Date of Award
10-30-2020
Publication Type
Master Thesis
Degree Name
M.Ed.
Department
Education
Keywords
ambivalence in teaching, higher education, knowledge creation, Textbook selection, university professors’ pedagogy, use of educational materials
Supervisor
Andrew A. Allen
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This study utilized a qualitative case study design methodology to explore the corporatization of educational materials and its effects and influence on the ways university professors or instructors teach in an age of globalization. The study’s fundamental purpose was to investigate the views of university professors’ use of pre-designed, pre-selected teaching materials such as textbooks, workbooks, teaching manuals, and coursewares for teacher education program at one mid-sized comprehensive Canadian university. The researcher investigated the pedagogical experiences of nine university professors recruited through the Dean’s Office in the faculty of education via random sampling. The study findings revealed that textbooks are an antinomy as participants appeared to have ambivalent values for using them as pedagogical tools; on the one hand they supported textbooks, while at the same time they experienced cognitive dissonance as they questioned the content of the textbooks. This study revealed the paradox of textbooks whereby governmentality and performativity in pedagogy in general and educator agency in particular imposed by neoliberal institutions can limit the scope of teaching in higher education institutions. Furthermore, textbook selection and use often face time limitations as one-size-fits-all primers, and comes at the cost of creativity, research, knowledge deconstruction, and knowledge creation. Similarly, the findings suggest that pedagogy is a complex phenomenon that requires pedagogical orientations to deconstruct subtle sites through academic collaboration, reciprocity, and avoidance of corporatized pedagogical tools in the process of knowledge creation and its deconstruction.
Recommended Citation
Zaidi, Syed Ali Nasir, "The Corporatization of Educational Materials and Its Effects or Influence on the Ways That University Instructors and Professors Teach in an Age of Globalization" (2020). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 8497.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/8497