"Identity" Constructions in Online Learning Events: Gender, Subjectivities, and the Productive Effects of Power

• Author / Creator

  Lawlor, Carmen G

• ABSTRACT

  Advances in computer technology have created powerful opportunities for learners to engage with others, producing very different contexts for learning, and for negotiating our very way of being. Yet, engagement in these virtual learning environments also raises many questions around how our (re)positioning within the discourses available to us, structures our understanding of self, our social reality, and our subjectivities. In this study I embarked upon a poststructural critique of the experiences of six women enrolled in a graduate online learning program to explore how subject positions and subjectivities are produced, the possible enactments of self within this context, and the ways in which these women resisted or adhered to the dominant discourses in their individual identifications. My investigation identified four discourses that influenced the ways in which their subjectivities were shaped, including discourses of difference; competence; gender; and connection, conflict, and control.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Identity
  • Gender
  • Power
  • Online Learning
  • Subjectivity

• Graduation date

  Spring 2013

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R34S4J

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.