Abstract

This article explores what happens to interpersonal and power dynamics when tutors use closed-group Facebook pages as a social networking tool in their tutorial groups with first and second year Bachelor of Education (BEd) students at the Wits School of Education (WSoE). It argues that this literacy practice creates an alternative pedagogical space that enables critical practices in relation to writing. These pages create a space that brings students' out-of-school literacy practices into a domain which normally promotes formal, academic literacy practices; a schooled space; a space where students feel safe enough to make their voices heard; a space where there are some interesting shifts in power relationships, identities, norms of communication and modes of learning. The research analyses the writing of tutors and students on these pages from a critical literacy perspective and makes use of the critical literacy model presented by Janks (2010) to see how this space changes issues of power, access, diversity and design by creating new relationships and new forms of interaction, language and texts.

Citation

Reid, J. (2011). "We Don't Twitter, We Facebook": An Alternative Pedagogical Space that Enables Critical Practices in Relation to Writing. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 10(1), 58-80. Retrieved March 22, 2023 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/51547/.

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Keywords

• Access to Education
• computer mediated communication
• Critical Theory
• Foreign Countries
• Interpersonal Communication
• literacy
• Power Structure
• Self Concept
• social networks
• student attitudes
• teaching methods
• tutors
• Writing (Composition)