George McMurtry Lecture

Teaching Technology for Social Justice

Professor Lynette Kvasny

Friday, Sep 27, 2013
2:30 pm
Room 208 IST

ABSTRACT

As an educator, my objective is to raise students’ consciousness of both the opportunities and problems that arise from our world’s growing reliance on information and communication technology (ICT). I do so by bringing a social justice perspective to the study of ICT and society. According to Adams, Bell and Griffin (1997), social justice education utilizes experiential pedagogical principles that help students to understand power relations expressed in oppressive systems that incite feelings of marginalization, exploitation of labor, threats of violence, cultural imperialism, and feelings of powerlessness. As students apply these themes to familiar ICTs and their digital culture, they become conscious of their operating worldview and are able to examine alternative ways of understanding the world and social relations. Social justice education has the potential to prepare students to become something more than technologists who are able to effectively design, implement and manage information systems. They are becoming people who are sophisticated in their understanding of social interactions amongst diverse groups, and are able to critique current technology arrangements and envision new possibilities for ICT and society.