Ideological Contestations in Faculty’s Conversational Categories for Students in Faculty Online Learning Communities

Abstract

Faculty Online Learning Communities (FOLCs) have shown potential gains in supporting instructor implementation of new curricula. Influenced by work from Ilana Horn (2007), we set out to determine if FOLCs recreate or challenge dominant ideologies towards students as fast, slow, or lazy. After analyzing transcripts from recordings of FOLC meetings, we found that while these discussions at times recreate problematic student framings, there are also explicit challenges to this ideology (e.g. away from dominant problematic framings toward a focus on student learning). We find that these contestations are taken up more in later meetings though there isn’t necessarily a clear convergence on these alternative ideologies. In further research, we hope to determine if convergence toward alternative ideologies and a focus on student learning occurs more frequently over time within the FOLC.