Start with the pedagogies, not the technologies

As a lecturer in cultural studies at a regional Australian University, my teaching is based on a pedagogy that is consistent with the concerns of cultural studies.

These concerns include the notion of discourse and the nature of 'truth', the social construction of knowledge, representation and and the politics of reception, and identity, commodification, and resistance.

Henry Giroux has, for the last thirty years, been engaged in a sustained attempt to link critical pedagogy and cultural studies in a project aimed at developing a more democratic culture and a politivally aware citizenry. Douglas Kellner summarises Giroux's work, saying that in a time where new technologies, discourses, and practices are emerging almost daily, we need not simply more sophisticated ways of acquiring knowledge about our culture and the society in which we live, we need a critical pedagogy that struggles for democratization and against injustice.