Creating online discursive spaces that legitimate alternative ways of knowing

Although educators have long recognised prior learning and life experience in their pedagogical strategies epistemological or cultural difference has not generally been legitimated. Knowledge originating from within non-western cultural groups, whether indigenous or migratory has not been valued. Such hegemony has created negative consequences for members of minority groups and has led to the exclusion of a range of possible epistemologies that might enhance learning. The advent of asynchronous models of communication, and in particular online learning, offers possibilities for more inclusionary and validating environments and pedagogy, by creating the opportunity for reflection through the dissociation from time and space. Yet technology does not in itself determine social process and if, like education, it remains enmeshed in a Western paradigm the possibilities for change remain limited. We will propose a model of use for online discussion boards that recognises them as a separate ‘thinking space’ beyond the formality of the classroom. This allows us to create new discursive spaces in which the student has the opportunity to engage in learning in way that is culturally appropriate for themselves, valuing their own worldview and epistemology. In a culturally diverse classroom, the discussion board can become a central enabling point of reference that reduces the colonisation of the student by an academic steering media, allowing for praxis-based learning to occur. In such a model facilitation of the discursive and reflective processes assumes prominence, affording educators the opportunity to bridge the gap between the propositional and practical forms of knowledge construction.