Abstract:

Critical pedagogy emphasises the political character of education and commits itself to social transformation in the interest of democracy and social justice (Giroux, 2005). Ellsworth (1999) notes that the rationalist assumptions and implicit power dynamics informing the critical pedagogical discourse, if not properly theorised and critically problematised, may give rise to repressive myths perpetuating domination in the classroom. The question of who produces valid knowledge, raised by this author, is particularly relevant to the African context (see Lin and Martin, 2005; McLaren and Farahmandpur, 2005; Newstead, 2008). As noted by Cornbleth (1990: 50) "In so far as the covert and implicit aspects of the curriculum enable students to develop socially valued knowledge and skills… or to form their own peer groups and subcultures, they may contribute to personal and collective autonomy and to possible critique and challenge of existing norms and institutions". At the same time, students bring aspects of their own cultural background into their responses to the demands of formal education.

The question of how to educate South African students for the digital age often revolves around the balance between conforming to as opposed to challenging established practices, often imported tout court from the West without much consideration of cultural, technological and academic dependency. Some authors (Cochrane et al. 2012) note the need to integrate the use of technology such as social media into journalism education for instance. The affordances of Interactive (particularly Web-based) technologies make it possible to link social learning approaches and social media use. McLoughlin and Lee (2010) speak about Pedagogy 2.0 to emphasise the importance of student-generated content as well as context.

In this paper I reflect on the use of social media as a tool of communication and research in two courses: An Honours/Master module in digital media in the School of Journalism and Media Studies and an Honours module in ICT Education in the Education Department at Rhodes University. While students engage in similar activities, the differences in terms of field of study, age and socio-economic background of these two groups provide the scope for interesting observations. Analysis of digital texts and multimedia products as well as formal and informal feedback reveal different attitudes, expectations and perceived usefulness of ICT. Having taught both courses, employing comparable teaching and assessment strategies, I believe this paper constitutes a valuable and relatively rare comparison of digital media integration across disciplines.

Keywords:

Critical pedagogy, ICT Education, ICT, South Africa.