Just Google it! Digital literacy and the epistemology of ignorance
Contenu
Titre
Just Google it! Digital literacy and the epistemology of ignorance
Teaching in Higher Education
Créateur
Ibrar Bhatt
Alison MacKenzie
Sujet
Digital literacy
epistemology of ignorance
higher education
ignorance
literacy studies
Résumé
In this paper we examine digital literacy and explicate how it relates to the philosophical study of ignorance. Using data from a study which explores the knowledge producing work of undergraduate students as they wrote course assignments, we argue that a social practice approach to digital literacy can help explain how epistemologies of ignorance may be sustained. If students are restricted in what they can know because they are unaware of exogenous actors (e.g. algorithms), and how they guide choices and shape experiences online, then a key issue with which theorists of digital literacy should contend is how to educate students to be critically aware of how power operates in online spaces. The challenge for Higher Education is twofold: to understand how particular digital literacy practices pave the way for the construction of ignorance, and to develop approaches to counter it.
volume
24
numéro
3
pages
302-317
Date
April 3, 2019
doi
10.1080/13562517.2018.1547276
issn
1356-2517