Catching the sun with my bare handsWelcome to the fourth week of FLO! You have come so far already. We have explored some really key topics that are hopefully already giving you ideas and inspiration about your online facilitation practice. The topics we have explored so far have been focused on what we do, our facilitation practice. For the next two weeks, we shift our focus slightly to focus more on reflection inwards, onto who we are as practitioners and how that informs our practice. This intersection of practice and reflection is known as praxis, a central idea to the theory of critical pedagogy.  As articulated by Giroux (2006):

Critical pedagogy is a discourse for asserting the primacy of the political and the ethical as a central feature of educational theory and practice. Critical pedagogy makes clear that schools and other educational spheres cannot be viewed merely as instructional sites, but must be seen as places where culture, power, and knowledge come together to produce particular identities, narratives, and social practices. (p. 4)

The idea of praxis, or “theorizing practice and practicing theory” (Monchinski, 2008, p. 1), which can also be understood as a cyclical process of reflection and action, serves as a helpful reminder of the value of reflecting on what we do and why we do it.

This leads to our theme for the week, Pedagogical Values. This week, you will be invited to look inwards and reflect on your values, or “the ideals that give significance to our lives, that are reflected through the priorities that we choose, and that we act on consistently and repeatedly” (Hall, 2003, p.21); more specifically, we will encourage you to explore how your values inform and support your teaching practice, especially in the online learning context. Some examples of pedagogical values include: care, community, diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice. This week, you will have opportunities to:

  • Recognize the role of values in teaching practices;
  • Identify the relationship between values, intentions, and teaching practices, specifically those that relate to facilitating learning online;
  • Identify your own core pedagogical values; and
  • Describe specific teaching practices for the online context that speak to your identified pedagogical values.

This week follows the same format as weeks 2 and 3, with learning activities supported by your peer facilitators from Monday to Thursday, followed by reflection and feedback activities from Friday to Sunday. In addition, this week we will be gathering together for our second synchronous (web-conferencing) session, via Collaborate Ultra, on Thursday at 12:00pm (PST). The synchronous session will be recorded for those unable to make it. As usual, you are encouraged to complete the activities for this week in the order they appear, and please refer to the Course schedule for a list of all tasks to complete this week.

Good luck peer facilitation team! 😊

(Photo by Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash)

[Note for FLO facilitators: We recommend you include an audio option for the text above here if using a platform that does not have an audio feature built in. Remove this note before offering starts.]

Last modified: Tuesday, 4 August 2020, 9:37 AM