What now, Week 5?

A few weeks ago, as part of the topic 'Cognitive, Social and Affective Presence', I created a mindmap, representing the Community of Inquiry framework, and also engaged in the discussion on the Lifesaver videos created by the Resuscitation Council. I have some new thoughts on this after having let my thoughts settle, and will now reflect on the two topics.

Community of Inquiry & the Lifesaver Videos

If you have forgotten what my mindmap looked like, you can find it here (click!). I will focus my reflections on the lifesaver videos for now, and return to the CoI framework a the end.

When I was posting on this topic, whether these videos (to be found through this link) could be lifesaving or not, I was speaking highly from my own socio-geographical context.

I still support what I stated in this forum post, but a colleague's post really reminded me of how contextual these things are. From my perspective, videos like this could do a lot in terms of cognitive presence, but that is highly due to the fact that there is a foundation of knowledge and experience through the public school system where you learn about lifesaving. Through highlighting the experience form Thailand and Bangladesh, two of my classmates illustrated how these videos wouldn't do the trick as there is not any tradition of lifesaving in the way presented in the video. Their comments made it very apparent to me how much of material I see straight away fits with my world view and how I grew up. Another classmate for example, posted a video where students were using street theatre to teach about lifesaving, and I couldn't resonate with that at all, even though I thought it was cool to see. It wouldn't work in the Swedish context.

So upon reflection, I can see how crucial it is to emphasise context whenever we are discussing examples or best practices. Something that can seem neutral almost never is. It is a reconnection to Freire (1993) for me:

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."

In this example of using the lifesaving video, the repercussions might not be as extreme, but it still carries with it history and will be more or less applicable to students from varying contexts, and all of this is connected to power. To relate it back to the topic of the week, it is a reminder of that frameworks exist within structures of power - everything does. We can never forget the foundations we stand on, or to connect with Academic Review 4 - our purpose as educators.

#Week5 #Revisit