George Herbert Mead provides a symbolic interactionist conception of education in which education is treated as communicative action. His theory entails three critical premises. First, the educational practice involves the interplay between two or more than two symbolic actors dynamically producing and reproducing meaning. Secondly, meanings are conveyed in a way that the pedagogically used and acquired materials are transformed during the learning-teaching process. Thirdly, productive education implies an act of teamwork and synchronization between the actors involved in the discursive process without providing a meta-social role to the educator or treating the mind as the to-be-filled reservoir awaiting the master-instructor. These necessary premises have critical implications for online learning. Thus, to appreciate the implications of Mead's philosophy of education for online learning, the questions that can be raised include: Is there ample discursive space for meaning to be produced within the online domain? Are students accorded the appropriate role in building meaning, or are they treated as passive receptacles? Does the online context provide ample opportunity for the process of intellectual resocialization and growth for the agents involved? Does online learning provide the occasion for the pedagogical material to be acted upon and reconditioned in the process? The authors provide thoughtful answers to these questions based on their years of online and face-to-face teaching experiences and informal conversations with colleagues. Future research will be based on a phenomenological study of instructors' and students' lived educational online and offline experiences, along with a comparative examination of online and face-to-face instructions.

Authors:
Alem Kebede, California State University, United States
Jonathan Basilio, California State University, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Alem Kebede is a Professor of sociology at California State University, Bakersfield. His areas of interest include social theory, social psychology, political sociology, and sociology and philosophy of education.

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