2 Virtual Bodies, Material Implications Black Feminist Epistemology as a Framework for Online Education

Cultural Narratives and Material Conditions Surrounding Online Education

Online education is often perceived as an alternative to the traditional and more formally accepted f2f education (Di Leo, 2020). As a result, online education is often understood as education for mostly non-traditional students. For example, Sapp and Simon (2005, p. 471) note that online courses can serve “diverse and hard-to-reach student populations.” These populations taking online courses are also perceived to live “complicated lives” (Fike & Fike, 2008, p. 71). Moreover, June Griffin and Deborah Minter (2013, p. 146) share that online learning “can alleviate some of the practical challenges of getting to class that often lead ‘at risk’ students to drop out of face-to-face classes (e.g., irregular work schedules, unreliable transportation, lack of childcare, other familial obligations).” Speaking to the material conditions of students who tend to gravitate toward online courses, Ji-Hye Park and Hee Jun Choi (2009, p. 215) add that adult learners who do not receive support from their families are “more likely to drop out of online courses.”

But accommodating students who have trying circumstances is not the only perceived benefit of online learning. Some scholars believe that online education can also address issues of diversity. For example, some have argued that online education can be empowering (Chick & Hassell, 2009) and provide opportunities for students to participate in a class on a more “equal footing” than they would have in an f2f classroom (Sapp & Simon, 2005, p. 484). The invisibility of students’ material bodies in online courses is said to have the capacity to “break down barriers to learning such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and the social obstacles related to popularity and fashionability” (Sapp & Simon, 2005, p. 484), even though the technology that facilitates online learning has been well documented as not neutral (see Migueliz Valcarlos et al., 2020; and Vorstermans & Mohler, this volume). Scholars have also claimed that online writing courses are agentic because students have control over the choices that they make in the courses in terms of topics, genres, and digital tools (Stella & Corry, 2016, p. 166), a claim that disregards the abilities of students to make these choices in the first place (Houlden & Veletsianos, 2021).

My analysis of my online students’ perceptions of online learning corroborates the cultural narrative that online learning is the de facto solution to problems faced by non-traditional students. In my fully online first-year writing course, I asked students to share their thoughts on online education as a substitute for face-to-face education. To protect the identities of my students, I use pseudonyms. In response to this prompt, Yesenia shared the following: “It was very difficult for me to get a job during the school year because my classes were so scattered [that] I did not have sufficient time in between to go to work. However, if I had taken online classes, I could have found a job with ease because of the flexibility.” Her “scattered” schedule encouraged her to consider online learning. She was clearly compelled to place the onus of responsibility on herself to design a schedule conducive to obtaining a job, and when that failed to materialize Yesenia shifted to online learning. Because her courses did not line up how she wished them to, she took it upon herself to fix the situation by taking courses online.

Similarly, Xavier shared the following: “I had a friend who went to a university for a year and had to drop out. It was just simply not right for her. She now attends college online, is on the honour roll, and is planning on graduating pre-vet next year.” Telling in Xavier’s response is that traditional onsite learning was “not right” for their friend. This response draws from the rhetoric of “fit” in which students’ “complicated lives” (Fike & Fike, 2008, p. 71) can make onsite learning challenging. Moreover, such students are “left to their own devices to fit themselves” into places “or drop out of the higher education system” (Oswal, 2015, p. 263).

This idea was shared among other students. For instance, Ann revealed the following: “I believe it [online learning] gives kids that might have troubles in school the chance to still succeed, and if you take online courses seriously, like I do, you can truly benefit so much.” Although she did not elaborate on the kinds of trouble that students might have in school that would require them to take online courses, it was evident that she believed in the value of online education for students with “troubles.” In fact, Ann added the following: “I have grown up watching so many troubled kids get taken to boot camps or other places because of behavioural problems. When these troubled kids get out of these places, the best thing they can start to do for themselves is go to school. I believe the best option for them is online school. Finishing school can be such a big accomplishment for kids that really face troubles throughout their lives.”

These representations portray online education as the “solution” to “problems” faced by non-traditional students, problems that contribute to challenges in their obtaining a traditional f2f education (Moeller, 2009). Positioning online education as a solution to a perceived problem is concerning because there are structural inequalities that disadvantage an already vulnerable group of students (called “at risk” in some of the literature). Yet many of my own students hold these perceptions, perhaps because of narratives that they themselves have heard and internalized. Romantic notions of online education for under-represented students might align with neo-liberal logics by which students themselves are asked to “fix” the “issues” that cause them not to perform as well as their counterparts when these issues are actually structural and institutional (Cherry et al., 2021; Grimaldi & Ball, 2021; Houlden & Veletsianos, 2021). More concerning, though, is how online students themselves often internalize these neo-liberal logics and see online learning as neutral, so that any issues that arise are their own rather than connected to political and economic conditions.

For example, in the fall of 2019, I attended a writing conference at which a presenter, who identified as having a disability, shared how, if it were not for online courses, they would not have been able to earn a degree. The narrative was met mostly with nods of agreement: “How wonderful an opportunity the presenter had to be able to earn a degree online.” However, I could not help thinking about whether the presenter had desired online learning from the outset or was simply influenced by the lack of accommodation in traditional f2f learning. Much like Yesenia, Xavier, and Ann, the presenter believed that online education was the solution to their problem rather than understanding how, as Oswal (2018, p. 4) argues, a “built environment or a social structure [can] … also be disabling, and, in fact, be the cause and whereabouts of disability.” It can be seen that these narratives do not demonstrate the possibility that social, economic, and political structures, as opposed to students’ personal situations, contribute to their challenges in academia.

Although many believe that online education creates a positive opportunity for a population that otherwise would not be able to attend school, some scholars raise concerns about disparities in online education, including how it continues to marginalize and exclude a population already “othered.” In “Going the Distance with Online Education,” Jorge Larreamendy-Joerns and Gaea Leinhardt (2006, p. 570) argue that “distance education has always been known for its departure from the conditions in which teaching and learning ‘naturally’ take place.” They believe that, to a certain extent, distance education presents itself as a “pedagogical oddity” (p. 570). They add that one of the roles of distance education in higher education is to be a “substitute for on-campus learning” (p. 577). I argue that the idea of distance education as a “substitute” is significant because it troubles the idea that online education is a better “fit” for non-traditional students. For example, in “Fault Lines in the Terrain of Distance Education,” Laura Brady (2001, p. 348) argues that, when economic factors motivate pedagogy, the gap between access and equity can be widened as teachers and their students are “differentially displaced.” Importantly, Brady asks us to pay attention to how the metaphor “distance learning” implies displacement (p. 351) and that access to technology should be explored as one reason that online students might struggle.

This idea is corroborated by Michael W. Gos (2015), who argues in “Nontraditional Student Access to OWI” that many writing program administrators and OWI (online writing instruction) teachers take for granted computer use in students’ homes. Gos reminds readers that family income plays a significant factor in computer ownership (p. 311) and that students who do not have access to computers at home might rely on the computers in public libraries, but their access in these spaces might be limited. This limitation was especially true under conditions posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, for even access to libraries or the internet in public spaces was limited or restricted (Manzoor & Bart, 2021). As I discuss elsewhere (Arzu-Carmichael, 2021), and as many scholars have indicated, a sense of place matters to how students engage virtually and materially in online writing courses.

With a critical eye to cultural narratives surrounding online education and its effects on non-normative bodies, Marie Moeller and Julie Jung (2014) offer ideas that can help us to grapple with the material conditions of online education. In “Sites of Normalcy: Understanding Online Education as Prosthetic Technology,” they draw from scholarship in disability studies to examine how certain conceptualizations of online education “reproduce an ideology of normalcy that marks difference as deficiency” (para. 2) and whereby “disparaging attitudes toward online education become attached to the bodies of its users” (para. 3). Moeller and Jung challenge this construct of online education as breaking down barriers to learning when they argue that this “altruistic agenda” reveals how online education “helps to sustain the status quo by providing the means and rationale for keeping some bodies out of traditional educational spaces” (para. 6). For instance, in the foreword to this volume, Dolmage speaks to issues of proctoring technologies that contribute to mandated timed test taking. These non-normative bodies of which Moeller and Jung speak include people with disabilities, people living in remote areas, employees, and parents.

The authors’ use of prosthetics as a metaphor to argue that we need to pay attention to how technologies (like online education) maintain an ideology of normalcy is also important in understanding issues such as presence and absence because they allow us to ask questions not only about which students are served by online education but also why. Moeller and Jung argue further that, by providing access to online education for “at risk” students, institutions do not then need to make any necessary material and ideological changes that otherwise would have included the students. As Paolo Freire (2000, p. 74) asserted, “the solution is not to integrate them into the structures of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become ‘beings for themselves.’” To be clear, I am not arguing that online education should not be an option for students who might need it; instead, I am arguing that, when online education is the only means through which a population of students can earn an education, we should question this reality and advocate for change. This change is especially crucial given our recent experience with online education, which became the only means of learning for most students because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not surprisingly, online education continues to target non-traditional and “at risk” students. In my research on online programs, I discovered that one institution in the American southwest described its distance learning program as “designed to serve students who may not be able to pursue an education through traditional means.” Another institution relied on its former and current online students to share their experiences, and one student indicated that “I am a different learner, I am a different student, I am different from the norm, …” arguing that the online program offerings at the institution nurtured this difference. Although it was the student who noted this difference, online students typically have been described with emotionally loaded terms such as “disadvantaged,” “low performing,” “educationally deprived,” and “at risk.” When students are described as at risk, they are typically thought of as struggling academically because of their personal backgrounds. For example, the common notion that online learning is ideal for students typically introverted in f2f classes suggests that we value students who speak up in class. These classifications highlight the harm that online education can do to students already marginalized because of their personal characteristics or backgrounds, especially when they are expected to accommodate themselves in online instructional settings. As Collins and co-authors find in Chapter 4 of this book, the voices and experiences of marginalized students must be centred in narratives about online education. The above literature reveals that, though online education has its benefits, it also has aspects that are complicated and potentially harmful to certain populations.

Some scholars have worked hard to avoid the fact that issues of online education can be explained at an individual student level by seeking connections between student performances and individual student characteristics, such as age, race/ethnicity, gender, GPA, financial aid, and history of online course withdrawal. For Cochran et al. (2014), if these “risk factors” are known, then educators can predict which students might drop out of online courses, and there could be strategies of intervention in place to prevent the dropouts from occurring. Although Cochran et al.’s findings showed some variables, other studies revealed more definitive relationships among students’ characteristics. For example, in “Adaptability to Online Learning: Differences across Types of Students and Academic Subject Areas,” Di Xu and Shanna Smith Jaggars (2013) conducted a study of students’ adaptability to online courses. Their study revealed that “males, younger students, Black students, and students with lower levels of prior academic performance had more difficulty adapting to online courses” compared with their performance in f2f courses (p. 6).

Although the data presented here seemingly are meant to help institutions identify better ways to assist students who might struggle with online courses, these generalizations do not account for the role of the institution in why these characteristics matter so much to how students adapt to online education. In other words, we should consider the social and political structures and their oppressiveness, as opposed only to students’ personal backgrounds, that could create barriers for some students but not others. Thus, recognizing that black feminist epistemology “was born from the need to resist oppressive structures” (Moore, 2018, p. 193), I argue that this framework can contribute to our conceptualization of online education and the bodies made to fit in this space.

Black Feminist Epistemology for Online Writing Instruction

The discussions above show cultural narratives about online education and material conditions of bodies that participate in online education. What does a black feminist epistemology have to offer to how we think about such cultural narratives and material conditions of online education? Collins (2009, p. 270) reminds us that epistemology investigates “why we believe what we believe to be true”; it “points to the ways in which power relations shape who is believed and why.” How we come to understand online education in the way that we do, including recognizing why some bodies are oriented toward this space, is based on traditional knowledge claims about what online education affords and to whom. A black feminist articulation of online education would challenge these traditional knowledge claims about education and discourses (Henry, 2005), contribute to growing calls for online pedagogies that draw from black critical theoretical ways of knowing (Humphrey & Davis, 2021), and reveal how virtual bodies experience material inequalities (Asenbaum, 2021; Nakamura, 2020). Online education is presented as a solution to the problems faced by marginalized students. Furthermore, these students then believe that online education is the solution to their problems (Moeller & Jung, 2014); for example, for me to be able to care for my child, I must teach online. Interestingly, though, marginalized students oriented toward online education, because of their material conditions, are themselves then blamed when they later fail and drop out of online courses.

Nirmal Puwar (2004) takes up ideas of marginalized bodies in Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies out of Place. She questions what happens when bodies not expected to occupy certain places do occupy them (p. 1). The innate relationship between bodies and spaces is undeniable. Puwar reminds readers that, even though today women and racialized minorities are in positions that they were previously excluded from, “social spaces are not blank and open for any body to occupy.… While all can, in theory, enter, it is certain types of bodies that are tacitly designated as being the ‘natural’ occupants of specific positions” (p. 8). Indeed, following Ahmed (2001), Kellie Sharp-Hoskins and Julie Jung (2017, p. 177) note that “histories of who and what matters render some spaces more accessible to some bodies than others.” My own lived experiences as a black woman and a mother seem to align with the ideas that, though some bodies seem to belong to certain spaces, “others are marked out as trespassers, who are, in accordance with how both spaces and bodies are imagined (politically, historically, and conceptually), circumscribed as being ‘out of place.’ … [T]hey are space invaders” (Puwar, 2004, p. 8). Thus, I assert that black feminist epistemology in online education can lead us to counter normative ways of thinking about who belongs in certain spaces and asking more difficult questions about the role of the institution in issues of presence and absence in online courses, issues that also bring to the forefront how bodies matter in online places and how they matter differently.

For three years, I worked as a writing program coordinator; for one of those years, I took my son to work with me. At two months old, he started to accompany me to work as I attended meetings, led workshops, and mentored new graduate teaching assistants at my former institution. My supervisor was understanding, and I never had to ask if I could bring my son with me to work. She even offered her office to me to breastfeed my child. Although I was welcomed to bring my son to work, I always worried about snickers and stares indicating that I was invading someone else’s space. I did not feel like a “natural” occupant of this space. In this regard, Puwar (2004, p. 8) admits that, though the relationship between certain bodies and spaces will certainly change, it will not be without consequence since it will be shifting how these bodies traditionally have been placed. As my experience suggests, embodied spatial practices invite conversations about how power shows up in the classroom (hooks, 1994) and how bodies show up in educational spaces (Hill, 2019). In this regard, I argue that we can better respond to issues of presence and absence in online spaces through a black feminist epistemology, particularly by accounting for the relationship between bodies and technologies. There is an inherent relationship among technologies, places, and bodies. For example, in “‘Wanted: Some Black Long Distance [Writers]’: Blackboard Flava-Flavin and Other Afrodigital Experiences in the Classroom,” Carmen Kynard (2007) challenges existing narratives of online communication that recognize how students represent their racial identities. Kynard draws from the work of critical geographer Kathrine McKittrick to remind us that “geographies are always infused with distinct yet multiple knowledges and language systems” (p. 334). Kynard reminds us that, “Since space and place are always much more than just vessels that contain peoples and their social relations, geographies represent connective and connected sites of struggle” (p. 334). Thus, it is important to resist a simplistic connection between online pedagogy and a desire or preference to teach and/or learn online. Black feminist epistemology allows us to “advance new, alternative, and sometimes oppositional interpretations” (Henry, 2005, p. 96) that might shift how we think about our online educational experiences.

Ostensibly a benefit to me, my orientation toward online classes based on socio-economics also marginalized me because of institutional edicts that make my material conditions matter. As Fleckenstein (2003) contends, institutional rules tend to ignore the material constraints of students, and in part this creates obstacles for students to receive an education. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these obstacles since many institutions have been forced to shift more pedagogical practices to online spaces, but many students might not have the institutional support that they need to succeed. In examining the relationship between place and literacy, Fleckenstein argues that “obstacles to academic success evolve in part because of institutional edicts that ignore those material constraints” (p. 66).

These constraints can include course scheduling, a factor that affected the decision of one of my students (Yesenia) to shift to online learning. Drawing from Mary Soliday, Fleckenstein shares how institutional rules tend not to include the “life situations of students, especially working-class students—commitment to families, jobs, commuting distances—[that can] transform those lives into impediments to education” and prevent the students from attending and graduating from a university (p. 66). Although institutional rules might not have created students’ material conditions, these edicts “make the students’ material conditions matter” (p. 66). Fleckenstein’s ideas of material constraints and obstacles affect students and teachers alike, and when our bodies move online they disappear, which maintains the status quo of traditional education (Moeller & Jung, 2014). Thus, it is important for students to be able to name their experiences and feelings about why learning online might not be “right” and for them, and we can assess how those experiences and feelings are affected by institutional rules that complicate access to education.

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