: An embodiment of the essentialist tradition 88 Modernism, media comparisons, and structuralist semiotics 90 Human information processing, cognitive determinism, and Instructional Systems Design 95 Postmodernism in education 99 Hyperpedagogy and Foucault’s disruptive semiotics 101 Hyperpedagogy as congealed labor 118 Cyborgs, posthumans, & flickering signifiers 121 Chapter summary 126 Chapter 3: Hyperpedagogy at odds with information age pedagogies 128 Traditional curriculum theory 131 Bobbitt’s The Curriculum 136 Tyler’s “Rationale” 139 Kliebards’ critique of bureaucratic efficiency in education 147 Dewey’s pragmatic curriculum 152 Towards a definition of curriculum. 169 Eisner’s six curricular ideologies. 171 Curriculum reform and American insularity 175 A history of rigor and educational scientism. 180 E-learning in the information age 186 The neoliberal myth 194 Regimes of truth: Neo-con educational agendas 198 Chapter summary 202 Chapter 4: Hyperpedagogy as poiêsis 204 Poiêsis, nature, and education 207 Poiêsis and hyperpedagogy 213 My pedagogical creed as an example of poiêsis 220 Artistic creativity at odds with curricular reform 231 Dewey’s Rejection of classical metaphysics 233 Poiêsis as a critique of the classical metaphysics 239 The philosophic fallacy’s place in Western metaphysics and education 241 Education, conversation, and poiêsis 245 Constitutional convention 246 Chapter summary 251 Chapter 5: Binaries and e-learning: Gender, race, and sexuality in educational cyberspaces. 253 Hyperpedagogy as a critique of dualisms and binaries 255 Digital dualisms 266 The digitized body 269 Deconstructing categorization 274 Cartesian binaries and a sense of place in cyberspace 278 Digital discrimination: How computers are used to instill a sense of cultural inferiority 285 Technophilia/homophobia 286 Chapter summary 292 Chapter 6: Hyperpedagogy as praxis 294 Dismantling the master’s house 296 Hyperpedagogy as a pedagogy of discomfort 302 Hyperpedagogy and Freire’s social justice pedagogies 313 Feminist critiques of Freire’s masculinizing heroism 323 Closeting privilege in education 328 The tropes of hyperspace and gender 334 Gender and CMC: Disrupting masculine discursive norms 344 Cyberrace 351 Confronting the null curriculum of heterosexism 358 Chapter summary 363 Conclusion 365 References 371 Appendices 388 Appendix 1-1 388 Appendix 1-2 390 Appendix 2-1 391 Appendix 2-2 394 Appendix 4-1 395 Appendix 6-1 397 Appendix 6-2 400 Notes 404 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1: Forum Overview 69 Figure 1-2: Forum You Choose 70 Figure 1-3: Controversial Forum 71 Figure 1-4: Teacher Responsibility Forum 72 Figure 2-1: Bentham’s Panopticon 86 Figure 2-2: Human Information Processing Model 96 Figure 2-3: The Eye 107 Figure 2.4: Noise 124 Figure 2.5: Coordination 125 Figure 4-1: Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation 214 Figure 4-2: Comparable Formulas for Escape Velocity – Earth and Blackhole 215 Figure 4-3: Blackboard Discussion Board (Collapsed) 221 Figure 4-4: Blackboard Discussion Board