TECHNOPARTICIPATION collection of chapters in Lee Campbell's LEAP INTO ACTION: CRITICAL PERFORMATIVE PEDAGOGIES BOOK COLLECTION
Dominant cultural expectations of ‘the student’ are moving steadily away from receiving collective instruction in a passive manner towards being able to individually (re)cons- truct the place, pace, timing and nature of any engagement with learning. As such, digital technologies are frequently described as reconfiguring contemporary forms of education. (Selwyn, 2011: 156)
In response to Nick Selwyn above, as we accept digital technology in everyday life, so too should we accept it as a learning tool. Yet, is technology really a learning tool or is it more of a way of socialising? Or can it function as both? Critical Digital Pedagogy is a philosophy and social movement where the digital is the framework within which critical pedagogy is practised. Students develop as autonomous self-reflective thinkers and doers in a constantly evolving digital age. Paige Abe and Nickolas A. Jordan suggest, ‘using social media in the classroom creates a new pat- tern of social encounter’ (2013: 17). Digital teaching practice should be viewed less as ‘social encounters’ (ibid.) and more as ‘performative events’ (Nunes, 2006: 130– 131). Within this event the student is ‘anything but marginal’ (ibid.: 130).
Developing a diverse identity as an artist, educator and interdisciplinary practitioner, my pedagogical interests have opened out to include questions of inclu- sivity in terms of the role of technology for improving access, participation and collaboration within the arts. Drawn from these interests, Part III explores the possibilities as well as the blind spots of enacting a Critical Digital Performative Pedagogy. It challenges learning taking place purely in the real ‘physical’ world with contributions by authors who are tutors who generate technoparticipation. They tap into the increasing importance of digital and virtual realities in students’ lives by helping them to engage with multiple technologies that build digital lite- racy thus ensuring that teaching and learning does not displace students’ unique life experiences.They employ technology to rapidly multiply the spaces and oppor- tunities for collaboration and participation—to achieve technoparticipation—using the digital learning environment as a space to not only reflect upon artistic practice but also to produce it as well as prompt statements and responses from students as
introduction to its limits. Many authors in contributions prior to Part III write about role of the (physical) body and embodied experience in teaching and learning.
A selection of contributions in Part III interrogate what digital forms of teaching and learning may mean for tutors providing possibilities for sensory engagement/immersion amongst students. Indeed, these contributions (Campbell, Childs and Childs) aim to uncover ‘the point at which the body is crucial’ (O’Gorman, 2015) in terms of achieving sensorial bodily immersion through digital/virtual means in class.
