Orienting toward the otherwise in the Twitterverse: Activating pedagogical commitments with pedagogists and Twitter

Abstract

This article asks how social media platform engagement, on Twitter in particular, collides with thinking and experimenting with the educational practice of a pedagogist. Beginning with tracing the role of the pedagogist as an emerging figure in early childhood education within the Canadian context, we turn to thinking #BecomingPedagogist, the hashtag used on Twitter by those undertaking work toward responding to and inventing the digital practices of a pedagogist. We situate the labor of a pedagogist on Twitter amid public pedagogies and then follow some contemporary threads of Twitter activism. Then, we offer two “problems” for pedagogists on Twitter: (1) settler moves to innocence through utilizing “beauty” as a primary frame for engaging with tweets from Indigenous people; (2) resisting the pull of individualizing, productivity-oriented neoliberal logics on Twitter. We conclude by offering questions we hope pedagogists will consider and continue to grapple with throughout the collective project of thinking pedagogists’ online practices.