About

Roberto de Roock, PhD, is a researcher focused on learning, technology, and social justice. His professional profile highlights his engagement with these areas, indicating a commitment to exploring the intersections of educational practices, technological advancements, and issues of equity and justice in society. The available information emphasizes his role as a scholar dedicated to these themes, although further detailed descriptions of his background, specific research projects, or key contributions are not provided in the text.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Law
• Psychology
• Media studies
• Aesthetics
• Pedagogy

Selected publications

• Literacy, racial capitalism, and the politics of good feeling

  Race Ethnicity and Education · 2024-03-08 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article advances a deeply political and material understanding of feeling in the context of racial capitalism. Informed by Ahmed's work on the 'politics of good feeling' (2008, 1) and Gilmore's concept of 'infrastructure of feeling' (2022, 490), we interrogate how feeling is regulated in everyday literacy contexts through two examples: 1) the history of the phrase 'joy of reading' and its use in a text for teachers and 2) a vignette in which youth were expected to use digital media to share their grief. Both examples show how liberal sentimentality works to control unruly or unhappy feelings that disrupt the democratizing fiction of white progressivism. With a deeper understanding of the infrastructure of feeling as an analytic intervention drawing on liberatory histories and struggles, educators can work to transform these spaces into arenas of emotional negotiation and emancipation, thereby countering the oppressive reach of racial capitalism.

  PublisherDOI

• To Become an Object Among Objects: Generative Artificial “Intelligence,” Writing, and Linguistic White Supremacy

  Reading Research Quarterly · 2024-09-02 · 17 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This paper critically explores the implications of generative artificial “intelligence” (GAI) technologies for literacy theory and practice through a case study of the author's use of OpenAI's ChatGPT. The study opens with an overview of recent literature surrounding the pedagogical implications of using GAI with a focus on issues of racial justice, outlining an abolitionist political ecology approach to literacy that extends relational theories of mediation to machine‐aided writing. The framework is then applied to data from a cognitive autoethnography of GAI use over a 6‐month period, which included a digital ethnography of ChatGPT and an extended semistructured “interview” with the GAI chatbot. Racial justice issues were found, especially linguistic and other biases. As such, soon‐to‐be ubiquitous artificial intelligence (AI) technologies require profound reconsideration of the productive value of literacy exploited by GAI, which will inevitably be pursued through an acquiescence or fundamental rupture with the dystopian visions of the technology's creators.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Platformization of Writing Instruction: Considering Educational Equity in New Learning Ecologies

  Review of Research in Education · 2023-03-01 · 19 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This chapter provides a systematic review of research published between 2006 and 2022 on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) platforms in writing instruction. We theorize writing and platforms as complex ecologies, investigating the interplay of their relations and implications for educational equity. Our findings suggested three functional categories of AI platforms in writing instruction (assistive, assessment, and authentication) and a focus on the technical dimensions of platforms and their intersections with the cognitive dimensions of writing. Finally, we found a focus on equity notably absent from our corpus. Taken together, these findings suggest an agenda for equity-oriented research and pedagogy that confronts aspects of platform and writing environments that have, to date, been omitted from the empirical record.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction to the Handbook of Critical Literacies:The Current State of Critical Literacy Around the World

  Griffith Research Online (Griffith University, Queensland, Australia) · 2022-01-01 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In this introductory chapter the five editors lay out the genesis of the Handbook, some of their underlying axiomatic commitments, describe its structure, and discuss in detail the form and structure of its component parts. Area 1 contains chapters that outline the antecedents and current state of critical literacies. Area 2 is a global survey of critical literacy in praxis, examining work in over 23 countries. Area 3 holds future-oriented chapters that push the reader to consider what is next. They discuss the theoretical underpinnings of chapters in each area and highlight the reviews of research offered by authors in the chapters.

  PublisherDOI

• Conclusion:Critical Literacy and the Challenges Ahead of Us

  2022-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  In bringing this Handbook to a close, we as editors reflect on the privilege it has been to gather these chapters together in one volume as a contribution to the scholarship and activism in the field. The five of us came to this Handbook positioned as both scholars and learners. As we noted in the Preface, we are aware of and grateful for the giants on whose shoulders this Handbook stands. Some appear as authors in our chapters, and others have influenced our paths to critical literacy since graduate school; we are honored to be their students and mentees, as well as their friends and colleagues. We came to this Handbook with the certainty that critical literacy was the cornerstone or core of our work. As we explained in the Introduction, we all shared the belief that critical literacy is not just a buzzword or something we do. Critical literacy shapes who we are as teachers, as researchers, as scholars, as community members, and as family members. However, we were also fully aware that we still had so much more to learn about the field. We know we have segmented vision based on conceptual affinities, geographical locations, and other epistemological positionalities. We know that our field can only grow if we expand our horizons through radical linguistic, cultural, and geographic inclusivity.

  Publisher

• The Handbook of Critical Literacies.[ 1st ed.]

  2022-01-01

  articleSenior author

  The Handbook of Critical Literacies aims to answer the timely question: what are the social responsibilities of critical literacy academics, researchers, and teachers in today’s world? Critical literacies are classically understood as ways to interrogate texts and contexts to address injustices and they are an essential literacy practice. Organized into thematic and regional sections, this handbook provides substantive definitions of critical literacies across fields and geographies, surveys of critical literacy work in over 23 countries and regions, and overviews of research, practice, and conceptual connections to established and emerging theoretical frameworks. The chapters on global critical literacy practices include research on language acquisition, the teaching of literature and English language arts, Youth Participatory Action Research, environmental justice movements, and more. This pivotal handbook enables new and established researchers to position their studies within highly relevant directions in the field and engage, organize, disrupt, and build as we work for more sustainable social and material relations. A groundbreaking text, this handbook is a definitive resource and an essential companion for students, researchers, and scholars in the field.

  Publisher

• Datafication, educational platforms and proceduralised ideologies

  2022-01-14 · 3 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  Research on datafication has historically emphasised the ways that human actions and behaviours have been translated into quantifiable metrics, which increasingly happens through digital technologies. However, these approaches can overlook the interactional and dynamic nature of the datafication process and the complex responses of individuals, which can be simultaneously agentive and constrained by designed systems embodying the ideologies of their creators. This chapter develops a perspective on datafication that unpacks some of these complexities in the context of online learning management systems (LMS) through the lens of proceduralisation. We use this term to describe the ways that ideological constructions are embedded in and circulated through the designs of technologies. We then use mediated discourse analysis to geeapply this lens to the context of the Canvas LMS, highlighting how the procedural design and applied use of the platform evidences a particular ideological model of teaching and learning. We base this analysis on qualitative interviews with students in the western US on their beliefs, experiences and strategies navigating the LMS, as well as our own analytic walkthroughs of the software itself. We close by discussing pedagogical implications for the material and ideological responses of those immediately involved with datafication through learning systems.

  PublisherDOI

• Digital Game-Based Learning: Foundations, Applications, and Critical Issues

  Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education · 2022-06-17 · 21 citations

  reference-entrySenior author

  As contemporary societies continue to integrate digital technologies into varying aspects of everyday life—including work, schooling, and play—the concept of digital game-based learning (DGBL) has become increasingly influential. The term <italic>DGBL</italic> is often used to characterize the relationship of computer-based games (including games played on dedicated gaming consoles and mobile devices) to various learning processes or outcomes. The concept of DGBL has its origins in interdisciplinary research across the computational and social sciences, as well as the humanities. As interest in computer games and learning within the field of education began to expand in the late 20th century, DGBL became somewhat of a contested term. Even foundational concepts such as the definition of games (as well as their relationship to simulations and similar artifacts), the affordances of digital modalities, and the question of what “counts” as learning continue to spark debate among positivist, interpretivist, and critical framings of DGBL. Other contested areas include the ways that DGBL should be assessed, the role of motivation in DGBL, and the specific frameworks that should inform the design of games for learning. Scholarship representing a more positivist view of DGBL typically explores the potential of digital games as motivators and influencers of human behavior, leading to the development of concepts such as gamification and other uses of games for achieving specified outcomes, such as increasing academic measures of performance, or as a form of behavioral modification. Other researchers have taken a more interpretive view of DGBL, framing it as a way to understand learning, meaning-making, and play as social practices embedded within broader contexts, both local and historical. Still others approach DGBL through a more critical paradigm, interrogating issues of power, agency, and ideology within and across applications of DGBL. Within classrooms and formal settings, educators have adopted four broad approaches to applying DGBL: (a) integrating commercial games into classroom learning; (b) developing games expressly for the purpose of teaching educational content; (c) involving students in the creation of digital games as a vehicle for learning; and (d) integrating elements such as scoreboards, feedback loops, and reward systems derived from digital games into non-game contexts—also referred to as gamification. Scholarship on DGBL focusing on informal settings has alternatively highlighted the socially situated, interpretive practices of gamers; the role of affinity spaces and participatory cultures; and the intersection of gaming practices with the lifeworlds of game players. As DGBL has continued to demonstrate influence on a variety of fields, it has also attracted criticism. Among these critiques are the question of the relative effectiveness of DGBL for achieving educational outcomes. Critiques of the quality and design of educational games have also been raised by educators, designers, and gamers alike. Interpretive scholars have tended to question the primacy of institutionally defined approaches to DGBL, highlighting instead the importance of understanding how people make meaning through and with games beyond formal schooling. Critical scholars have also identified issues in the ethics of DGBL in general and gamification in particular as a form of behavior modification and social control. These critiques often intersect and overlap with criticism of video games in general, including issues of commercialism, antisocial behaviors, misogyny, addiction, and the promotion of violence. Despite these criticisms, research and applications of DGBL continue to expand within and beyond the field of education, and evolving technologies, social practices, and cultural developments continue to open new avenues of exploration in the area.

  PublisherDOI

• Toward equity innovations: lower tracked students and classroom digital media use in Singapore

  Asia Pacific Journal of Education · 2022-11-29 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article overviews the realities of so-called “low achieving” students in Singapore, efforts to support them better, and the place of educational technology in this support. We undertook a comparative case study of lower tracked Normal Technical (NT) secondary school students and their teachers in two schools in Singapore. We found a diversity of student backgrounds and struggles, with many students facing barriers to academic success and social mobility despite purported government efforts to support them. Findings also revealed a variety of approaches taken by their teachers, influenced by teacher ideologies of student backgrounds and abilities, pedagogy, and learning. Using the lens of selective digital technology integration, we highlight the promises and potentials of these efforts to improve NT student outcomes, along with the corresponding tensions and dilemmas. We conclude by arguing that a focus on innovation should mean pulling away from standard ideas of novel technological innovation and a move to collaborative, expansive, research-based pedagogy and systemic equity innovations.

  PublisherDOI

• Conclusion

  2021-07-22 · 1 citations

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  This concluding chapter surveys the themes and tensions surrounding critical literacies surfaced throughout the chapters of this Handbook. We open with a recap of the main goals and ethos driving this volume. We then discuss issues that arose in the exploration of the past and present of critical literacies praxis, the many ways critical literacies have historically been discussed and researched, and how conversations have shifted in light of the conceptual and cultural diversity. This initial discussion then shifts into some ideas salient to the future of critical literacy praxis around the world, including places and ideas that the field needs to keep in mind. Rather than provide a conclusion, the final lines of this chapter are an invitation to all those involved in this Handbook, authors and readers alike, to take up critical literacies as a global affair.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Raúl Alberto Mora

  7 shared

• Jessica Zacher Pandya

  California State University, Dominguez Hills

  6 shared

• Jennifer Alford

  Griffith University

  6 shared

• Noah Asher Golden

  California State University, Long Beach

  6 shared

• Ibrar Bhatt

  3 shared

• Elizabeth Koh

  Nanyang Technological University

  3 shared

• Jonathon Adams

  2 shared

• Mark Gaved

  2 shared

Education

• PhD, Language, Reading, & Culture

  University of Arizona

  2015

• BA (Dual), History & Latin American Studies

  University of Arizona

  2004