ICT as political action – a thesis

Ray O'Neill

This web site presents the possibility of representing a thesis in a way other than the traditional written thesis which usually takes the form of a lengthy typescript or more recently a word processed book. This thesis is offered in a multimedia form as a web site using a wide range of media in an attempt to represent more clearly the research.

The main focus of my research is in examining my educational influence and transforming my embodied knowledge into explicit knowledge and from explicit knowledge into public knowledge (Varela et al: 1993). In making my embodied knowledge public I am responding to Snow’s (2001: 3) call to systematise personal knowledge so that it will be become publicly accessible and contribute to the knowledge base of teaching. In the thesis I show this process in action and explain its significance. In particular I aim to show my educational influence in the learning of others while I support them as students, administrators and colleagues. I explain how ICT have exhibited a transformational quality in supporting my own learning and the learning of colleagues. I explain how my educational knowledge has developed through my practice, as I have engaged colleagues and students in enquiries into their own learning as they ask and research the question: how can I improve what I do?

By asking the question, ‘How can I reconceptualise ICT as political action?’ I am asking whether it is possible to conceptualise ICT as a means of supporting individual human endeavour by people working in collaboration with others in life-affirming practices which enable them individually and collectively to create a new world for themselves.

• Can I provide students and colleagues with an opportunity to design and develop their own multimedia artifacts which are relevant to their own lives?
• By exploring and reflecting on their learning in producing these multimedia artifacts can they become creators of their own learning?
• Are there ways that I could work with colleagues to develop practices that are relevant to our lives and support us in becoming creators of their learning?
• How can I support my students to reach their capacity through the use of ICT?
• How can I use ICT to support political action?
• Can I develop my own theory of learning as I work and support others in their learning?’
• How do I demonstrate the validity of my evidence-based claims to knowledge?

These are the questions that I will address throughout the thesis. . The work of educators detailed in this thesis, although undertaken in the context of a school programme, frequently does not entail formal teaching rather it is, that form of teaching which is, after Buber (Hodes 1972), ‘undertaken most successfully when educators are not consciously trying to teach at all’. It is the form of teaching and learning that involves developing relationships of trust, commitment and friendship rather than focusing on formal curricula, pedagogies and methodologies. Later in this thesis and in the enveloping multimedia version examples will be given of ‘teachers acting spontaneously out of their own life’ through the support given to the Leaving Certificate Applied programme, and in supporting initiatives of the Setanta project. Throughout the thesis there is a struggle to represent wholeness within the confines of the linear linguistic form which we recognise as the format of a traditional thesis. Bohm’s (1979) challenge to fragmentation and the development of his idea of an ‘implicate order’ is reflected in this struggle and in the multimedia representation of the thesis which attempts to provide a non-linear, interactive, unified view of a life which rather than being simple and linear is complex and web-like. The evidence in various multimedia formats is available here.