Though this was an interesting paper (PDF link that currently points to a 22 page MS-Word Doc), the demographics of the participants ("20 undergraduates and 10 graduates at a small midwestern liberal arts college who were enrolled in two online teacher preparation courses") work against the sharing of a diverse set of perspectives and, potentially, the insights that might arise. Basically, the paper lays out a set of feminist pedagogical principles, applies them in the form of a teaching method based on relatively self-organized small group discussions, and reports the results from the perspective of Gee's (2011) Building Task Tools. Overall, the authors argue, "relational-type small group online discussions provide opportunities to expand accessibility and equity through community development and content learning while also impacting future teachers' identities." I think, though, that the results would have been very different with different sets of students. Some students (I count myself among them) would resist being placed into a small group for the duration of the course, and it's hard to see this method as promoting autonomy when it's a core requirement. With a less like-minded set of participants, there would be more than just one person criticized for "focused on ensuring they provided a detailed 'right' answer rather than having a discussion between classmates," or for that matter violating other norms of relationship-building small group settings. I wish the authors had been forced to grapple with these wider issues, but alas, the setting was too small for that.
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