This chapter aims to introduce readers to critical theoretical orientations necessary for online pedagogues, including feminist pedagogies, praxis pedagogy, culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy, and embodied practices. These critical theoretical orientations undergird a critical digital pedagogy in an online master's course, Diverse College Students. Critical digital pedagogical strategies employed by the authors, such as high context communication, community and relationship building, and visual and audio pedagogies, are discussed. The authors conclude the chapter by engaging in a self-reflexive activity, opening space for insights about the role of current political events, personal student successes, and an engaged community beyond the classroom. Recommendations for faculty wishing to engage a critical digital pedagogy are offered, as are recommendations for future research.
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How might faculty, pedagogues, and scholars engage in creating critical, culturally responsive, and culturally sustaining online learning environments? The authors agree with Gloria Ladson-Billings (2014) assertion that “our pedagogical practice has to be buttressed with significant theoretical grounding” (p. 83). Such theoretical grounding follows bell hooks’ (1994) conceptualization of theory as liberatory practice. Online pedagogues cannot simply transfer traditional pedagogical strategies into online environments without thinking about how the medium of educational engagement or delivery shifts possibilities. Nor can online pedagogues emphasize solely skills-based, technological, and technocratic approaches to online teaching and learning. In the digital age, we must also account for technocultures (Luppicini, 2012), hardware and software, and begin critically examining the role of digital technologies in the complicated relationships that undergird social and educational (in)equality (Gin, Martínez-Alemán, Rowan-Kenyon, & Hall, 2017; Nakamura & Chow-White, 2012; Noble, 2018). As the authors have argued previously (Montelongo & Eaton, Under Review), online education, particularly when focused on the multiplicity (Hames-García, 2011) and heterogeneity of people’s identities, cultures, and histories, necessarily needs to account for even more complex pedagogical strategies, critical reflection, and personal commitment. As the authors aim to build an anti-oppressive education (Kumashiro, 2000), the use of a wide range of critical theoretical perspectives humbles us to account for social structures, personal positionality (or standpoint), history, politics, sociopolitical realities, and a willingness to admit that, sometimes we just do not know (Ladson-Billings, 2014).