Over the past year, articles have been written praising and discounting the value and possibilities of the multibillion-dollar monolith called the Metaverse.
The range of these articles is dizzying - from the potential of the Metaverse to be used as a tool for democracy and international understanding to ways the Metaverse might replicate and exacerbate oppressive social relations.
And then there is Juan Ortiz Freuler and Marà a Fernanda Soria Cruz's 2021 article outlining how the metaverse is a natural extension of capitalist extraction of our data. It's an article that's had my mind swimming for some time, mainly because I am a tech enthusiast whose first inclination is to see the good in technology as an enabler of learning. Then my critical educator instincts kick in, and I begin reconciling whether the new tech I want so desperately to love might be used to support or subvert oppressive social relations, particularly in education.
By considering those potential implications of the Metaverse - both good and bad - I can see a path for building a critical pedagogy that isn't just about fostering digital citizenship or touting its potential as a learning dreamscape. Nor is it about reducing the Metaverse's potential into a dystopian hellscape. Rather, a critical pedagogy for the Metaverse begins by asking how it can serve as a space for what Paulo Freire called situated learning, where the boundaries that would allow it to thrive as a public good are clearly stated.
In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire outlined critical pedagogy centered on problem-posing, dialogue, praxis, conscientization, and the politics of education. For a metaverse-based critical pedagogy to be successful, it must embody these same principles.
As a site of learning, the Metaverse must be built on a foundation of problem-posing. That is, it must be designed to encourage users to constantly question and interrogate the world around them. Such a design would serve Freire's belief that education must begin with solving the teacher-student contradiction by recognizing the necessity of collaboration between teachers and students. In other words, the Metaverse must be built as a space in which educators and learners are partners in the learning process, with each playing an active role in shaping the direction of that learning.
Next, the Metaverse must be a space that is conducive to dialogue. That is, it must be designed to encourage users to engage in critical conversation with each other. Dialogic spaces are key to critical pedagogy because they excite learners to want to share their experiences and perspectives. These conversations can also help build empathy and understanding, which are essential for any effective education.
The Metaverse must also be a space for praxis. That is, it must be designed to encourage users to take action based on their learning. This type of action can take many forms, from engaging in civic activism to starting a business or simply changing the way one thinks about and interacts with the world. Whatever form it takes, praxis is essential to critical pedagogy, as it is only through action - even action in a digital space - that critical learning can lead to social change.
The Metaverse should also be a space for conscientization, meaning its design should encourage users to develop a critical consciousness of the world around them. Consciousness-raising is essential to critical pedagogy, as it is only through developing a critical consciousness that learners can begin to see the world in new and different ways.
Finally, the Metaverse must be a space for the politics of education. That is, the space must be designed to promote critical engagement with the political dimensions of education. This is essential to critical pedagogy, as it is only through critically examining the politics of education that we can begin to understand and challenge how education is used to maintain social inequalities. And to see politics play out in a digital space before they play out in the real world means we can then discover and experiment with new and different ways of subverting social inequalities.
Henry Giroux, a prolific writer and student of Freire's, has further developed Freire's notions of critical pedagogy, situating them within various social issues and problems. In particular, Giroux provides a way to think about how the Metaverse could be used as a space to support what he calls "pedagogies of hope." These pedagogies are based on the belief that education plays a crucial role in promoting individual and social agency, democratic practices, and social justice. In other words, education can be a force for good in the world, empowering young people to change themselves and their communities for the better.
For the Metaverse, this includes its potential to connect people across the globe in real-time, which makes it a space for situated learning and conscientization and brings into sharp relief the contradictions inherent in neoliberal capitalism, like class, race, and gender. But the Metaverse can also be a space to promote pedagogies of hope by providing opportunities for users to take action and engage in praxis. In other words, the Metaverse has the potential to be a space where critical pedagogy can come to life and where young people can learn to be agents of social change.
And yet, while developing a critical pedagogy is an important first step, we must also consider how the Metaverse can be exploited by its creators.
After all, we are talking about engaging in a space created by the same tech companies that collect data to surveil and influence, sow division, and undermine democracy. It's a space that is created and funded by the same companies that weaponized social media in 2016 while asking that we now trust their intentions. With digital learning becoming increasingly popular, it is essential to know about the companies that are driving this new era and how they might use the Metaverse for their own agenda.
If we think about the Metaverse as a classroom, who has the power to control what is taught? Who gets to design the learning environment? And who gets to decide who has access to that environment?
In a Metaverse controlled by corporations, the answers to these questions will likely differ from what Paulo Freire had in mind. Though he had nothing against using technology in the learning process, Freire recognized the risks associated with relegating learning "to a mere exercise of technology." Not only did Freire believe that educators should encourage their students to think critically, but he also believed that they should model this behavior by thinking critically about the use of technology in their own teaching by creating "new channels of knowledge, new methodologies, new relationships between the subjects who seek knowledge and the most advanced technological innovations that we have at our disposal."
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