A posthumanist critique of flexible online learning and its “anytime anyplace” claims
Abstract
Flexible approaches to online learning are gaining renewed interest in some part due to their
capacity to address emergent opportunities and concerns facing higher education. Importantly,
flexible approaches to online learning are purported to be democratizing and liberatory,
broadening access to higher education and enabling learners to participate in educational
endeavors at “anytime” from “anyplace.” In this article, we critique such narratives by showing
that flexibility is neither universal nor neutral. Using critical theory we demonstrate how
flexibility assumes imagined autonomous learners that are self-reliant and individualistic.
Through relevant examples we show how such a framing to flexibility is oppressive, and argue
that a contextual, relative, and relational understanding of flexibility may in fact be more
liberatory. Such an approach to flexibility, for example, may involve contextual and relational
efforts to relax prescribed curricula within courses or programs of study.
Description
The version of record is available at https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12779.Collections
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