Promising virtues in the virtual classroom : metaphors on trial

Abstract

The utopian promise of the virtual classroom has been sustained by the metaphors ingrained in a persuasuve discourse shaping online learning. This discourse promotes an orthodoxy of a singular pedagogy married to technological affordances rather than to any instructional content, student body or pedagogical context. This study explores the limits of the now commonplace metaphors in this discourse: virtual 'commuinity, virtual 'classroom' and online 'discussion'. The rhetoric of utopian, imaginary visions of cyberspace's pedagogical possibilities is contrasted with empirical accounts of the vicissitudes of pedagogical itneraction in virtual environments, and with other theorizations of what constitutes 'community', 'classroom', and 'discussion'. The analysis explores how these concepts work as metaphors, and what such metaphors selectively choose not to represent. The analysis explores whether what is talked up in the enthusiastic discourse of online learning warrants the virtues of its metaphors, or is performing the work of simulation. The paper suggests that this discourse of a singular pedagogy unnecessarily limits the discursive resources available to teachers and cannot adequately reflect the potential diversity and relational properties of pedagogic relations in electronic environments.