My dissertation was a mess. My committee chair said to me as gently as she could, “there are a lot of moving parts going in a bunch of different directions.” I was lost and didn’t see a way forward.
On a rainy day in 2018, my wife and I took shelter in Russel’s Books in Victoria. I stumbled upon Ursula Franklin’s The Real World of Technology and read it standing in the store. Suddenly, I could see the finish line for what I was trying to do. The shelving within my brain was reorganized according to Franklin’s multiple realities (which became the title of my dissertation), which provided the theoretical framework necessary for me to articulate what I wanted to see, and how I might be able to see the invisible. This article grew out of that immersion in Franklin’s thought, and it explores wrong relationship between technology and teaching in postsecondary contexts, and it gives some guidance for how the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning can serve as a redemptive technology.
Very glad to see this tribute to Ursula Franklin finally come to life.