Between Social Justice and Decolonisation: Exploring South African MOOC Designers' Conceptualisations and Approaches to Addressing Injustices

Autor/in	Adam, Taskeen
Titel	Between Social Justice and Decolonisation: Exploring South African MOOC Designers' Conceptualisations and Approaches to Addressing Injustices
Quelle	In: Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2020 (2020) 1, Artikel 7 (11 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1365-893X
Schlagwörter	Foreign Countries; Social Justice; Large Group Instruction; Online Courses; Design; Racial Bias; Social Bias; Equal Education; Economic Factors; Access to Computers; Cultural Awareness; Political Issues; Power Structure; Higher Education; Minority Groups; Blacks; South Africa + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Ausland; Soziale Gerechtigkeit; Online course; Online-Kurs; Racial discrimination; Rassismus; Ökonomischer Faktor; Cultural identity; Kulturelle Identität; Politischer Faktor; Hochschulbildung; Hochschulsystem; Hochschulwesen; Ethnische Minderheit; Black person; Schwarzer; Südafrika; Süd-Afrika; Republik Südafrika; Südafrikanische Republik
Abstract	As social justice and decolonisation discussions fill the physical and virtual corridors of universities in South Africa, educators, and in this case, MOOC designers, are inevitably influenced by them. They are prompted to reflect on such topics, whether in agreement or with scepticism. Provoked by one interviewee's comment that 'you could decolonise and still have an enormous amount of injustice', this paper investigates how South African MOOC designers conceptualise (in)justice, and how they attempt to address these injustices in and through their MOOCs. As notions such as 'social justice' and 'decolonisation' have multiple meanings and connotations, a framework was created to unpack the 'Dimensions of Human Injustice' namely, material, cultural-epistemic, and political/geopolitical injustices. These dimensions of injustice were used to analyse semi-structured interviews with 27 South African MOOC designers. MOOC designers who stressed cultural-epistemic injustices, focused on relevance, inclusive processes and the geopolitics of knowledge production. Those who stressed material injustices, focused on socio-economic disparities, infrastructural inequalities and the need to tackle these systemic problems at a societal level. Through illustrating that MOOC designers attempt to address injustices based on their different conceptualisations of (in)justice, this study argues that a multi-pronged approach to tackling the various dimensions of injustice perpetuated in and through MOOCs can lead to more holistic justice-oriented MOOCs that better enable learners. Additionally, justice-oriented efforts by South African MOOC designers, highlighted in this paper, can be seen as a guide for the MOOC space in general to take greater strides in creating MOOCs in more justice-oriented ways. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University. Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK. e-mail: jime@open.ac.uk; Web site: http://jime.open.ac.uk
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2022/1/01