ICT for Enhancing Learner Agency and Inclusive Participation: Contributing to Justice in Nepali EFL Classrooms

Abstract

The conventional practices of dominant cultural ideologies historically situated and reproduced in practice still prevail in education, and they can still be observed in the Nepalese English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. In this regard, this study explores the potential of ICT use for enhancing learner agency and inclusive participation in the EFL classroom with special reference to Nepal. Grounded in reflective experiential learning theory and critical pedagogy, it seeks to suggest ways to bring about changes in students’ learning engagement and classroom participation. It illustrates how the use of ICT in the EFL classroom contributes to improving learning through the praxis of equality. Using auto ethnographic reflection documented in the reflective journal, this study explores how the use of ICTs can prepare silent learners to amplify their voices, agency, and engagement to create a participatory classroom to challenge the hierarchical classroom practices where only the dominant groups prevail in the classroom. The findings suggest how ICT enhances students' learning competence as a means of enhancing learner agency and questioning hierarchies and the prevalent practices established on the prejudiced grounds of the sociopolitical system and ethnic subjugation and othering, to a majority of disadvantaged and silent students. This paper suggests that critical EFL teachers can use ICT to activate, motivate, and sensitize the majority of less participating and ignored students to build their agency and explore a just and democratic classroom where all students participate and contribute to classroom activities for learning. Teachers, teacher educators, and policy makers can benefit from this study by adapting the findings in their contexts.