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Palgrave Macmillan’s Digital Education and Learning
Much has been written during the first decade of the new millennium about the
potential of digital technologies to produce a transformation of education. Digital
technologies are portrayed as tools that will enhance learner collaboration and
motivation and develop new multimodal literacy skills. Accompanying this has
been the move from understanding literacy on the cognitive level to an appreciation of the sociocultural forces shaping learner development. Responding to these
claims, the Digital Education and Learning Series explores the pedagogical potential and realities of digital technologies in a wide range of disciplinary contexts
across the educational spectrum both in and outside of class. Focusing on local
and global perspectives, the series responds to the shifting landscape of education,
the way digital technologies are being used in different educational and cultural
contexts, and examines the differences that lie behind the generalizations of the
digital age. Incorporating cutting-edge volumes with theoretical perspectives and
case studies (single-authored and edited collections), the series provides an accessible and valuable resource for academic researchers, teacher trainers, administrators and students interested in interdisciplinary studies of education and new and
emerging technologies.
Series Editors:
Michael Thomas is Senior Lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, and
Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments.
James Paul Gee is Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor at Arizona State University,
USA. His most recent book is Policy Brief: Getting over the Slump: Innovation Strategies
to Promote Children’s Learning (2008).
John Palfrey is Head of School at Phillips Academy, Andover, USA, and Senior Research
Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. He is co-author of
Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (2008).
Digital Education: Opportunities for Social Collaboration
Edited by Michael Thomas
Digital Media and Learner Identity: The New Curatorship
By John Potter
Rhetoric/Composition/Play through Video Games: Reshaping Theory and
Practice of Writing
Edited by Richard Colby, Matthew S. S. Johnson, and
Rebekah Shultz Colby
Computer Games and Language Learning
By Mark Peterson
The Politics of Education and Technology: Conflicts, Controversies,
and Connections
Edited by Neil Selwyn and Keri Facer
Learning in Real and Virtual Worlds: Commercial Video Games as
Educational Tools
By Pilar Lacasa
Digital Networking for School Reform: The Online Grassroots Efforts of
Parent and Teacher Activists
Edited by Alison Heron Hruby and Melanie Landon-Hays
Augmented Education: Bringing Real and Virtual Learning Together
By Kieron Sheehy, Rebecca Ferguson, and Gill Clough
Digital Technologies for School Collaboration
By Anastasia Gouseti
Digital Skills: Unlocking the Information Society
By Jan A. G. M. van Dijk and Alexander J. A. M. van Deursen
Critical Perspectives on Technology and Education
Edited By Scott Bulfin, Nicola F. Johnson, and Chris Bigum
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Critical Perspectives on
Technology and Education
Edited by
Scott Bulfin, Nicola F. Johnson,
and Chris Bigum
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION
Copyright © Scott Bulfin, Nicola F. Johnson, and Chris Bigum, 2015.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-38544-4
All rights reserved.
First published in 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-48124-8
DOI 10.1057/9781137385451
ISBN 978-1-137-38545-1 (eBook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: February 2015
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
List of Illustrations
vii
Series Foreword
ix
Acknowledgments
xi
Chapter 1 Critical Is Something Others (Don’t) Do: Mapping
the Imaginative of Educational Technology
Chris Bigum, Scott Bulfin, and Nicola F. Johnson
1
Chapter 2 Gorillas in Their Midst: Rethinking
Educational Technology
Chris Bigum and Leonie Rowan
Chapter 3 The Work of Theory in Ed-Tech Research
Nicola F. Johnson
Chapter 4 Extending Understandings of Educational
Technology: Teachers’ Critiques of Educational
Technology as Important Intellectual Capital
for Researchers
Joanne Orlando
Chapter 5 Digital Play: What Do Early Childhood Teachers See?
Susan Edwards, Joce Nuttall, Ana Mantilla,
Elizabeth Wood, and Sue Grieshaber
Chapter 6 Youth Breaking New “Ground”: Iconicity and
Meaning Making in Social Media
Mark Evan Nelson, Stacy Marple, and Glynda Hull
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35
51
69
85
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Contents
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
The Scripted Sandbox: Children’s Gameplay
and Ludic Gendering
Nicola Pallitt and Marion Walton
The (Mis)Use of Community of Practice:
Delusion, Confusion, and Instrumentalism in
Educational Technology Research
Michael Henderson
Researching with Heart in Ed-Tech: What
Opportunities Does the Socially Indeterminate
Character of Technological Artifacts Open up for
Affirming Emergent and Marginalized Practices?
Julianne Lynch
Chapter 10 Teaching the “Other”: Curriculum “Outcomes” and
Digital Technology in the Out-of-School Lives of
Young People
Glenn Auld and Nicola F. Johnson
Chapter 11 Translocalization in Digital Writing, Orders of
Literacy, and Schooled Literacy
Dimitrios Koutsogiannis
Chapter 12 The Lake Highlands One-to-One Laptop Initiative:
NCLB, Drill and Practice and the Formation of a
Relational Network
David Shutkin
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127
141
163
183
203
Chapter 13 The Global and the Local: Taking Account of
Context in the Push for Technologization of
Education
Rachel Buchanan, Kathryn Holmes, Gregory Preston,
and Kylie Shaw
227
Chapter 14 Technology and Education—Why It’s Crucial
to be Critical
Neil Selwyn
245
Notes on Contributors
257
Index
261
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Illustrations
Figures
6.1
6.2
6.3
7.1
9.1
9.2
The South African participants at Kaap
The American participants at Bay
The Indian participants at Pradesh
Play episodes by genre
iPad artwork: Heart with candies and sunglasses
Colonization of iPad exterior by a seven-year-old boy
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109
149
150
Tables
3.1
5.1
Selection of theories employed in ed-tech research (self-report)
Gender, age, and selected artifacts across the continuum
engaged with by the participating children
8.1 Search results for CoP in research literature
8.2 Theoretical foundations of CoP literature
11.1 Writing in chat rooms
11.2 Using word processing for educational purposes
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128
133
188
194
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Series Foreword
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uch has been written during the first decade of the new millennium about the potential of digital technologies to radically
transform education and learning. Typically such calls for change
spring from the argument that traditional education no longer engages learners or teaches them the skills required for the twenty-first century. Digital
technologies are often described as tools that will enhance collaboration and
motivate learners to reengage with education and enable them to develop
the new multimodal literacy skills required for today’s knowledge economy.
Using digital technologies is a creative experience in which learners actively
engage with solving problems in authentic environments that underline
their productive skills rather than merely passively consuming knowledge.
Accompanying this argument has been the move from understanding literacy on the cognitive level to an appreciation of the sociocultural forces
shaping learner development and the role communities play in supporting
the acquisition of knowledge.
Emerging from this context, the Digital Education and Learning series
was founded to explore the pedagogical potential and realities of digital
technologies in a wide range of disciplinary contexts across the educational
spectrum around the world. Focusing on local and global perspectives, the
series responds to the shifting demands and expectations of educational
stakeholders, the ways new technologies are actually being used in different educational and cultural contexts, and examines the opportunities and
challenges that lie behind the myths and rhetoric of digital age education.
The series encourages the development of evidence-based research that is
rooted in an understanding of the history of technology, as well as open to
the potential of innovation, and adopts critical perspectives on technological
determinism as well as techno-skepticism.
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Series Foreword
While the potential for changing the way we learn in the digital age is
significant and new sources of information and forms of interaction have
developed, many educational institutions and learning environments have
changed little from those that existed over one hundred years ago. Whether
in the form of smartphones, laptops, or tablets, digital technologies may be
increasingly ubiquitous in a person’s social life but marginal in their daily
educational experience once they enter a classroom. Although many people
increasingly invest more and more time on their favorite social media site,
integrating these technologies into curricula or formal learning environments remains a significant challenge, if indeed it is a worthwhile aim in the
first place. History tells us that change in educational contexts, if it happens
at all in ways that were intended, is typically more “incremental” and rarely
“revolutionary.” Understanding the development of learning technologies in
the context of a historically informed approach therefore is one of the core
aspects of the series, as is the need to understand the increasing internationalization of education and the way learning technologies are culturally
mediated. While the digital world appears to be increasingly “flat,” significant challenges continue to exist, and the series will problematize terms that
have sought to erase cultural, pedagogical, and theoretical differences rather
than understand them. Digital natives, digital literacy, digital divide, digital media—these and such mantras as twenty-first-century learning—are
phrases that continue to be used in ways that require further clarification and
critical engagement rather than unquestioning and uncritical acceptance.
The series aims to examine the complex discourse of digital technologies and to understand the implications for teaching, learning, and professional development. By mixing volumes with theoretical perspectives with
case studies detailing actual teaching approaches, whether on or off campus,
in face-to-face, fully online, or blended learning contexts, the series will
examine the emergence of digital technologies from a range of new international and interdisciplinary perspectives. Incorporating original and innovative volumes with theoretical perspectives and case studies (single authored
and edited collections), the series aims to provide an accessible and valuable
resource for academic researchers, teacher trainers, administrators, policymakers, and learners interested in cutting-edge research on new and emerging technologies in education.
Series Editors
Michael Thomas
James P. Gee
John G. Palfrey
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Acknowledgments
T
he editors thank the following people for kindly acting as reviewers for book chapters: Glenn Auld, Rachel Buchanan, Scott Bulfin,
Chris Bigum, Suzy Edwards, Michael Henderson, Kathryn Holmes,
Nicola Johnson, Julianne Lynch, Mark Evan Nelson, Joanne Orlando, Greg
Preston, Leonie Rowan, Neil Selwyn, Kylie Shaw, and David Shutkin.
Scott would like to thank Nicola and Chris for all their work and support,
and Emma, Austen, Lucy, Christian, and Hamish for all their patience. He
would also like to thank colleagues at Monash University and beyond who
continue to inspire and motivate through rich conversation and challenging
work.
Nicola would like to thank David, Elle, Warwick, and Suzanne, her
Gippsland colleagues and the members of the Learning with New Media
Research Group. Nicola acknowledges her coeditors as long-time colleagues
and friends, from whom she continues to learn.
Chris would like to thank Scott and Nicola for their cheerful forbearance in the assembling of this book. He would like to thank Leonie, Steph,
Isaac, and Sophie and acknowledges the generous and supportive input of
colleagues over many years in many places who have contributed to his
thinking.
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CHAPTER 1
Critical Is Something Others (Don’t)
Do: Mapping the Imaginative of
Chris Bigum, Scott Bulfin, and
Nicola F. Johnson
Mapping the Imaginative of Educational Technology
This book is an outcome of a provocation paper1 prepared by Neil Selwyn
(2012) for a conference concerned with critical perspectives on learning with
new media. In his paper, Selwyn argued that
Education and technology could be classed as an area of scholarship
whose time is yet to come . . . As an area of academic study, education and
technology is populated by a transient ragbag of individuals hailing from
the learning sciences, social psychology, computer science, teacher education, media studies, sociology and beyond. As such, this is a “mongrel”
area of scholarship that suffers from the absence of any long-term collective obligation amongst its participants to develop their “(non)field” of
study into anything more than the sum of its parts. (p. 6)
He made a case that the (non)field of education and technology (used in this
instance to refer to computing and related technologies) is largely instrumental in its approach and detailed limitations of topics, questioning theory
and method. Selwyn made a strong plea to broaden and sharpen what he
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Bigum, Bulfin, and Johnson
called the “ed-tech imagination,” in terms of the limitations he identified.
As is the case with any good provocation, space is created to explore and
examine the ed-tech imagination of those who write and research in the
(non)field. It’s fair to say that the provocation worked. This book is one
product of it. In what follows we will use the shorthand “ed-tech” to label
the field in which computing and related technologies are used for various
educational purposes. So, in the spirit of sharpening and broadening the edtech imagination, this book is organized around three aims:
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To make an argument about the need for critical perspectives in research
on ed-tech more generally and in several specific areas: theory, key concepts, and “getting serious” about how the field develops, integrates,
and handles critique of accumulated knowledge and perspectives.
To illustrate the use of critical perspectives (i.e., it doesn’t just make the
argument that these are needed) in a range of areas by reexamining key
educational ideas and concepts often used in the area of education and
technology research and doing this via “critical perspectives” drawn
from social, cultural, and critical theory. This is partly about being
“more critical” in terms of asking more critical questions about technologies, but also about rethinking the relationship between “technology” and the “educational” or the “social.”
To point forward and identify and evaluate some of the larger questions, tensions, problems, and conflicts that arise when critical perspectives are employed to look at ed-tech, and to imagine how the field
can be taken forward.
This book is a modest contribution to what is an ambitious agenda to
rethink, rework and reimagine scholarly and research work concerning edtech. To gesture to the size and difficulty of the task, we are reminded of the
observation made by French philosopher Michel de Certeau, who pointed
out that we learn as much about a field of study by looking at what it excludes
as we do by focusing on what it includes. He wrote: “finally, beyond the question of methods and contents, beyond what it says, the measure of a work
is what it keeps silent” (de Certeau, 1986, p. 131). He went on to describe
the vast “expanses of silence” which are found within dominant cultural
discourses as a “geography of the forgotten” (p. 131). The contributors to
this edited collection draw attention to the many elements of the geography
of ed-tech that are sometimes ignored, often forgotten, or completely disregarded as part of the terrain. Collectively, they remind us that the practices
of education necessarily undergo an interrogation whenever these practices
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are altered or tinkered with as occurs when new or different ways of doing
things are explored. We use the phrase new or different ways of doing things
to shift the focus from the objects of ed-tech, the stuff, the hardware, software,
and netware, to the new or different practices that emerge when new stuff is
deployed in an educational setting. Practices, ways of doing things, are necessarily entanglements of people and things (Pickering, 1995). Most of the
chapters in this volume describe the multiple practices of various groups of
people in a range of contexts, and are somewhat unique as they tend to avoid
focusing exclusively on objects or stuff. For example, the contribution from
David Shutkin describes the complex sociotechnical and relational work
that both constructs and constitutes a one-to-one laptop initiative across a
US school district. Employing actor-network theory, rather than a focus on
laptops per se, Shutkin illustrates the complex negotiations that bring the
initiative into being and sustain it.
Maps and Map Making
To speak of a geography of ed-tech is to invoke metaphors of mapping and
of map making. Mark Monmonier (1991) reminds us of the problems of
making any map: “a single map is but one of an indefinitely large number of
maps that might be produced for the same situation or from the same data”
(p. 2). His argument, that every map must necessarily contain lies, distortions, and omissions, is also one that applies generally to any representation2
of reality. He goes on to say
A good map tells a multitude of little white lies; it suppresses truth to
help the user see what needs to be seen. Reality is three-dimensional,
rich in detail, and far too factual to allow a complete yet uncluttered
two-dimensional graphic scale model. Indeed, a map that did not generalize would be useless. But the value of a map depends on how well its
generalized geometry and generalized content reflect a chosen aspect of
reality. (p. 25)
In the field of ed-tech it is fair to say that there has been one map that
has come to be the dominant way to make sense of the terrain. It is a
map that reflects a reality that can be traced back to at least the 1860s.
Halcyon Skinner’s patent for a device for teaching spelling (Benjamin,
1988, 703) was the first of a number of explorations of the notion of automating some teaching practices. The involvement of machines in one way
or another in teaching was prompted by an interest in, at first, improving
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efficiency. Fast forward to the early days of computing in education and the
improvement rationale has broadened to improving more than efficiency.
It now is concerned with improving, among other things, learning. It is a
familiar association—computers and improving things. Computers have
been deployed to improve productivity across numerous fields of human
endeavor. In this sense, as the logic goes, why should education be any different from banking, the military, business, or medicine?
The now familiar map of ed-tech is one that clearly highlights those
features of the terrain that are associated with improvements in learning and the associated and necessary change of practices and policies to
support such improvement. If we persist with our mapping metaphor a
little further, we notice that the edge of the map, the known frontier, is
one that develops very quickly. As each new digital technology appears, it
has to be mapped (and often measured) in one way or another. It has to
be judged to be of educational interest or significance, or not. Each new
landform is not obviously educational; work has to be done to mark it as
of little significance or of educational value. A good deal of effort goes into
finding educational problems for which each new landform is a solution
(Bigum, 1998). In a broader account of technology, Ursula Franklin (1999,
p. 106) describes this work as that done by unpaid product development
engineers.
Larry Cuban (1986, p. 8) offers a glimpse of this work, albeit not associated with computers, when he included a 1927 photo of a teacher conducting a geography class in an aeroplane3 flying over Los Angeles. In the photo
the teacher is standing and pointing to a globe. The children are seated in
the conventional classroom desks of that era. The cabin has been remade
into a classroom, complete with clock and blackboard. The photo is entitled,
Today’s Aerial Geography Lesson.
This example taken from Cuban poses a number of questions useful for
our purposes here and for the kind of critical effort we are arguing for:
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Is the map we are looking at a map of digital technologies or a map of
educational practices?
Who gets to add to the map?
Are there other maps of the field of ed-tech, what alternatives are possible, and who might make them?
Borrowing an idea of David Turnbull’s (2000), we take the Fool’s Cap
Map as a useful device to further develop our mapping metaphor, and our
initial mapping of the ed-tech imaginative. The Fool’s Cap Map shows an
image of a court jester with the face replaced by a map of the world.4 Similar
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to Monmonier, Turnbull suggests maps necessarily hide things. He suggests
one way to read this image. That is
All seemingly universal truths, all apparently trustworthy knowledge or
authoritative maps, are partial and untrustworthy in that they conceal
a hidden social ordering. This may be seen in the analogous role of the
jester who confirms the king’s power through mocking him. (p. 91)
While we don’t intend to play the jester for the remainder of this chapter,
we nevertheless will draw on the idea and remain mindful that any new
imagining of the field of ed-tech, any new mapping will be as susceptible
to “taking our knowledge for truth” as those who are engaged in making
the well-established map of ed-tech. In Turnbull’s words, “We who purport
to be historians, sociologists, or cultural critics, are also tricksters” (p. 91).
With this in mind, we return to the map of interest, the mapping of ed-tech
and the improvement of learning.
Mapping Two Levels
The association of computing and related technologies with improving things
is a kind of default logic. Why else would you deploy computing technologies if it was not to improve something, make a process more efficient, do
things that otherwise could not be done? So too in education. The research
literature associated with ed-tech is made up of an almost unending number
of studies that look for improvements in learning. When these studies are
combined with allied research that is directed at changes in policy and practice to support improved learning via ed-tech, the size of the corpus dwarfs
other research and scholarship. For instance, there has been considerable
attention paid to the integration of computers into classrooms, or indeed the
use of computers and other online spaces as classrooms, the need for teachers to have so-called “technological and pedagogical content knowledge”
(Harris, Mishra, & Koehler, 2009; Koehler & Mishra, 2009; Mishra &
Koehler, 2006) and, more recently, for teachers to be proficient with social
media (e.g., Callaghan & Bower, 2012).
Support for the focus on learning comes from the learning sciences, cognitive psychology and, more recently, social neuroscience. There is a vast literature concerned with cognition and it has necessarily played an important
role in framing and shaping policy and practice in education. Its extension
into and in support of ed-tech research is understandable (see Johnson, this
volume). But, as will be evident in the chapters that follow, what is taken
from the learning sciences is selective.
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We have noted that the map of ed-tech that is commonly accepted to be
the map has, as a consequence of ongoing developments in various digital
technologies, an ever-expanding frontier. Indeed, doing work that is at the
edge of the map is an important characteristic of a good deal of ed-tech
research and scholarship. The patterns of research and enquiry that are
underpinned by a rapidly developing set of digital and related technologies can continue and be repeated ad infinitum. It is possible to continue
to ask banal questions that compare blackboards with interactive whiteboards or iPads with books, or examine the merits of particular pieces of
online software. There is a narrowing of focus. It is akin to what Dr. Ian
Malcolm, a character in Michael Crichton’s (1990) novel, Jurassic Park,
called thintelligence.
They don’t have intelligence. They have what I like to call “thintelligence.” They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they
call it “being focused.” They don’t see the surround. They don’t see the
consequences. That’s how you get an island like this. From thintelligent
thinking. (p. 284)
We believe that a continuance of these patterns of research and scholarship
will consign the field to little more than a pseudo-scientific component of
the marketing arm of companies that produce the various digital artifacts,
which keep practitioners and researchers busy locating problems for which
the artifacts can be solutions. A more worrying consequence of the hubris
is that the field becomes limited in what it pays attention to and is always
confident that no matter what happens it has the research approaches to
deal with any new development. It is a recipe for more of the same for
policy and practice. It is a recipe that has overseen a limited and limiting
approach to thinking about computing and related technologies in education for more than three decades. The challenges of narrow policymaking
in this area, characterized as it typically is by short-term deterministic
thinking, are explored by Rachel Buchanan, Kathryn Holmes, Gregory
Preston, and Kylie Shaw in their chapter. They point to the way successive
governments in Australia and, by implication, in other parts of the world,
regularly make policy outside of any real and situated context. We are of
the strong view that the serious challenges posed by recent and future
developments in digital and related technologies warrants the kind of serious and considered attention to context and history, amongst other issues,
that is modeled in the chapters of this book. Dimitrios Koutsogiannis’
chapter is an excellent example of this sort of focused attention to local/
personal, national, and global contexts and histories and how these mediate the critical digital literacies of young people and the exchange value
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that these literacies might have in both vernacular settings and in formal
educational contexts.
Crichton’s fictional account underlined the importance of unintended or
unexpected outcomes when any new technology is deployed. It is a feature
of the ed-tech map that such outcomes are rarely acknowledged and even
more rarely examined. In their landmark study of the impacts of computermediated communication in an organization, Sproull and Kiesler (1991,
p. 4) distinguished between what they termed first- and second-level effects.
First-level effects are “the planned efficiency gains or productivity gains that
justify an investment in new technology,” for instance, an ed-tech claim
would be “we will improve student literacy with iPads.” Second-level effects
are unintended or unanticipated outcomes. As Sproull and Kiesler point out,
these second-level effects arise because when the new ways of doing things
are put into place, “people pay attention to different things, have contact
with different people, and depend on one another differently” (p. 4). So, in
the case of the introduction of iPads into schools, it would not be unusual
to see accounts which report that “some of the students are using their iPads
to develop apps, others are designing games.” In other words, things change.
Because things change, attempts to examine whether or not things have
improved become pointless. These second-level outcomes don’t get mapped.
They don’t fit the logic of improvement.
Since Sproull and Kiesler’s historic study, there have been scores of studies that have confirmed this two-level thesis in various ways (Jackson, 2007).
This finding has gone almost completely unnoticed in the field of ed-tech
research. Other approaches to looking carefully at what happens when edtech is deployed in a particular setting and which draw attention to things
that have changed tend to be bracketed out: “that’s interesting, but what has
it got to do with improving student learning?”
To begin to address the problems we see in much of the existing research,
we think it is important to name this problem and acknowledge its obduracy. As Gregory Bateson (1999) put it:
There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds,
and it is characteristic of the system that basic error propagates itself. It
branches out like a rooted parasite through the tissue of life, and everything gets into a rather peculiar mess. When you narrow down your
epistemology and act on the premise “What interests me is me, or my
organization, or my species,” you chop off consideration of other loops of
the loop structure. (p. 492)
This book is directed at adding other loops, that is, at producing other maps
of the ed-tech terrain. Joanne Orlando’s chapter highlights the criticality
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employed by teachers in their use of ed-tech and how teachers’ responses
to challenges and problems using new technologies can be very useful if
taken seriously. The chapter by Susan Edwards and her colleagues points to
alternatives with learning and teaching via digital play in early childhood.
Mark Nelson, Stacy Marple, and Glynda Hull’s chapter uses C. S. Peirce’s
notion of iconicity to explore young people’s meaning making through their
engagement with social media. Nicola Pallitt and Marion Walton develop
the notion of “ludic gendering” in their exploration of children’s playful and
parodic gender performances in digital gameplay. Julianne Lynch’s chapter
opens a map on some equally marginalized practices and explores how the
stories told about technologies support various sorts of politics and action. We
acknowledge that each mapping (and remapping), invoking the figure of the
jester, brings with it an assemblage of theory and practice, of heuristics and
ways of thinking about knowledge and reality(ies). They are not limited to a
commitment to a single idea. Collectively, there is an unruliness to them that
we think is important in taking up the challenge of Selwyn’s provocation.
Each chapter draws to some degree upon Selwyn’s (2012, p. 10–12) heuristics for shifting and mapping the ed-tech imaginative, that is of
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moving from the “state-of-the-art” to the “state-of-the-actual”
reflecting the social milieu of education and technology
asking better questions of education and technology
making better use of research methods
making better use of familiar theory, and
making more use of unfamiliar theory.
In some respects, these heuristics have informed some of the critical literature of the past. For example, the work of Kevin Robins and Frank Webster
(1989, 1999), Larry Cuban (1986, 2001), Michael Apple (1988), Hank
Bromley and Apple (1998), Steven Hodas (1993), Stephen Kerr (1996), and
Chet Bowers (1988a; 1988b; 1990) are familiar names associated with critical
work in ed-tech.
Critical agendas in ed-tech are not immune to our jestering. It is not difficult to identify a degree of repetition of research questions and a familiar
reliance on many of the classic mainstays of critical theory.5 Selwyn (2012)
makes a related point:
Until we have established a significant and sustained body of critical
work that acts as a permanent counterbalance to the otherwise anodyne
mainstream educational technology literature, then the points raised in
this paper are as relevant now as they have ever been. (p. 15)
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We, however, take the view that more of the same critically won’t generate the
counterbalance Selwyn argues for. More importantly, the challenges that
digital technologies will pose for ed-tech into the near future are of an order
and significance that we will likely need a robust collection of maps, even a
critical miscellany.
Hastening Slowly and Legendary Thinking
The effectiveness of research and scholarship associated with the field of edtech has, in many respects, reassured those who work in the broader field of
education that things in the ed-tech area were being well covered. There was
no need for other research questions or approaches unless they could usefully add to the main map. There was also the sense that other approaches
and maps were unhelpful.6 While this might have been a useful heuristic in
the early years of ed-tech, it is now a dangerous one.
To observe that “the digital” is everywhere, or soon will be, is to point
to the acceleration of deployment of objects and devices that have computational and networking capacities. Phrases like “the internet of things,” “Big
Data,” and “machine learning” flag developments that have already attracted
the attention of ed-tech researchers and scholars. It is a simple matter to
locate emerging research agendas attending to Sproull and Kiesler’s (1991)
first-level effects, adding to the main map. There is much less literature
that seeks to map the unintended or unexpected.7 Glenn Auld and Nicola
Johnson’s chapter makes an effort in this direction, making an argument for
the value of mapping students’ informal learning outside of school against
formal curriculum outcomes. However, a key part of adding anything to a
map is understanding how legends are used; in terms of our interests, the
words used to represent the various ed-tech realities of interest.
Almost 40 years ago, Drew McDermott (1976) wrote a small article
called, “Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity.” He had concerns
about the nature of research in artificial intelligence (AI) that were not dissimilar to those of Selwyn’s, ours, and other folk we have noted here. In the
paper, McDermott criticized the use of wishful mnemonics like “understand”
to label AI programs that did little more than process data in a particular
manner. In the field in which this book is located, we have similar, wishful
terms like “educational technology,” “learning technologies,” “networked
learning,” and the like. They are labels that are used to impose particular
characteristics on hardware and software that are independent of context.
The use such labeling receives from scholars who use these terms as glibly
as vendors, clearly works against establishing a sharp sense of what is under
consideration. At the very least it makes for a confusing and confused map,
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at worst charts that might as well be for distant stars rather than the complex
realities of sociotechnical practice.
Even the basic term technology, which is often used as a kind of shorthand
for computing and related technologies, gestures implicitly to the socialtechnical binary, a long-standing cause for much debate and confusion in
the field that can still be found in many publications. Trying to separate
out the role humans play and those played by the artifacts that are not language bearing is a common occurrence in debates about policy and practice
for many technologies, for example, debates about guns or automobiles are
familiar to most. Each of these controversies spin around a separation of the
social and the technical that inevitably lead to positions based upon social or
technological determinants. We simply point to the problem to emphasize
the importance, even centrality, of care in naming, which is of course also
shaping. Michael Henderson takes up this issue in his chapter, examining
the use and abuse of “community of practice.”
Having a sense of the history of ideas, and of the field generally, is a
key element in advancing any critically informed agenda. When it comes
to material artifacts, the umbrella term technology appears very limp when
compared with this account by Latour and Venn (2002) of his hammer:
The hammer that I find on my workbench is not contemporary to my
action today: it keeps folded heterogenous temporalities, one of which
has the antiquity of the planet, because of the mineral from which it has
been moulded, while another has that of the age of the oak which provided the handle, while still another has the age of the 10 years since it
came out of the German factory which produced it for the market. When
I grab the handle, I insert my gesture in a “garland of time” as Michel
Serres (1995) has put it, which allows me to insert myself in a variety of
temporalities or time differentials, which account for (or rather imply)
the relative solidity which is often associated with technical action. What
is true of time holds for space as well, for this humble hammer holds
in place quite heterogenous spaces that nothing, before the technical
action, could gather together: the forests of the Ardennes, the mines of
the Ruhr, the German factory, the tool van which offers discounts every
Wednesday on Bourbonnais streets, and finally the workshop of a particularly clumsy Sunday bricoleur. (p. 249)
In this book you will find similar, rich accounts that draw attention to
features of the ed-tech terrain that are not as easily accommodated in the
main map. They are small maps, incomplete and at times speculative. Taken
together, and keeping the jester in mind, they offer pause for thought. They
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rethink some of the taken-for-granteds of ed-tech. They problematize some
assumptions about learning and teaching. We believe they provide a necessary broadening (an initial sketching of more and different maps) as well
as a long overdue sharpening (better and different legends) of the ed-tech
imaginative. Festina lente (Latin: make haste slowly).
Notes
1. A longer version of the paper was published in 2010 (Selwyn, 2010). We draw on
both papers in this introduction.
2. Issues associated with representationalism are developed in the chapter by Bigum
and Rowan in this volume.
3. The image is available online at https://iamliterate.wikispaces.com/Social
+Studies+IRP
4. The image is available online at http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VoFM4aW7x9A
/TI_9JuOwl2I/AAAAAAAADSk/nTKn0hSVkqM/s1600/Fool’s100.JPG
5. See, for example, Latour (2004).
6. See Selwyn’s closing chapter in this volume.
7. In the broad debates about digital technologies, the work of Evgeny Morozov
(2013) and Jaron Lanier (2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2013) are useful illustrations of
different map making.
References
Apple, M. W. (1988). Teaching and technology: The hidden effects on teachers and
students. In L. E. Beyer & M. W. Apple (Eds.), The curriculum: Problems, politics
and possibilities (pp. 314–338). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bateson, G. (1999). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Benjamin, L. T. (1988). A history of teaching machines. American Psychologist,
43(9), 703–712.
Bigum, C. (1998). Solutions in search of educational problems: Speaking for computers in schools. Educational Policy, 12(5), 586–601. doi: 10.1177/08959048
98012005007
Bowers, C. A. (1988a). The cultural dimensions of educational computing: Understanding
the non-neutrality of technology. New York: Teachers College Press.
Bowers, C. A. (1988b). Teaching a nineteenth-century mode of thinking through a
twentieth-century machine. Educational Theory, 38(1), 41–46.
Bowers, C. A. (1990). Educational computing and the ecological crisis: Some
questions about our curriculum priorities. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 22(1),
72–76.
Bromley, H., & Apple, M. W. (Eds.). (1998). Education/technology/power: Educational
computing as a social practice. Albany: State University of New York Press.
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Callaghan, N., & Bower, M. (2012). Learning through social networking sites—
the critical role of the teacher. Educational Media International, 49(1), 1–17. doi:
10.1080/09523987.2012.662621
Crichton, M. (1990). Jurassic park: A novel. New York: Knopf.
Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines: The classroom use of technology since 1920.
New York: Teachers College Press.
Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
de Certeau, M. (1986). Heterologies: Discourse on the other. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Franklin, U. M. (1999). The real world of technology. Toronto: Anansi.
Harris, J., Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2009). Teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge and learning activity types: Curriculum-based technology integration reframed. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 41(4),
393–416.
Hodas, S. (1993). Technology refusal and the organizational culture of schools.
Education Policy Analysis Archives, 1(10). http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v1n10.html.
Jackson, M. H. (2007). Should emerging technologies change business communication scholarship? Journal of Business Communication, 44(1), 1–10. doi:
10.1177/0021943606295781
Kerr, S. (1996). Toward a sociology of educational technology. In D. Jonassen (Ed.),
Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp. 143–169).
New York: Macmillan.
Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content
knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE
Journal), 9(1), 60–70.
Lanier, J. (2010a). Does the digital classroom enfeeble the mind? New York
Times. September 16. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19
/magazine/19fob-essay-t.html
Lanier, J. (2010b). You are not a gadget: A manifesto. New York: Vintage Books.
Lanier, J. (2011). The local-global flip, or, “The Lanier effect.” The Edge. http://
edge.org/conversation/the-local-global-flip
Lanier, J. (2013). Who owns the future? (1st Kindle ed.). New York: Simon &
Schuster.
Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Enquiry, 30(2), 225–248.
Latour, B., & Venn, C. (2002). Morality and technology: The end of the means. Theory,
Culture & Society, 19(5–6), 247–260. doi: 10.1177/026327602761899246
McDermott, D. (1976). Artificial intelligence meets natural stupidity. SIGART
Newsletter (April), 4–9.
Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge:
A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017–1054.
Monmonier, M. S. (1991). How to lie with maps. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
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Morozov, E. (2013). To save everything, click here: Technology, solutionism and the
urge to fix problems that don’t exist (Kindle ed.). New York: Penguin.
Pickering, A. (1995). The mangle of practice: Time, agency, and science. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Robins, K., & Webster, F. (1989). The technical fix: Education, computers and
industry. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Robins, K., & Webster, F. (1999). Times of the technoculture: From the information
society to the virtual life. London: Routledge.
Selwyn, N. (2010). Looking beyond learning: Notes towards the critical study of
educational technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(1), 65–73. doi:
10.1111/j.1365–2729.2009.00338.x
Selwyn, N. (2012). Sharpening the “ed-tech imagination”: Improving academic
research in education and technology. Keynote presentation to the Critical
Perspectives on Learning with New Media Conference, Monash University,
Australia (pp. 6–16). http://bit.ly/1Ec3qTl
Sproull, L., & Kiesler, S. (1991). Connections: New ways of working in the networked
organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Turnbull, D. (2000). Masons, tricksters, and cartographers: Comparative studies in the
sociology of scientific and indigenous knowledge (Kindle ed.). Australia: Harwood
Academic.
CHAPTER 2
Gorillas in Their Midst: Rethinking
Chris Bigum and Leonie Rowan
Gorillas in Their Midst
Humans, unlike some species, have a blind spot that derives from an absence
of photoreceptor cells in the retina. We usually don’t notice our blind spot
because the other eye helps the brain fill in the missing information. This
means, as Leonard Mlodinow (2012) suggests, that reality is a little less
straightforward than we might imagine. He puts it this way: “senses plus
mind equals reality.”
In the 1990s, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons (2012) conducted experiments on a related phenomenon, that of inattentional blindness (Simons & Chabris, 1999). The experiment, known popularly as the
invisible gorilla (Chabris & Simons, 2012) has subjects watch a video tape
that runs less than a minute. The tape shows two groups of basket ballers,
three dressed in black shirts and three in white. The task is to count the
number of passes that are made. About thirty seconds into the tape a female
student wearing a gorilla suit appears, stares at the camera, thumps her
chest, and wanders off camera. The “gorilla” spends about nine seconds on
screen. The first experiment was conducted at Harvard University. About
half the subjects did not notice the gorilla. They were so intent on their
task of counting the passes that they simply did not see the gorilla. Chabris
and Simons’ work is part of a wider body of literature that explores the gap
between what we “see” and what we notice.
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Bigum and Rowan
Reflecting on the invisible gorilla serves as a useful challenge for us as
researchers. Many of the claims made about educational research are based
upon the belief that a particular study or project or paper will look at a field/
issue/topic, notice the things that are most important, and then communicate that message to others with a similar interest so that they, too, may
learn to notice the really important things. In this process we not only send
messages about what we see as important, we also contribute to a tradition
of noticing (or not noticing) and influence where others in the same field
may also be inclined to look. Thus any field of research is characterized by
assertions (implicit or otherwise) about the issues that are most worthy of
ongoing attention.
The gorilla in our midst reminds us that there is a difference between
an ability to notice what we are told (or trained or encouraged) to notice,
and what there actually is to notice. Of course, social neuroscience is not
the only field that helps us make this point. It can be argued that over
time, a kind of orthodoxy emerges in any well-established field, something that Law (2004) describes as a hinterland, in which there are reality possibilities and impossibilities: things that can and cannot be said or
thought about.1 Somewhat counterintuitively, the more established a field
becomes the less likely it is that new issues or new ideas will be noticed.
To continue the metaphor introduced above, even if the number of gorillas keep on multiplying, the rules, traditions, and habits of the hinterland
(with its reminders about what we’re supposed to be paying attention
to) do not actually allow them to exist and thus, they are impossible to
notice.
In this chapter we use the motifs provided by Mlodinow, Chabris and
Simons, and Law to frame a reflection on literature associated with educational technologies. In the pages that follow, we ask questions about what
we are trained, expected, encouraged to notice within much of the literature
associated with this broad field. In this first section of the chapter we illustrate the existence of blind spots and patterns of noticing through reference
to three particular publications. In analyzing these publications, we reflect
also on what they tell us about patterns that extend into a broader field of
literature produced by what we refer to as the educational technorati (ET 2)
literature and what, by extension, we risk overlooking. In the second half
of the chapter we look at an alternative approach to researching in education and technologies: an approach that opens up new ways of noticing the
unnoticeable.
It is important to acknowledge here that we are not seeking to critique
everything within this broad literature or to suggest that it has not played
any valuable roles. Our focus, rather, is on the complex question of the
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existence—within any established field of enquiry—of significant blind
spots and the implications this may have for future research.
In writing this chapter, we struggled with the usual process of writing
chess, that is passing drafts back and forth, rewriting each other’s rewrites,
and so on. This kind of work is often rendered invisible in final publications that offer, instead neat, tidy, and nonargumentative representations
of ideas that have been struggled over and contested. Given the chapter’s
overarching interest in noticing the unnoticeable, we have decided to make
more visible the various stages of thought we progressed through. We found
ourselves having question and answer conversations and we decided to
deliberately bring these to the foreground as a counterpart to the theoretical work. The intention was to create discomfort. The account is suspenseful, a consequence of how we decided to paint the picture. So we have used
a style that reflects our discussion for much of the remainder of the chapter.
We have attributed names to questions and responses in the interests of
establishing a logic to the conversation but both our ideas are interwoven
though all of the text.
Noticing What Is Noticed
Leonie : Let’s begin with the obvious question. What does get noticed in
most ET literature?
Chris: It’s worth recalling the origins, or at least the early days of com-
puter use in formal education settings. The field might be said to
have taken off in the early 1980s. Prior to this there had been interest
in using various “new” media, like television, film, and radio to help
improve student learning (e.g., Cuban, 1986). Then, as computers
began to be deployed across a wide range of human activity, chiefly
on the basis of improving things, it seemed logical that computers
might also play a role in education as they had begun to play roles in
industry, commerce, and the military, for example.
Leonie : Doug Noble’s (1991) work in tracing the role of the military in a
broad set of educational technologies and practices makes those connections explicit.
Chris: Yes. The history is important because you can trace the origins
of what has remained important to the ET for the past 30 or more
years, namely, improving student learning, access to information, and
employability. Once this is your focus the research questions concentrate on how to achieve these outcomes.
Leonie: If activity today is anything to go by, there must have been a great
variety of things being tried in the classroom back then.
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Chris: There were. The legacy of an earlier interest in automating teach-
ing appeared as drill and practice software. But then, as application
software like word processing and spreadsheet software became available, teachers became interested in adapting these resources to meet
their teaching purposes. Interest in teaching programming also blossomed around this time.
Leonie: So the focus remained on improving things?
Chris: Yes. For instance, there was research into how word processors
could improve student writing, or in the case of spreadsheets, improvement in the learning of mathematics was explored.
Leonie: OK. But I have to say that seems logical. Laudable even. Formal
education institution’s supposed prime interest is in helping students
learn. So is it a problem that this focus has remained intact over this
period of time?
Chris: Yes and no. Let me continue with this very brief overview. What
emerged fairly quickly was the observation that despite what was
happening outside of schools in other fields of work, it was proving
difficult to demonstrate the improvements that had been imagined.
The ET kept the faith, that is, that the various digital technologies
would improve things. They were reluctant to notice that the change
they imagined for teaching and learning was only rarely happening
and when it did, it was difficult to sustain or spread from one site to
another.
Leonie: You have written about this in more detail recently (Bigum,
2012a, 2012b). What struck me was how successful schooling has
been in domesticating the various technologies that have been brought
into the school.
Chris: I think that the response of the ET to this dilemma underlines
the point we are trying to make; that is, when you concentrate on
one aspect, albeit a highly important one, you miss a lot of what else
is going on.
Leonie: So focusing on improving learning, you don’t notice how
schools operate to limit opportunities through the various modes of
domestication.
Chris: I think the broader literature concerned with studying the use
of various new technologies across a range of human activity does a
much better job. Largely, because it does not begin with the assumption that improvement is the only possible or interesting outcome.
Unintended and unexpected outcomes can, more often than not, be
more important and interesting (e.g., Latour, 2000; Sproull & Kiesler,
1991; Tenner, 1996).
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Leonie: So there is not a lot of interest in unintended outcomes. What do
the ET do?
Chris: In the instances that were judged to be successes, research turned
to identifying the factors that contribute to these successful outcomes. Loveless (2011), in a recent review, maps something of the
history of model development in relation to pedagogy and computing technologies. Better known examples of pattern making include
Siemen’s notion of connectivism (2005) and Koehler and Mishra’s
(2009) Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK)
model. Building models and their related classification schemes has
been a common way to make sense of observations across a broad
number of fields, as Bowker and Star (1999) put it, “to classify is
human” (p. 1).
Leonie: So the focus remains firmly on how best to improve teaching and learning via digital technologies. And presumably in this
work you have to decide what is important and what is not. You
end up with factors that don’t appear to fit and will ultimately get
ignored, like the socks that we can’t find mates for in the pile of
clean laundry.
Chris: The sock example captures it well. There is a tidiness associated
with looking for factors. But it is important to think about how things
get tidied and the work associated with keeping things tidy. Some
things get tidied out of sight. If they don’t fit into any of the categories
of a model, they are simply made to disappear, or, like the gorilla we
began this chapter with, are simply not seen.
Leonie: OK. I think I get it. So, for example, if was able to know in
advance the characteristics of my students and how they would react
to my pedagogy I would know if my class was going to be successful,
or attract good feedback. But actually, I can’t, and so, in a sense I play
it by ear, adjusting and adapting as I go.
Chris: As all good teachers do. There is a set of related ideas here that
we should briefly flag. Identifying factors, establishing categories that
can predict successful outcomes is an approach that extends beyond
the interests of the ET. The emblematic question of this approach is,
what makes a good teacher?
Leonie: Yes and how we measure “goodness” remains a matter of ongoing
contention (Rowan, 2013). But the factor/category-based approach
appears significant, at least in terms of numbers of papers. I did see a
lot of effort focused on “determining the important factors in a successful educational innovation” when I was reading from the sample
of papers we drew from the ET literature.
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Chris: In the sample we read, the persisting interest in how to best inte-
grate computers into classrooms was remarkable.
Leonie: It was. It’s the how question again, which seems to be an indicator
of a continuing focus on improvement. There has been some interest
in questions about what and why but such questions challenge key
curriculum decisions, that is, what is important to know and why?
So here, I think, it would be useful to briefly outline the subset of
papers we eventually chose from the ET literature and how they help
us illustrate what we are trying to argue. Two of the papers report
studies aimed at identifying the key factors for integrating computers
into classroom.
Paper one is by Zhao, Pugh, Sheldon, & Byers (2002) and reports
the outcomes of an evaluation study in which they collected data from
118 funded innovation grants. The purpose of the work was to develop
the characteristics of instances of successful integration of computing and related technologies in classrooms. In paper two, Debele and
Plevyak (2012) draw in part on the work of Zhao et al. and examine
reported accounts of successful integration of computers in social studies classrooms. The third paper is an editorial (Maddux & Johnson,
2012). They argue that the overall problem of integration has to do
with not achieving what they call external validity:
By external validity, we mean the extent to which results of a study
or a given program development project can be assumed to apply to
other people in other places and at other times. (p. 250)
Chris: OK. So what did you make of each of them? What did they actu-
ally do to arrive at their categories or characteristics?
Leonie: Zhao et al. outline the process they went through to identify the
11 “salient factors,” which they cluster under three headings: the innovator, the innovation, and the context. They argue that each cluster
interacts with the other two, and identify the implications of their
findings for the professional development of teachers, the way in
which this work should be understood, evolutionary not revolutionary, and support.
The second paper is similar to the first. Debele and Plevyak draw
on the work of Zhao et al. to establish factors and conditions for
the successful integration of computers in social studies classrooms.
They canvassed 45 empirical studies from which they selected 33
based upon whether or not the instructional goals for each project
were met. They also draw on Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) work on
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TPCK. Their analyses broadly mesh with the findings of Zhao et al.
They found that:
The most visible commonalities among the successful technology
projects were clarity/focus of the targeted learning outcomes, pedagogy—technology alignment, and the role of the researcher in the
project development and implementation. (p. 289)
Chris: TPCK is vogue among many of the ET at present. It does expand
the things to be considered in thinking about computer use in classrooms but, like all category-based approaches, necessarily omits things
that don’t fit.
Leonie: It’s interesting that they refer to “visible commonalities” . . . sort
of illustrates your point. But before we get onto what they are missing
we should introduce the third paper. The editorial by Maddux and
Johnson captures some of the key themes in the other two papers, and
frames these findings with the question, why computing technology
has “not lived up to its considerable potential in education” (p. 249).
They see the solution to the problem as inattention to what they term
external validity, or the reproducibility of results of an innovation
across time and space.
Chris: The Maddux and Johnson editorial is interesting. They are concerned that studies of computer use in classrooms are done under good
or almost ideal conditions, “master teachers in classrooms and schools
where personnel are strongly committed to the success of these programs and methods” (p. 250). Their interest, as is the case for those
who develop category systems, is in generalizability. But they argue
that to produce more useful categories, studies ought to be done under
less than ideal conditions.
Leonie: I get the picture: this kind of “labeling” approach certainly makes
you look for certain things. Surely other people have drawn attention
to the narrow and restrictive nature of category-based analysis? What
about critical sociologists?
Chris: There have been a number of scholars from the critical sociology
tradition that have been making this point for quite some time. Hank
Bromley and Michael Apple (1998) and Larry Cuban’s work (1986,
2001) come to mind. The term critical appears to have been something of a flag to the ET as an approach that misses the much more
important task of figuring out how to improve teaching and learning.
Critical approaches tend to focus on the “why” and “what” of teaching
and learning.
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Leonie: Does this mean that critical sociology is also a form of category-
based analysis?
Chris: In a word, yes. Critical sociologists use categories, but they tend
to be of a different order than those of the ET. What characterizes
the scholarship of critical sociologists are terms that point to generic
influences or forces. As Bruno Latour (2005), writing about critical
sociology, rather unkindly puts it:
When faced with new situations and new objects, it risks simply
repeating that they are woven out of the same tiny repertoire of
already recognized forces: power, domination, exploitation, legitimization, fetishization, reification. (p. 249)
Leonie: Well [indignantly], that is a glib account of a large and important
body of scholarly work that has been hugely influential over a long
period of time in education. Nevertheless, I remain curious about putting criticality into the same camp as the ET. Are you saying that they
are both category makers and users?
Chris: Yes. As we too will be at the end of this chapter, but the categorization we do will have a different basis than the typical ET analysis or
the usual critical take on educational technologies.
Leonie: So does this mean that even if we add in criticality to our thinking about computers and classrooms, there are still, at least potentially, gorillas in our midst?
Chris: Yes. But the key point is, even if we shift to a different approach,
one we will talk about shortly, you can never be sure there will not be
gorillas in our midst.
Noticing Representation
Leonie: So, are we there yet? Is it time to put forward the alternative?
Chris: Yes we are. Let’s make a brief argument about the broad kind of
knowledge-making that is going on in the literature we have looked
at. The research of the ET is concerned with representing the reality
of what is going on in classrooms and it uses categories to aid that
representation. Over time these categories and representations come
to appear natural. So we don’t even particularly notice how they train
us to attend to some things rather than others. Of course the ET are
not the only group who represent things. It is a mode of knowledge
work that is common to much of Western thought.
Leonie: And then we build category systems to organize those
representations.
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Chris: Exactly. But the problem is—and it is a philosophical issue—the
separation between the thing being represented and its representation.
Once you separate matter from the meaning given to it, the opportunity to further divide or categorize matter becomes straightforward.
The material, as Richard Edwards (2011) argues, can then be divided
into, “the social, the natural, the technological, the cultural and the
economic. These enacted distinctions or boundary markings are then
assumed to be ‘natural’ and taken to be foundational” (p. 529, emphasis added).
Leonie: So the social, the natural, and the technological are not foundational? What then is?
Chris: What follows is less an answer about what is foundational and
more one of drawing attention to the systems of thought that rely on a
foundation in which there is a separation of matter and meaning.
Leonie: So it is not a matter of one being better than another?
Chris: Rather than which foundation is better, I think it is more useful
to ask what is being done when a particular epistemology is deployed.
The thing is that each set of assumptions of a particular epistemology
and its ontology has effects. For example, if you take the view that
people or things have essential attributes or properties, then claims
that a woman’s place is in the home or that particular technologies
have affordances are controversial only at an epistemological level.
What tends to be forgotten is that claims like this are dependent upon
the assumptions that are made about reality, that is, in this case that
people and things have essential attributes and properties that can be
represented.
Leonie: Poststructural feminists have been working to challenge essentialist claims for decades now. In its many guises it has worked to
destabilize essentialisms of various kinds to good effect over the
years.
Chris: Indeed it has. There are, as you point out, a large number of
approaches that have rightly asked questions about essentialisms of
one kind or another. The important point is that the basis of representation, that is, the separation of matter and meaning is not an
issue of interest in the literature of the ET. This is where we enter
the world of the performative. A quote from Barad (2007) captures
it well:
Performative approaches call into question representationalism’s
claim that there are representations, on the one hand, and ontologically separate entities awaiting representation, on the other, and
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focus enquiry on the practices or performances of representing, as
well as the productive effects of those practices and the conditions
for their efficacy. (p. 49)
What a performative approach draws attention to is practices, what
is done,3 for example, to make the categories that determine whether
computer integration into a classroom is successful and so on.
Leonie: There are a lot of different approaches to the performative that,
I think, can make the idea seem a bit confusing to the newcomer.
It’s not something that leaps out at you as routine as representational
approaches do.
Chris: I agree. The idea is not easy. Moving to the performative turns
things on their heads, so to speak. Rather than beginning with a fixed
set of components, factors, or predispositions that require representation, we have to think about the practices that make or do or enact, in
the case of computers in classrooms, what we might call, integrationrealities. For instance, the papers we cited earlier in this chapter, as
well as this chapter, do or enact realities. A key question then is how
different realities get performed in practice. How, for instance, are
teachers, their students, the computers in the classroom enacted in
integration-realities? Or, to put it another way, teachers, their students,
and the computers that are the focus of concerns about integration are
not entities to be represented, they are all effects of practices.
Leonie: That is a huge leap to make. But let’s see where it takes us with
each of the three papers. And in passing, we still have not escaped the
category problem, have we?
Chris: No we have not. Language and particularly its role in knowledge
production has to be about categories of some kind. So deploying the
category of practices in thinking about the realities in which we are
interested shifts focus away from things and how to put them into tidy
boxes and toward how those boxes are built and how different things
are put into different boxes.
Leonie: Maybe it’s best to illustrate the idea by looking again at the
three papers. What can we say about the integration-realities that are
described in these papers?
Chris: Now, unless you are familiar with, for example, the Zhao et al.
paper then all you know about it is what we have put in this chapter.
Our writing practices and your reading practices together assemble,
for you, a putative reality of the Zhao et al. paper (Law, 2012). This
is, as Law argues, the performativity of practice at work. Similarly,
our reading practices and the writing practices of Zhao et al. produce
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various realities of teachers, of failed and successful projects, of technologies and pedagogical beliefs. Teachers, in the paper by Zhao et al.,
are enacted as knowledgeable (or not) about specific technologies, as
having beliefs “compatible with the technology” or not, as being able
to draw support from colleagues (or not).
Leonie: There is work being done here to divide, to make boundaries, to
classify? I think I am beginning to join some of the dots. But we need
also to pay attention to what else is being done in each of the three
papers? For instance, the criteria for successful innovations in Zhao
et al.’s (2002) paper are being done or enacted.
Chris: And we can then ask how are they being done?
Leonie: The paper maps the process the authors went through in some
detail. I got a sense of a great deal of data being tidied or reduced to
something that could be managed to fit into the accepted length of
the discussion/methods section of a paper. This is what always happens in research including obviously my own. You can’t publish it
all. The authors noticed a messiness in the practices on which they
report. A set of accounts from surveys, interviews, and observations is
reduced to three clusters of attention: the teacher, the project, and the
context, and how each of these “need” to relate in order for integration/implementation to occur.
Chris: It struck me that the clusters are held together conditionally,
“successful implementation of classroom technology is more likely
to occur if . . . ” (p. 492). There are nine statements that are structured this way in the text. Further, they are nested, almost like
computer code, IF . . . THEN . . . IF . . . THEN . . . . The else is always
implicit. Success is enacted as a nested set of conditions. The successful world is realized through snippets of the cases that were studied.
Interestingly, the artifacts, the hardware and software that are the
concern of the work are glossed into one word, technology. There are
gestures to affordances, to upgrades, and to infrastructure. There is
a brief list of some software and implied hardware in the table that
maps the participants (pp. 486–487). What must have been a large
and disparate set of artifacts is represented by one word. The reality of
successful innovations is enacted as a tidy reality, one characterized
by a set of check-box conditions and a generic technology.
Leonie: There is more than that. The various bits of hardware and software are being enacted as having affordances, lending themselves for
“fitting” with the pedagogical beliefs of teachers.
Chris: It is easier to allocate affordances to objects that don’t have language than those that do. So we have the pedagogical beliefs of
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teachers being done here. For instance, one of the teachers, Kathy
(p. 492), makes a connection between the way hypertext can be used
to connect chunks of text and the way humans think.
Leonie: How is that a pedagogical belief?
Chris: That’s not the point. One of Kathy’s pedagogical beliefs is being
done this way. The account washes away all else about Kathy’s pedagogy. It enacts her pedagogical beliefs as an association between computer algorithms and how humans think. Her project is deemed to be
successful. The complexity of what a teacher values, how they think
about particular challenges, students, and working with various materials is collapsed into a category, pedagogical beliefs.
Leonie: There is similar work being done in Debele and Plevyak’s (2012)
paper. The criteria for successful integration, this time in social studies classrooms, is being enacted in terms of the alignment of pedagogy
and technology. The authors took 45 empirical studies, which they
reduced to 33 by deleting those that did not meet their instructional
goals.
Chris: So the stuff that “failed” is left out?
Leonie: Yes. They made the model of Zhao et al. a little more elaborate.
To the three clusters of factors identified by Zhao et al., they added
four more: the role of the researcher(s), the objectives of the project,
the type of technology, and the “types of targeted learning outcomes”
(p. 288). Here, technology has been split into the many forms that
one might anticipate are in use in classrooms. Software is named.
Hardware is implicit. There are brief synopses of the papers’ accounts
of the success of projects. Success is being done. It is being done, like
Zhao et al., in terms of the ordering or coincidence of a series of factors, like the IF . . . THEN idea you described.
Chris: Alignment is also being done. Alignment is being done as strong
or weak, well aligned and not well aligned. Alignment is being done
as a kind of fit between the use of particular artifacts and the development of particular learning outcomes. Successful teachers, in this
model, are enacted as aligners of things. As they put it:
Educators should ensure that pre-service and in-service teachers
are not only introduced to the “what” and “how” of a certain innovation, but also to the kinds of learning outcomes (e.g., historical
thinking, media literacy, etc.) that can best be achieved using those
innovations. (p. 296)
Leonie: So successful teachers are being enacted as knowers of the prac-
tices that support or encourage particular behaviors of students and
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knowers of the capacities, affordances, or attributes of particular computing artifacts. That’s a good thing to argue isn’t it?
Chris: It may be. Relying upon representations and tidying them through
various categories enacts separations of things that are entangled.
Leonie: You mean things like “the social” and “the technical”? So debates
about which is more important becomes a contest between which representation, and hence explanation, is better. The technology did it or
the teacher did it.
Chris: Yes. Boundary making, even the boundaries we are making in
relation to practices, has consequences.
Leonie: Turning to the paper by Maddux and Johnson (2012), we have a
different approach to the problem of integration that was the focus of
the first two papers. It is the editorial for the issue in which the Debele
and Plevyak paper appears. The authors pose a variation on the now
long-standing question among the ET—why have we not seen the
kind of changes in schools that are evident in so many other social
practices? Their question is:
Why has technology failed to bring about a widespread shift from
passive methods such as the lecture to more active kinds of instruction including inquiry-based learning? (p. 249)
Chris: What is different in this paper is that failure rather than success is
being enacted. Failure is being done as an absence, a lack of demonstrating “good external validity” (p. 249), or as the authors put it:
The extent to which results of a study or a given program development project can be assumed to apply to other people in other places
and at other times. (p. 250)
Maddux and Johnson point to the practices in which “ideal” circumstances are put in place in order to carry out a project. They are
supportive of the development of ideals, like the category work of the
other two papers, but they want findings from sites that are not ideal.
Leonie: This is category making of a different kind. While not ideal seems
intuitively closer to the messy realities of classrooms, we still have not
moved from representations and their associated categories.
Chris: No. We can represent what we see going on in classrooms or in
papers that are written about what is going on in classrooms.4 We can
generate idealities, abstractions, frameworks, and schemas but they
are no longer connected to the practices that produced them. The separation makes the reproducibility of the classroom practices that have
been represented impossible. We can’t be certain that what was left
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out as the criteria for success or failure. We can’t be sure that what was
left out was not an important part of, for example, the enactment of
integration.
Leonie: Does this mean we need messier accounts of computers in
classrooms?
Chris: Yes and no. Yes to obtain some sense of what a non-representational
account looks like and no because we will still likely have gorillas. At
this point it is useful to briefly draw attention to two accounts, two
PhD theses, one has been turned into a book (Sørensen, 2009), the
other (Nicholls, 2009) is available online. Both works report studies of
practices associated with computer use in educational settings. Estrid
Sørensen reports an ethnography conducted in a school in Denmark.
Her interest was in “how newly implemented technologies participate
in school practice with the way in which established technologies do
so” (p. 3). She goes on to write:
The established technologies we encounter in this study include a
blackboard, chalk, a chalk-holder, a one-meter ruler, songs, bodies, notebooks, a bed-loft, sheets of paper, chairs, and a bell. The
new technologies include an online 3D2 virtual environment, a
weblog (more commonly known as a “blog”), and a conference
system. (p. 3)
Nicholls (2009) also conducted an ethnography in Ramingining—
a town in Arnhem Land, Australia, where the majority of the inhabitants are Aboriginal peoples. Like Sørensen, Nicholls was interested
in the materials that had a role in enacting the practices she studied.
In both accounts there is no initial assignation of attributes or affordances to people or things. For example, knowledge, as was the case
for all the other labeled practices and things, was something that
was done or performed. Both accounts explore the materiality of the
practices that produces the multiple realities of the two ethnographies (Law, 2008).
Sørensen’s rich account of the introduction of a virtual environment into
a school arose from her noticing the already-in-place ways of knowing and
doing, in the classroom, the other technologies. As she puts it:
My point of departure was to study a 3D virtual environment,
but the nature of the empirical field led me to ask questions about
materials I thought I knew all to well: a blackboard, notebooks,
pencils, chalk, even walls and doors. I was surprised to find how
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crucial and unexpected were the formations these materials contributed to performing (p. 189).
Leonie: Like Sørensen, Anthea Nicholls has a collection of rich accounts
of computers, learning, and materials in her performance of the social
life of the computer at Ramingining. One such story, about Bulany,
the chairman of the local government council, and the donation of a
computer to him by the school in the local community is illustrative
of our argument (Nicholls, 2009):
Today, the 9 November 2006, the school is donating a computer
to Bulany, in recognition of the work he has put into learning
about computers. It is an iMac and sports a sticker which reads, To
Bulany, Council Chairman, from Ramingining School . . . Bulany is
excited . . . He has cleaned his office earlier today . . . It seems a fitting
welcome for the colorful iMac. The lead only just makes it from the
desk to the powerpoint and Bulany seems reluctant to move the desk
closer, so the computer accommodates by sitting at an angle.
Power surges into the iMac and it bursts into life, bright faced . . . a
little later (he) responds to a suggestion to write the school a thank
you note . . . The screen already says, Hi there, where he has been
practicing how to select text and change its size, and he goes to start
the letter, Hi there Corrie . . . but then he hesitates, saying aloud, Hi
Corrie. The computer is prepared for such changes and together
they take the “there” out.
The next day Anthea has to go into Darwin for a month . . . When
she returns the iMac has a sad look to its desktop face, with only a
few icons scattered there. She searches in vain for the Word program, the phonics and the games. They have all gone . . . Kids have
been here . . . Not only the programs have been wiped . . . Something
vital in the computer’s own internal capacity to heal itself has been
removed.
Leonie: Selecting a few paragraphs of text from a 300-page thesis makes
it difficult to convey the elaborate interweaving of practices that enact
the social life of the computer at this site.
Chris: Enactments such as this and Sørensen’s clearly meet the Maddux
and Johnson criterion of less than ideal conditions. They would be of
less interest to studies that seek to locate factors which contribute to
successful implementations. Importantly, these accounts enact realities that at times cohere and at times are in tension. In a performative
idiom, there is no requirement to reconcile difference. Just as those
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who work at the coal face know, working with digital technologies is
often a matter of dealing with the unexpected, and the unintended.
Tidy, category-based accounts enact realities that are different from
those that derive from attending to practices. As Andrew Pickering
(1995) puts it, “within the representational idiom, people and things
tend to appear as shadows of themselves” (p. 6).
Learning to Laugh at Certainty
Leonie: So where to from here? Is it a case of representational bad, per-
formative good?
Chris: No it isn’t. We are in the realm of what Mol (1999) calls ontologi-
cal politics, or ontics, that is, not deciding in advance what ontology
is right or wrong. Law (2007) suggests, ontics is a politics that “is
explicit about the goods and bads of different metaphysics” (p. 127).
Leonie: This is all very well, but for teachers and the ET there is the
ongoing challenge of what do we do on Monday? Are we, for instance,
suggesting that we stop worrying about representations of integrating computers into classrooms and that we pay more attention to the
practices of integration or what?
Chris: If we take Law’s (2012) advice and pay attention to the practices
of Monday, we look to see what is being done, and, in particular how
it is being done. We can examine how the various relations are being
assembled and ordered to produce the effects we call school. All the
while we need to keep in mind that there is no single, coherent reality
“out there” that is independent of or prior to practice. It is, as Law
argues, “practices all the way down” (p. 169).
Leonie: So for a teacher, thinking along these lines means paying
attention to practices and perhaps being less concerned with their
representation?
Chris: Which, when you think about it, is not far from what teachers do.
It’s just that representing, naming, and labeling can come to occupy
most of their time, that is, I am teaching, she is learning, this is an
assessment, I am integrating computers into my history lesson, and so
on. Being set a little free of various ways of thinking about the big foci
of schooling, can, as Ball (2006) argues be liberating:
Theory can serve to conjure up its own anterior norms and lay its
dead hand upon the creativity of the mind. Too often in educational studies, theory becomes no more than a mantric reaffirmation of belief rather than a tool for exploration and for thinking
otherwise. (p. 64)
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Leonie: What about the ET?
Chris: I think it may be a little trickier for the ET, more because, for
some, their investment in various systems for representing the various
realities with which they work is not inconsiderable. It’s not a matter of tossing out things like TPCK but of adding a consideration of
practices to their repertoire. It allows them to ask how TPCK is being
done, for instance, or how integration of computers into classrooms
is being done.
Leonie: You seem to be suggesting that it is possible to have a foot in both
camps.
Chris: I am. I don’t think you can avoid representationalism (otherwise
we’d never be able to communicate?) but attending to practices and
avoiding the tidiness of category-based representations offers a more
demanding and useful approach to thinking about the phenomenon
of computing and formal education.
To illustrate the point we draw upon Helen Verran’s (1999), study
of the teaching of mathematics and science in Nigerian (Yoruba)
classrooms. Verran comes to a setting in which bilingual Yoruba children are able to work with the ontics of the two different knowledge
systems—English and Yoruba. She suggests that opposing ontologies
are not necessarily hostile to the other.
In subverting both English and Yoruba in working them together,
blending accepted routines of collective acting in ways that both retain
the certainty and reveal the origins of that certainty as located in routines, repetitions and rituals, Mr Ojo’s5 lesson is a revelation. We experience the certainty at the same time as we experience something else:
the amazing hoax of certainty. This laughter, the disconcertment, is
vital for it is in that that we can know ourselves as participants who tell
stories as part of our participation. Staying true to that laughter will
give us better ways of telling true stories in responsible ways. (p. 151)
To return to the point at which we began—there may be as many problems in noticing gorillas as there are in not noticing them. Perhaps we have
to learn how to count basketball passes and notice gorillas. Perhaps too,
we can also learn to laugh when we stumble upon the amazing hoax of
certainty.
Notes
1. Law works within the field broadly known as science and technology studies or
STS. This field, like all others, can also be analyzed in ways that draw attention
to the existence of a hinterland.
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2. We borrow the term technorati from the Web and coin the label to gesture to
those who contribute formally and informally to knowledge production in the
field of educational technology.
3. We use the verb “do” to underline the point that in a performative idiom, we
are not talking about a single reality “out there” that requires description. It is
to emphasize that “realities (including objects and subjects) and representations
of those realities are being enacted or performed simultaneously” (Law, 2008,
p. 635).
4. Or in papers that are written about papers that are written about what goes on in
classrooms.
5. One of the teachers with whom she worked.
References
Ball, S. J. (2006). Education policy and social class: The selected works of Stephen J Ball.
London: Routledge.
Barad, K. M. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
Bigum, C. (2012a). Edges, exponentials and education: Disenthralling the digital.
In L. Rowan & C. Bigum (Eds.), Transformative approaches to new technologies
and student diversity in futures oriented classrooms: Future Proofing Education
(pp. 29–43). Dordrecht: Springer.
Bigum, C. (2012b). Schools and computers: Tales of a digital romance. In L. Rowan
& C. Bigum (Eds.), Transformative approaches to new technologies and student
diversity in futures oriented classrooms: Future Proofing Education (pp. 15–28).
Dordrecht: Springer.
Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bromley, H., & Apple, M. W. (Eds.). (1998). Education/technology/power: Educational
computing as a social practice. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Chabris, C., & Simons, D. J. (2012). The invisible gorilla and other ways our intentions
deceive us. New York: Crown.
Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Debele, M., & Plevyak, L. (2012). Conditions for successful use of technology in social studies classrooms. Computers in the Schools, 29(3), 285–299. doi:
10.1080/07380569.2012.703602
Edwards, R. (2011). Theory matters: Representation and experimentation in
education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(5), 522–534. doi: 10.1111
/j.1469–5812.2010.00719.x
Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content
knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE
Journal), 9(1), 60–70.
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Latour, B. (2000). When things strike back: A possible contribution of “science
studies” to the social sciences. British Journal of Sociology, 51(1), 107–123.
doi:10.1111/j.1468–4446.2000.00107.x
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science. London: Routledge.
Law, J. (2007). Pinboards and books: Juxtaposing, learning and materiality. In
D. W. Kritt & L. T. Winegar (Eds.), Education and technology: Critical perspectives, possible futures (pp. 125–149). Lanham: Lexington Books.
Law, J. (2008). On sociology and STS. The Sociological Review, 56(4), 623–649.
doi: 10.1111/j.1467–954X.2008.00808.x
Law, J. (2012). Collateral realities. In F. D. Rubio & P. Baert (Eds.), The politics of
knowledge (pp. 156–178). London: Routledge.
Loveless, A. (2011). Technology, tedagogy and education: Reflections on the accomplishment of what teachers know, do and believe in a digital age. Technology,
Pedagogy and Education, 20(3), 301–316.
Maddux, C. D., & Johnson, D. L. (2012). External validity and research in information technology in education. Computers in the Schools, 29(3), 249–252. doi: 10.1
080/07380569.2012.703605
Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6),
1017–1054.
Mlodinow, L. (2012). Subliminal: The revolution of the new unconscious and what it
teaches us about ourselves (1st ed.). London: Allen Lane.
Mol, A. (1999). Ontological politics: A word and some questions. In J. Law &
J. Hassard (Eds.), Actor network theory and after (pp. 74–89). Oxford: Blackwell.
Nicholls, A. V. (2009). The social life of the computer in ramingining. Unpublished
PhD thesis, Charles Darwin University, Darwin. Retrieved from http://espace
.cdu.edu.au/eserv/cdu:9267/Thesis_CDU_9267_Nicholls_A.pdf
Noble, D. D. (1991). The classroom arsenal: Military research, information technology
and public education. London: Falmer.
Pickering, A. (1995). The mangle of practice: Time, agency, and science. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
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http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm
Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28, 1059–1074.
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Tenner, E. (1996). Why things bite back: Technology and the revenge of unintended
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Zhao, Y., Pugh, K., Sheldon, S. & Byers, J. L. (2002). Conditions for classroom
technology innovations. Teachers College Record, 104(3), 482–515.
CHAPTER 3
The Work of Theory in
Ed-Tech Research
Nicola F. Johnson
Introduction
Acknowledging the constructivist nature of meaning-making, “theory”
means different things to different people (and to scholars). In writing this
chapter, I was encouraged by colleagues (my fellow editors Scott and Chris
acting as difficult and supportive reviewers) to think about and identify
what theory actually means to me. The exhortation was that I needed to have
a theory about theory in order to write about it (theory!).
Theory has often been positioned as the antithesis of practice, and something that we apply, but in my mind, theory describes how we see and think
about the world. Theories provide concepts that help us to understand and
think more deeply about our practices. The theories and theorists I use are
often related to existence and everyday life and why “we” do the things “we”
do. My bias toward sociology and social theory is evident when I state that
a theory of practice is a theoretical framework for one’s thinking. This is in
keeping with Neuman’s (2006) work where he claims theory to be “a system
of interconnected ideas that condenses and organizes knowledge about the
social world and explains how it works” (p. 8). Theory “nurtures our ability
to see deeper, and to show connectivity and the whole in the parts” (Anyon,
2009, p. 21).
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In 1995, Sutton and Staw identified five features commonly presented in
submitted manuscripts, and illustrated how they were not theory: 1) references, 2) data, 3) lists of variables or constructs, 4) diagrams, and 5) hypotheses or predictions. What they were clear to point out was that theory
constituted the answer to why. They asserted that “theory is about the connections among phenomena, a story about why acts, events, structure, and
thoughts occur” (p. 378). Theory explains practice.
This chapter draws on the efforts of others who have done similar work
with theory in education more generally (cf. Ball, 2006; Edwards, 2012;
Thomas, 2007; Wright, 2008). The chapter builds on this work to argue
for the “work” of theory to be more explicitly at the forefront of research
within the field of ed-tech. It also draws upon work that has engaged in
critical perspectives on the use of theory in learning technology research
(Bennett & Oliver, 2011; Gunn & Steel, 2012; Selwyn, 2010, 2012). These
scholars have argued for the critical tradition to have more of a voice and
focus within ed-tech research.
Theoretical (Non)Engagement in Ed-Tech Research?
In a bid to further explore some questions about theory, in late 2012, the
Learning with New Media (LNM) research group (Faculty of Education,
Monash University) conducted an online international survey of 462
researchers positioned within educational technology, educational media,
and related fields (Bulfin, Henderson, & Johnson, 2013; Bulfin, Henderson,
Johnson, & Selwyn, 2014; Selwyn et al., 2013). The construction of the
online survey was informed by three questions:
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Who is conducting research in the area of education, technology, and
media?
What methods (or kinds of methods) of data collection and analysis
are privileged in this research?
What is the use of theory in shaping the kind of research work that
gets done?
Invitations were sent via email in 2012 to lead authors of articles published
between 2007 and 2012 in four leading English language journals: Computers
& Education, British Journal of Educational Technology, Australasian Journal
of Educational Technology, and Learning, Media & Technology. In addition,
open invitations to participate were distributed through various research
email discussion lists and forums throughout the United Kingdom/Europe,
Work of Theory in Ed-Tech Research
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North America/Canada, and Australasia. The survey was designed to generate data about the nature and form of researchers’ experience and expertise
in terms of preferred methodologies, professional backgrounds, and the use
and usefulness of theory in their research projects. Closed questions made
up the majority of items on the survey. This chapter presents some findings from the qualitative questions included in the questionnaire. The openended questions were:
1. Please list the main theoretical approaches that you have used in your
research on education and digital technology/digital media.
2. What it is about these particular theories that appeal to you? What
have you found their strengths to be in relation to education and digital technology/digital media?
3. Are there any underused theoretical approaches that, in your opinion,
appear promising for research on education and digital technology/
digital media?
4. Are there any theoretical approaches used in the literature that, in
your opinion, are largely unhelpful/inappropriate/overrated? If so,
why is this?
As is often typical, each of the qualitative questions (which asked for text to
be entered) had a notable reduction of responses from the participants. In
fact the response rates for each question were as follows:
Q1—257 responses from 462 participants = 56 percent
As no question was compulsory, many left these last four questions unanswered.1. Upon analysis of the survey data, two issues immediately surfaced.
First, the low response rate may support a belief that overall there is a lack
of theory being used by researchers within educational technology/media.
The initial report highlighted a “paucity of theoretical engagement (and
perhaps theoretical ambition) amongst many respondents” (Selwyn et al.,
2013, p. 25). It appeared that “many respondents’ notion of what constituted
useful ‘theory’ often related to specific ideas, concepts and frameworks that
would not be considered to be theoretically grounded or particularly theoretically sophisticated” (Selwyn et al., 2013, p. 25).
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Second, some respondents appeared to have a difficulty clearly identifying differences between a theory, a field, and method (or methodology). In
fact, 90 respondents seemed confused and were either unsure of the questions, unsure of what was meant by theory, or when asked to identify a theory
they used, provided an answer more aligned with being a field of research
or a method of research rather than a theory. For example, many wrote
that action research or design-based research were their preferred theories,
and while there is considerable debate about the interplay between theory
and methodology, it is arguable that these are seen by most researchers in
education and the social sciences as methodologies that inform research
methods.
Findings from this survey mean it is possible to begin to explain what
kinds of theories are privileged and why. The data suggests that in the field
of ed-tech, methods seem to be privileged over theory. In answer to question 4—which theoretical approaches were unhelpful or overrated—one
participant queried what we meant by the nature of “theory,” “theoretical,”
and “e-learning”:
I think you should unpack what you mean by “theory” and “theoretical.” The phenomenon of e-learning is an artificial, designed phenomenon, and any research approach needs to be appropriate to that.
Given this, experimental (and other) approaches which assume that
an e-learning artefact or environment exists in a “perfect” form (without evidence that no further design improvements are necessary) are
inappropriate.
This was preceded by the same participant’s response to question 3:
Before thinking about theories, we should think about the phenomenon
we are investigating and our broad research goals. Trying to shoehorn
e-learning research into predefined pseudo-theories is misguided. (associate professor in Educational Design)
A perspective such as this does point to how the person understands or values theory. Also in response to question 4, a different participant indicated
their dislike of qualitative research based on the following:
Research which relies upon qualitative evidence to support interpretations. The “science” academic community are never convinced. To
use ICT across all disciplines to support learning and teaching, there
needs to be unequivocal, statistical evidence from advocates. (professor,
Education)
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This respondent focused on methodologies and methods rather than theoretical approaches. The following answer demonstrated an opposite perspective
pointing out the overrated nature of what some believe quantitative research
can do:
Practically all positivist studies that believe they can “measure” phenomena which are too complex to be reduced to numbers. (professor,
Educational Psychology)
Both of these professors have pointed out limitations with research
approaches rather than addressing the question of overrated or unhelpful
theoretical approaches.
The main theoretical approaches mentioned by the participants as prominently used in their research were “constructivism,” “constructionism,” or
Vygotsky’s sociocultural learning, and cognitive/psychological theories.2
Theories associated with learning and learning environments were mentioned, such as “situated learning” “authentic learning,” and “communities
of practice” or “communities of inquiry.” Twenty-six percent of respondents
mentioned their use of theory being related to their teaching practice, or to
classrooms, or to pedagogy, or to a particular sector of education. Other reasons for using theory were, “because it’s how you do research for coherence,”
“contextual,” “fits with my worldview or makes sense to me,” provides a “lens,”
“pragmatic,”3 “provides a perspective or understanding or powerful explanation,” or reasons to do with the social world/humanity/people (in the sense of
focusing on what people are doing and making sense of this in terms of learning and teaching).
In answer to question 4, 23 respondents said there were no unhelpful or
inappropriate or overrated theories. Fifteen responses were coded to be discussing methods or methodology rather than theories, so these respondents
appeared to be unsure of what the question was asking or unsure of what
constituted a theoretical approach. Many critical comments were made of
the “digital natives” notion (n [number of respondents] = 12), meaningless
employment of activity theory (n = 12), and that Technological Pedagogical
Content Knowledge (TPACK) was insufficient (n = 5). Another critique
was the claim that constructivism was overused.4 An associate professor in
cognitive science pointed to the limitations of constructivism by stating:
Constructivism . . . is used in many approaches and may not be suitable,
especially for students who are struggling or just learning new concepts.
Having to construct solutions, answers, creative ways of doing “stuff”
takes a tremendous amount of cognitive load and I feel constructive/
problem based approaches are used in inappropriate situations.
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A participant who was an associate head of School in Teaching and Learning
believed that there were not any overrated or unhelpful theories, stating:
No, because it is up to us to determine their relevance to our research and
practice. There is room for a range of diverse theories and even if they are
inadequate they provide useful background information for building on,
extending or addressing gaps.
Researchers do need to know about various theories and understand them
well before using them to explain practices, as Amin and Thrift (2005)
indicated:
Few now believe that one theory can cover the world (or save the world,
for that matter). No particular theoretical approach, even in combination
with others, can be used to gain a total grip on what’s going on. (p. 222)
The following responses presented in the table 3.1 showcase a random
selection of responses from survey respondents listing the main theoretical
approaches used within their research, and also the perceived appeal and
strengths. The table demonstrates a wide range of intriguing approaches to
theory and to the use of theory within ed-tech research. It also points to the
diversity and variety of those involved in ed-tech research and that many
respondents draw on a number of theoretical approaches.
Returning to the data analysis, some respondents either did not state or
were unable to state why they do use or do not use theories in their research.
For example, a senior lecturer in computer science wrote, “I have no idea how
to answer this.” In response to both questions 3 and 4, a lecturer in marketing responded with, “Do not know.” A retired professor (Earth Sciences)
stated, “Not sure if you call it a theory but I am interested in the ‘cognitive
psychology’ findings” (Q3), and to question 4, “Again, not sure if it is theory but the ‘Learning Styles’ visual/aural/read-write/kinesthetic.” Fendler
(2012) referred to this kind of phenomenon by suggesting that theory is
lurking, that is, it is present but not overtly explained. It is of concern to
me when researchers are unable to articulate their theoretical perspective/s.
If someone is uncertain about the theoretical perspectives they draw upon,
then further concerns and questions arise about their understanding of
research, namely what they are contributing to and why they are engaged
in research? It also implies that some researchers may be unclear about their
views on epistemology, ontology, their paradigm and ideology and where
these fit, why their work is important, and why they do research. I now turn
to discussing some of the tensions associated with understanding theories
Table 3.1
Selection of theories employed in ed-tech research (self-report)
Main theoretical approaches used
Appeal and strength of these theories
A positivist-interpretivist continuum
(Adviser on technology
enhanced learning)
I believe that educational research
needs to be based on a pragmatic
methodology which enables a
combination of features of a
positivist approach with elements of
an interpretivist approach. I do not
consider positivism-interpretivism
to be a divide, where each is
mutually exclusive: on the contrary,
I believe this to be a gradual scale,
and educational research can be
placed at different points along the
continuum, depending on the
context of the research. This
enables a mixed methods approach
which draws both on
qualitative and quantitative data.
Cultural studies; critical communications
(Assistant professor, Sociology of
Education)
Cultural studies and critical
communications require that one
interpret the relationships between
education and digital media within
a broader context, taking into
account factors such as neo-liberalism,
globalizing youth cultures and
digital capitalism.
Social cognitive models (e.g., theory
of planned behavior); motivation
theory (e.g., self determination theory);
affordance theory
(Associate professor, Computer Science)
I am searching for theories and
models that 1) have explanation
power not available in the current
theories/models used by educational
technology or 2) present an
alternative perspective on the
problem to be solved.
Simulation fidelity; motivation;
situated learning; cognitive development;
expertise; cognitive load theory;
information processing theory;
generative learning; problem solving
(Associate professor, Instructional Design)
[I] prefer to use theories that do
not constrain me to a particular
media, rather study the processes
associated with learning and
use the media to leverage
approaches
continued
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Table 3.1
Continued
Exploration of pedagogy-andragogyheutagogy continuum; multimodal
learning theory; social network theory
(E-learning designer,
Communications/Media)
Their strengths are that they are
not related to the technology
themselves; rather they are related to
the purposes to which technology is
used in the daily lives of people and
in formal and informal
learning situations.
Daniel Miller’s notion of objectification;
Silverstone et al’s model of the
domestication of technology; Henri
Lefebvre’s ideas on space and everyday
life; Skeggs’s relationship between
respectability and class
(Lecturer, Media Studies)
They go beyond a technologically
determined approach to technology
and help to explain how a mobile
phone that may enable young people
in Europe to be mobile successful
and individualist could also help
young people in Africa cope with
being stuck in a village and make
them even less physically and
socially mobile and more integrated
into communal space. They
facilitate understanding everyday life
and show how class culture needs to
be examined ethnographically.
Constructivism; metacognition;
inquiry-based learning; interaction design
(PhD candidate, Communication)
I have found that they are valuable
in the context of learning in the
“digital age.” They provide
conceptual understandings of
how students can learn to become
independent and lifelong learners.
Cultural-Historical Activity Theory or
sociocultural theory, which has developed
from the writings of L. S. Vygotsky;
distributed cognition; situated cognition
(Postdoctoral researcher, Education)
I am interested in theories that are
process-oriented, and attempt to
relate social interactions and
physical interaction (with people,
with the environment) to the wider
social and physical world. Their
strengths are that they offer a
means to understand the relationship
between the design of an artifact and
what happens in its use by people in
real life situations – and thereby a
means to relate design to learning.
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Critical theory; cultural studies; media;
ecology; phenomenology
(Professor, Education)
I began my research in educational
computing using critical theory
and cultural studies because I was
disillusioned by ed-tech research in
general and was interested in
critiquing the conversation itself.
Later, I was drawn to media ecology
because it allowed me to continue
that critique while also focusing on
the need for balance and an
understanding of interrelationships.
Most recently, I’ve been drawn to
phenomenology as a way of
understanding what educational
computing means in terms of lived
experience.
Social shaping of technology;
poststructuralism;
social constructionism; cultural studies
(Professor of Media and Communications)
Ha! I want theory to help me to
ask (and answer) critical questions,
to be reflexive, to challenge
orthodoxies . . . Is that enough?!
Cognitive load theory; student
learning theory
(Senior lecturer, Educational
Psychology)
Cognitive load theory provides
a strong theoretical basis for
generating hypotheses about the
likely effectiveness of instructional
materials, including those presented
through digital media. Student
learning theory has provided the
basis for exploratory analyses of the
student learning experience under
blended learning conditions,
including how such experiences
relate to students’ approaches to
learning. Both theories have their
place. The former is useful for
improving instructional media
over learning time spans of
minutes to hours; the latter
helps us understand the dynamics
of blended learning on longer
time-scales, e.g. weeks to months.
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and their place in ed-tech research and point to reflections of researchers
within the field.
Epistemological Privilege
As Selwyn (2010) has pointed out, there has been a historical tradition of edtech research having a philosophical allegiance with the learning sciences.
Typically, the learning sciences are more focused on quantitative approaches,
the scientific method, and are aligned with educational psychology, rather
than sociology or social theory. The tendency to privilege scientific method
and positivist views of epistemology are evident in political priorities and
beliefs about quality research (Briggle, 2014). Lundahl (2012) points out the
continuing promotion of “scientifically valid research” and “scientifically
based research standards,” which mean “rigorous, systematic, and objective methodology to obtain reliable and valid knowledge” (Lundahl, 2012,
p. 221, see her footnote 6). She claims the Institute of Education Sciences
(IES) in the United States has a concern that all research projects be focused
on “practical utility—development of programs and evaluating or assessing their efficacy-effectiveness. There is, for example, no room for historical, philosophical or, more generally, critical studies” (p. 222). Additionally,
Anyon (2009) claims education research was only regarded as worthy of
government support if it includes “empirically randomized controlled trials”
(p. 1). The scientific method continues to be the signifier of what counts as
research and therefore as knowledge. Economic rationalist and neoliberal
discourses demand that clear and measurable outcomes result from investment and that investment is only put into programs or projects that can
measure or demonstrate increased efficiency.5 It is difficult to be any clearer
than Briggle (2014) who states that
The objective of public science agencies and the research evaluation community is to more systematically link investments in science to the goods
and goals that are used to justify those investments. (p. 5)
Positivist views of knowledge that only value verified, generalizable data
mean that work that engages with and develops social theory is marginalized. It appears that people’s understandings of theory, what it looks like,
how it is used or engaged with, and whether it is valued seemingly correlates
with beliefs about epistemology, that is, the nature of knowledge. To give an
example of this perspective, the following comment from a survey respondent to question 4 is provided: “Many small-scale studies—need to do larger
trials” (senior consultant, United Kingdom).
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Recently, the development and availability of Big Data and data analytics (Kitchin, 2014) points to a possible shift in how knowledge might be
challenged and understood. Kitchin6 points out the place of theory and the
place of the social even with the immense volume and velocity evident in
massive datasets. But he states clearly: “It is one thing to identify patterns; it
is another to explain them. This requires social theory and deep contextual
knowledge” (p. 8).
Academic accountability has also increased exponentially in the last
ten years. Neoliberal discourses or capitalist value systems (Fendler,
2012) demand ever-increasing output (Lather, 2013). This pressure surely
affects academics and depowers the ability to engage rigorously in intellectual debate and with theoretical conundrums because this simply takes time.
In order to build “critical intellectual power” (Anyon, 2009, p. 7), researchers must engage in challenging labor to increase our “intellectual agency”
(p. 9). As scientific knowledge continues to be privileged in modern society,
and because there are close links or resonances between positivism, neoliberalism, and economic rationalism, it appears that many researchers within
ed-tech have been focused on building the field up to be respected as a science, whereas in fact, when dealing with education, messy realities (Selwyn,
2013) abound and we would do better to embrace complexity.
Problematizing Presumptions and Assumptions
As Bennett and Oliver (2011) surmised, ed-tech research has been preoccupied with solving problems and addressing practical concerns. While
recognizing the positive aspects of interventions, action research, and the
need to make a difference that many educational technologists espouse, it
seems appropriate to point out the association between the “technology is
better” mantra and the delivery of research outputs that have focused on
perpetuating the mantra. The usefulness of technologies, their impact on
learning, and the way they are making a difference is often lauded in the
short-term. Ball claimed that using theory means “giving up on spontaneous empiricism, casual epistemologies, theory by numbers, and constantly
struggling against the governmentalities of scientism to find a proper rigour,
a thoughtful reflexive and practical rigour” (2006, p. 5). Continuing to
assume that an increase of technologies within educational settings will
lead to improved practice, rather than considering the historical constructs
that have led to the presumption is in keeping with a technologically determinist explanation where focus is placed on “impact,” “cause,” “effect,” and
“progress” (Selwyn, 2012). Social aspects such as culture, politics, ideology,
disadvantage, and inequity appear to be ignored or pushed to the side in
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favor of “making” improvements through technology. A senior lecturer in
literacy highlighted the need for understanding the social: “I think quantitative approaches that overly emphasize number crunching but do not
reveal the context and the individual do not present a ‘real’ picture and
certainly not a ‘human picture.’” Prevalent is the “boosters” perspective
(Bigum & Kenway, 2005) that using stuff and objects (see chapter 1 of this
volume) will make for better learning and teaching, aptly described as a
“technology-as-savior” discourse (Bulfin, 2009). Ed-tech research needs
to problematize such taken-for-granted assumptions (Sikes, 2006, cited in
Wright, 2008).
Reflections from Researchers within the Field
Two of the editors (Johnson and Bulfin) are ethnographic-influenced and
employ a variety of social and critical theory in their work. Both are atypical
researchers in the field of ed-tech. Indeed Bulfin’s work is located more fairly
in literacy studies and my (Johnson’s) work in cultural studies. Yet, we both
have intently explored a number of issues relating to the use of technology
within and outside of schools.
At times I have felt that my PhD research was somewhat dismissed because
of my use of theory and because of the small number of participants (n = 8).
“Methodological fascism” appeared evident based on a handful of reviewers’ comments. As I am of the ilk that it is important to find out “what is
going on” in everyday lives in keeping with an ethnographic and sociological
influence, I explored the construction of what it means to be a technological
expert and how young people position themselves and construct themselves
in multiple ways. Rather than “just” confirming previous literature, I was
able to be open to what the participants were telling me and observe their
practices. Theory enabled me to go beyond previously published literature
and identify themes that the analysis brought forth, that is, what Fendler
(2012) believed to be exceeding or generating. I used a Bourdieuian framework that allowed the data to speak rather than being limited to descriptions
of “learning” and “innovation.”
For Bulfin,7 theory helped him reframe particular practices often
viewed as “nonvaluable” or not worth considering, as worthwhile and worthy of attention. Theory helped him reframe things like hacking, tinkering, and playing as different kinds of purposeful “work.” So rather than
treat these practices as worrying, theory helped him focus on them in a
careful and thoughtful way, taking them seriously as meaningful and purposeful. Wright (2008, p. 3) claims that “theory seem[s] to be thought of
as something esoteric, separate from practice, often thought of as ‘critical’
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in a negative way” and it is evident that both of us don’t neatly “fit” into
ed-tech research because of these preferences. But both of our research
practices are informed by a belief of the work that we see theory doing.
We are in agreement with a survey participant who had little interest in
“trying to nail a shifting target which is not well problematized” (reader,
Education).
Ball (2006) made a case for what he called the “urgent necessity of theory.” This is because of theory’s “crucial role in epistemological decisionmaking; in ensuring the conceptual robustness of conceptual categories;
and in providing a method for reflexivity—that is, for understanding the
social conditions of the production of knowledge” (p. 9). Theory helped
both Bulfin and I do what Ball argued it did for him. Ball (2006) made a
claim about the
Importance of the violence that theory does, as a reflexive tool within
research practice, its role in challenging conservative orthodoxies and
closure, parsimony and simplicity—that is, the role of theory in retaining
some sense of the obduracy and complexity of the social. (p. 9)
In order to understand something, it is not enough to simply describe it.
What must also be examined and understood are the contexts and “social
forces in which the object of study is embedded” (Anyon, 2009, p. 2).
Conclusion
Our accounts are of and in the world and not simply about it. To simply
write about is to represent and engage in a particular form of boundary
marking—between the world and the word. To write into the world is to try
and do something different (Edwards, 2012, p. 532).
In 1974, the president of the American Educational Research Association,
Patrick Suppes, stated there were five examples of theory in educational
research—“statistics, test theory, learning theory, theories of instruction,
and economic models” (cited in Wright, 2008, p. 5). Many who completed
the 2012 Learning with New Media survey believed that only those kinds
of theories were useful, and that other social or critical theories were not. In
addition, the privileging of “supposed” scientific method continues within edtech research (because they are deemed to be objective and useful). In order
to build the capacity of researchers in this field, the use of theory and beliefs
about objective knowledge need to be reviewed and rethought. As evident in
this volume, these chapters seek to problematize phenomenon that is taken
for granted and enable a richer, holistic understanding of educational practice
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mediated by technologies. In ed-tech research, there still remains many takenfor-granted assumptions about technology.
As I have developed and redeveloped this manuscript, I concur with
Fendler (2012) that theory is lurking; and I have realized that I am interested
in how theory can be vibrating. The role of theory is to retain some obduracy
and complexity of the social (Ball, 2006). As Edwards reminds us, “If theory
matters, then we need it to matter more rather than less” (2012, p. 533).
Theory is invaluable in opening up a range of interesting and powerful questions, beyond those about improving learning and teaching.
Notes
1. Admittedly, when I complete online surveys, I am guilty of completing only
the questions that take little effort. At times, when I do not have any particular
thoughts I wish to write in response to a question, I will often leave open questions blank. This is indicative of being time-poor.
2. Prior to the design of the LNM survey, Selwyn (2011) published a useful historical overview of the main learning theories much of ed-tech research has previously drawn upon.
3. For a useful discussion of the pragmatic approach, see Rosiek (2013).
4. Winner (1993) provides an informative overview and critique of social
constructivism.
5. We point to these “vendors” in chapter 1 of this volume.
6. Kitchin also points out the limitations of social determinism stating, “people do
not act in rational, pre-determined ways, but rather live lives full of contradictions, paradoxes and unpredictable occurrences” (2014, p. 8).
7. Special thanks to Scott Bulfin for his input surrounding the conception, development, redevelopment, refinement, and extensive editing of this chapter.
References
Amin, A., & Thrift, N. (2005). What’s left? Just the future, Antipode, 37(2),
220–238.
Anyon, J. (2009). Theory and educational research: Toward critical social explanation.
New York: Routledge.
Ball, S. J. (2006). The necessity and violence of theory. Discourse: Studies in the
Cultural Politics of Education, 27(1), 3–10.
Bennett, S., & Oliver, M. (2011). Talking back to theory: The missed opportunities in learning technology research. Research in Learning Technology, 19(3),
179–189.
Bigum, C., & Kenway, J. (2005). New information technologies and the ambiguous
future of schooling—some possible scenarios. In A. Hargreaves (Ed.), Extending
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educational change: International handbook of educational change (pp. 95–115).
The Netherlands: Springer.
Briggle, A. R. (2014). Opening the black box: The social outcomes of scientific
research. Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy, 28(2),
153–166.
Bulfin, S. (2009). Cyber-savvy students and industrial-era schools? Disassembling
and recasting the new home-school mismatch hypothesis. Refereed paper presented at the AATE/ALEA Conference, Australia, pp. 1–20.
Bulfin, S., Henderson, M., & Johnson, N. F. (2013). Examining the use of theory
within educational technology and media research. Learning, Media & Technology,
38(3), 337–344.
Bulfin, S., Henderson, M., Johnson, N. F. & Selwyn, N. (2014). Methodological
capacity within the field of “educational technology”: An initial investigation. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(3), 403–414. doi: 10.1111/
bjet.12145.
Edwards, R. (2012). Theory matters: Representation and experimentation in education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(5), 522–534.
Fendler, L. (2012). Lurking, distilling, exceeding, vibrating. Studies in Philosophy
and Education, 31(3), 315–326.
Gunn, C., & Steel, C. (2012). Linking theory to practice in learning technology research. Research in Learning Technology, 20, 16148, doi: 10.3402/rlt.
v20i0.16148.
Kitchin, R. (2014). Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts. Big Data &
Society, 1, 1–12, doi: 10.1177/2053951714528481.
Lather, P. (2013). Methodology-21: what do we do in the afterward? International
Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 634–645.
Lundahl, L. (2012). Educational theory in an era of knowledge capitalism. Studies
in Philosophy and Education, (31)3, 215–226.
Neuman, W. H. (2006). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative
approaches (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Rosiek, J. L. (2013). Pragmatism and post-qualitative futures, International Journal
of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 692–705.
Selwyn, N., Johnson, N. F., Bulfin, S. & Henderson, M. (2013). Academic research
in education, technology and media: Mapping the “field.” “First sight” research
report. Learning with New Media Research Group, Faculty of Education, Monash
University, January. Available from http://newmediaresearch.educ.monash.edu
.au/lnmrg/article/academic-research-education-technology-and-media-mapping
-field (date accessed July 7, 2014).
educational technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26, 65–73.
Selwyn, N. (2011). Education and technology: Key issues and debates. London:
Continuum.
Selwyn, N. (2012). Making sense of young people, education and digital technology: The role of sociological theory. Oxford Review of Education, 38(1), 81–96.
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Selwyn, N. (2013). Education in a digital world: Global perspectives on technology and
education. Abingdon: Routledge.
Sutton, R. I., & Staw, B. M. (1995). What theory is not. Administrative Science
Quarterly, 40(3), 371–384.
Thomas, G. (2007). Education and theory: Strangers in paradigms. Maidenhead,
England: Open University Press.
Winner, L. (1993). Upon opening the black box and finding it empty: Social constructivism and the philosophy of technology. Science, Technology & Human
Values, 18(3), 362–378.
Wright, J. (2008). Reframing quality and impact: The place of theory in education
research. Australian Educational Researcher, 35(1), 1–16.
CHAPTER 4
Extending Understandings of
Educational Technology: Teachers’
Critiques of Educational Technology
as Important Intellectual Capital
for Researchers
Joanne Orlando
Introduction
While research in the field of educational technology provides teachers with
intellectual resources on how best to use technology, teacher uptake appears
to be at best minimal. These intellectual resources, arising from research,
are often presented to teachers as pedagogical imperatives and include,
for example, e-learning, and connected teaching. Taking up these recommended resources requires significant commitment by teachers to transform
their practices.
Even more problematic in the research in educational technology is the
repetitive cycle of blaming teachers for not taking up these resources. The
bulk of research in this field focuses on evaluating whether teachers are
using the intellectual resources provided for them. A common finding is
that teachers are not. Suggestions from research tend to focus on how we
can change teachers so that they do take up these resources. For example,
there are often recommendations for professional learning that will influence teachers to change. This current approach to research has resulted in
an unproductive and unhelpful cycle of provision and blame.
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A new research approach is needed in the field of educational technology
to move out of this cycle and reinvigorate understanding of this area. This
requires taking a different vantage point as researchers. It is plausible that
the intellectual resources do not resonate with teachers because the resources
do not reflect the teachers’ priorities and understandings. Instead, it seems
that this field of research continues to recycle visions of the pedagogical
potentials of technology in schools.
Currently, there is little interplay between research and teachers in this
field. One way of addressing this is using teachers’ theorizations of educational technology to inform this field of research. Teachers’ theorizations
are most evident in their everyday critiques of technology. Teachers reflect,
debate, and justify their engagement with technology and their interpretations are represented in the everyday decisions they make in their teaching. While easily dismissed as complaints, teachers’ critiques encapsulate
knowledge of educational technology as a pedagogical resource in today’s
classrooms. This is a body of knowledge researchers would find valuable
because it is crucial to understanding everyday practices and progressing the
field of educational technology.
This chapter explores how research in the field of educational technology
might relate—productively and intellectually—to teachers’ critiques of educational technology. I argue this body of knowledge offers a rich basis from
which to interrogate and explore shortcomings of current research practices
that seemingly ignore these voices. This discussion is informed by pragmatic
sociology. This theory is informed by values of freedom with equality and
involves the interruption of elite—driven hierarchies in order to extend the
knowledge that is valued in research (Boltanski, 2011). This chapter argues
that teachers’ critiques can be/should be used as a body of knowledge to
inform research knowledge of technology practices in classrooms.
Teachers Labeled as “the Problem”
A difficult situation that has manifested in the field of educational technology is that teachers are generally not taking up the intellectual resources
that have been provided for them. These resources have been constructed
on notions of what technology can ideally achieve and how teachers can
best harness them. They provide teachers with the language, ideologies,
and arguments to understand and interpret educational technology. These
resources are often presented to teachers as pedagogical necessities and
include, for example, e-learning (Tapscott, 2008), collaborative learning
(Hu & McGrath, 2011), personalized learning (OECD, 2005), blended
learning (Pena & Yeung, 2009), mobile learning (Kukulska-Hulme, 2010),
Understandings of Educational Technology
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twenty-first-century learning (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2002),
and connected teaching (U.S. Department of Education, 2010).
These intellectual resources have been provided for teachers on the
assumption that teachers need assistance with understanding how technology should be used to support student learning. As Pelgrum (2001) asserts,
“educational innovations usually do not succeed if teachers are not provided
with the skills and knowledge needed to carry them out” (p. 165). Likewise,
Ertmer and Ottenbreit-Leftwich (2010) propose that “to achieve the kinds
of technology uses required for 21st-century teaching and learning we need
to help teachers understand how to use technology to facilitate meaningful
learning” (p. 257).
Implementing these intellectual resources requires substantial commitment by teachers. Teachers are expected to change their knowledge, beliefs,
and professional culture accordingly (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010).
Furthermore, as part of this change, teachers are expected to “unlearn habits
that have been useful in the past but may no longer be valuable to the future
and create new pedagogies that are meaningful to learners when learning is
intertwined with technology advances” (McWilliam, 2008, p. 263).
An even more difficult situation than teachers than not taking up intellectual resources is the recurring cycle in the research literature of blaming
teachers for the lack of uptake of these resources. The intellectual resources
provided for teachers have been positioned as the lens for developing educational technology. Evaluations, which use these resources to evaluate teachers’ practices, make up the bulk of research literature in this field (Friesen,
2009). While some teachers have adjusted their beliefs and behaviors
(Schibeci et al., 2008), most teachers are challenged in the uptake of these
resources (Law, Pelgrum, & Plomp, 2008; Mueller & Wood, 2012). Hu and
McGrath (2010) stated of the participant teachers in their study that even
though everything was provided for teachers—new software teaching systems, the installment of hardware and suitable software in teaching spaces,
and the provision of continuing professional development so that the reform
could be carried out smoothly—the teachers did not take up the revised
constructions of teaching. Similarly Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich (2010)
state, “despite increases in computer access and technology training, technology is not being used (by teachers) to support the kinds of instruction
believed to be most powerful” (p. 225). Research in this field refers to the
continued and unrelenting disengagement by teachers in the uptake of these
resources. In response, recommendations presented in research often focus
on how we can change teachers so that they do take up these resources. In
effect, whatever knowledge is established as valuable also serves to define a
group who do not possess it.
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It is plausible that the provided intellectual resources do not resonate
with teachers because the resources are disconnected from the teachers’
understandings and priorities of working with technology in classrooms
(Boltanski, 2011). Instead, it seems that this field of research continues to
recycle visions of the pedagogical potential of technology in schools.
One way of addressing this issue is using teachers’ theorizations of educational technology to inform this field of research. Teachers have distinct
understandings of the everyday uses of technology as pedagogical resources.
This body of knowledge can offer useful insights into understanding educational technology.
A new research approach is needed in the field of educational technology
in order to reinvigorate this field of research. The challenge for researchers
in educational technology is learning about new ways of engaging with the
knowledge of teachers. Such ways include using teachers’ intellectual capital
(Fay, 1987), the theorizations they have developed about educational technology in their work in classrooms with technology on a day-to day basis.
This is a body of knowledge that current research practices seem to ignore.
Such a focus assists in questioning whether we are tackling the right kind
of problems with educational technology in the first place, or who stands to
benefit from these developments (Friesen, 2009).
Currently, there is little interplay between research and teachers in this
field (Selwyn, 2011) and one way of addressing this is using teachers’ everyday critiques of educational technology. Teachers reflect, debate, and justify
their engagement with technology on a day-to-day basis. Teachers’ understandings are organic to this practice, context driven, informed by their
knowledge and experiences, and represented in the decisions they make in
their practice (Boltanski, 2011). Teachers’ lack of engagement with intellectual resources provided for them can be interpreted as a critique in itself.
While easily dismissed as complaints, teachers’ critiques reflect significant
changes to their context at the same time as they offer advance warning of
and motivation for its further transformation (Boltanski, 2011). This is a
body of knowledge researchers would find valuable because it is crucial to
understanding everyday practices and progressing the field of educational
technology.
Focusing on teachers’ intellectual capital moves beyond giving them
voice to express what they think and feel about their practice. Instead the
emphasis here is giving voice to teachers’ knowledge (Young, 2009), building on their knowledge in theorization of this practice. Forms of criticality from practitioners do not necessarily stand in opposition with building
scholarly understandings of educational technology. Instead, they importantly have the potential to advance and extend academic arguments and
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open up new horizons for theory and practice (Papastephanou, 2005) in the
field of educational technology. I argue this body of knowledge offers a rich
framework from which to interrogate and explore shortcomings of current
research practices that seemingly ignore these voices.
This chapter explores how research in the field of educational technology might relate productively and intellectually to teachers’ critiques of
educational technology. The discussion draws on pragmatic sociology that
focuses on the actions of human beings who rebel. It stresses their ability
to rise up against their domination and construct new interpretations of
reality in the service of critical activity. This theory is informed by values of
freedom with equality and involves the interruption of elite-driven hierarchies in order to extend the knowledge that is valued in research (Boltanski,
2011). Ideological domination by researchers reduces the power of research
to understand pedagogical practices and connect to theory. The absence of
teachers’ knowledge in this field of research contributes to a great deal of
suffering by teachers because they cannot live up to unrealistic expectations
of technology practices imposed on them (Convery, 2009). Moreover, current research approaches limit teachers’ freedom to develop practices based
on their own self-interpretations. The constructions presented in research
that expect teachers to feel, behave, and perceive in certain ways are a symptom of the lack of progress in this field rather than being the answer (Fay,
1987).
A key argument presented here is that teachers’ critiques provide a valuable body of knowledge that is needed to inform research knowledge of
technology practices in classrooms. The discussion here is presented as a
response to the lack of progress in practice and theory in this field (Bennett
& Oliver, 2011) and is positioned as a means of extending the knowledge
base to understand educational technology. The intention is to open up
spaces for renewing and reinvigorating research and practice in this field.
Teachers’ Priorities for Their Practices with Technology
Public critique by which many people express the same argument is important
to the power of critique to change the status quo. A critique, which becomes
communal and shared on a large scale, escalates its importance and openly
signals areas of need. Reflecting this understanding I explore the critiques of
many teachers in this chapter. To do this I draw on my own research as well
as the research of other researchers in the field of educational technology. Of
my own work, the first study I draw on (Study 1), is a qualitative study of 30
primary and secondary teachers in low socioeconomic status (SES) schools
in regional and city areas of New South Wales, Australia. The teachers were
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identified by their communities to be “exemplary” in engaging students in
learning (Orlando, 2013b), however exemplary teaching was not defined
in terms of technology use or expertise. As can be expected, technology
was more prominent in the practices of some teachers. The study included
male and female teachers; early career teachers with two years of teaching
experience to veteran teachers who had been teaching for over 30 years. In
addition to their teaching roles some teachers also held executive positions
such as principal or deputy principals positions.
The second study (Study 2) is a five-year, up-close qualitative examination
of the technology practices of a small group of five teachers in primary and
secondary schools in Australia, which focused on understanding change in
teachers’ technology practices (Orlando, 2009, 2013a, 2014). The teachers’
ranged from seven to twenty-five years teaching experience, and included
male and female teachers who varied in their enthusiasm and approaches to
teaching with technology.
These studies provided access to critiques expressed by teachers of educational technology based on the teachers’ own current and prior teaching experiences, as well as their familiarity with the technology practices
of teaching colleagues. Collectively these studies involved 35 teachers and
I have reanalyzed the data from these studies for the purposes of exploring
teachers’ critiques. This is explained further below.
The other research selected to supplement the examination of teachers’ critiques of educational technology includes contemporary, empirically
based research of teachers’ practices with technology that provide teachers’ expressions of what is important and not important to them in their
practices. I have drawn from studies internationally—Canada (Mueller &
Wood, 2012), United States (Harris & Hofer, 2011), Europe (Ciftci & Kurt,
2012), and Asia (Hu & McGrath, 2010). Studies that take place in diverse
contexts and with diverse teachers have been used to strengthen the notion
of teachers’ public critique of educational technology.
Here, the work of theorists including Fay (1987), Boltanski (2011),
Heyting and Winch (2005), and Heid (2005) have been used in the analysis
of teachers’ critiques of educational technology. These theorists have been
used because their writing centers on institution, critique, social reality, and
stresses confrontation of imposed social structures for the contemporary
renewal of practices.
Analysis of my data of these two studies began with identification of
the teachers’ objects of critique. This facilitated identifying and addressing
what matters to teachers in their interpretations of technology. It was demonstrated from this process that even though the teachers used technology
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in distinct ways, taught in different contexts, and with different levels of
technology expertise, there were particular issues of importance to all of
them in their practices with technology. Student learning, policy reform,
and changing knowledge were identified in this process to be of key importance to teachers in their critiques of educational technology.
The objects of critique were examined in terms of the language and type
of critique the teachers expressed. This process included identifying whether
teachers’ critiques represented a questioning of authoritative sources or a
questioning of social structures as contexts of education (Heyting & Winch,
2005). This step facilitated identifying the frame of reference, that is, the
belief systems of the teachers and allowed a more complex understanding of
why the objects of their critiques were important to them.
To deepen analysis, the teachers’ critiques were also examined in relation to imposed intellectual resources of technology practices provided for
teachers. It was evident from this process that such construction did not
align with the teachers’ understandings or priorities. There was significant
disconnect between constructions of technology practices and teachers’
critiques regarding student learning, ubiquity of technology, developing
teaching practices, management of technology, and hierarchical structures
of knowledge. This disconnect is explained further in the next section. This
process of analysis facilitated advancing my argument about teachers’ criticality and contributions to research and educational change.
Student Learning a Priority for Teachers’ Technology Use
Support of student learning was the primary concern that underpinned all
the teachers’ critiques of educational technology. They positioned student
learning as the central focus and priority of their work and their critiques
focused on the value technology brought to student learning as also the
technology-related factors that hindered this support. In their critiques of
educational technology, the teachers conceptualized supporting student
learning as deepening students’ knowledge of curriculum content, scaffolding learning, and nurturing the class as a learning community. While teachers expressed each of these categories to be equally important, the majority
of their critiques referred to the value of using technology to scaffold learning and nurture the class as a learning community.
The teachers identified technology was beneficial for student learning
because it could be successfully used to individualize learning and make
learning more accessible to students. Teachers found value in scaffolding
learning by using technology to present content in multiple ways, provide
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choice for how students could work with and present ideas, bring the world
outside school into the classroom, and make greater connections with students’ nonformal learning at home. For example, teachers stated:
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Many children don’t like pen and paper so technology offers a way
for them to learn that is not book learning. (primary school teacher,
Study 1)
Children use their own technology at school so it helps to cross the
boundaries between home and school. (primary school teacher, Study 1)
Similarly, teachers found benefit in using technology to build inclusive
learning environments, for example, building a sense of belonging in the
classroom by allowing students to have ownership of classroom technology
resources. The teachers also valued technology because it provided access
to different types of content to use in lessons and a platform for teachers
to develop lesson content, for example, making video footage to creatively
introduce or emphasize curriculum content.
Teachers valuing of technology for scaffolding learning is evident in other
research (Bulmer, 2010; Wright & Wilson, 2009). The quotation below,
drawn from a study by Mueller and Wood (2012) is representative of numerous teachers in that study, who found worth in technology for addressing
the learning needs of individual students.
I like for students to have the freedom to work at their own pace and
explore their own special interests within an area of study. (p. 6)
The teachers’ critiques of the usefulness of educational technology do not
indicate they are resistant to technology or not engaging with it. In contrast,
it shows engagement with technology and an understanding of where it is
beneficial to student learning. Much of the constructions of educational
technology are framed only in terms of intellectual pursuits and research
focuses on whether teachers are living up the expectations. The teachers’
critiques indicate they are independently (without the assistance of researchers) shaping new practices with technology that have value in the classroom.
To do this they have not relied on the provision of intellectual resources but
instead have drawn on their own understandings of pedagogy and “what
works in the classroom” to shape these new technology practices.
Technology was not considered by the teachers to be a foolproof resource
and their critiques made clear that indiscriminate use of technology limits student learning. This understanding was emphasized by all teachers.
The teachers defined uncritical use as overuse or unnecessary use. They
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expressed a need for teachers to strategically reflect on and select when technology could be used in a lesson to enhance student learning. For example,
one primary school teacher from Study 1 stated, “No need for virtual if you
don’t need virtual. Only use it if it suits what you’re trying to achieve.” Views
of this kind, expressed by teachers, are important because in contrast, frequency of use of technology is often used as a measure in research to evaluate
whether teachers are using these resources appropriately (OECD, 2006).
The teachers reacted against expectations by school management and
education authorities that they should be using technology all the time. A
primary school teacher from Study 1 explained, “If you’re doing too much
technology children get sick of it. People think you have to keep using technology but children get sick of it.” Likewise, a secondary school teacher from
Study 1 explained, “The children were engaged with technology because
it was their story, not because it was technology.” A similar sentiment is
expressed by teachers in other studies (Mueller & Wood, 2012; Wright &
Wilson, 2010) who, regardless of pressure to use technology, are emphatic
that technology itself is not a motivator for student learning. Instead, teachers emphasize it is the ways that it is used that makes technology engaging.
For example,
Despite pressures they perceived from their schools’ administrators to
integrate technology in their teaching, they made multiple references to
how technologies should be used to enhance curriculum-based learning,
rather than being used as an end unto themselves. (Harris & Hofer, 2011,
p. 224)
The teachers’ critiques of educational technology in terms of student learning were different to the concept of student-centered learning that is often
expressed in intellectual resources for educational technology provided for
teachers. The teachers’ critiques focused on their students and how they
addressed their particular students’ needs. For example, teachers’ critiques
commonly included language such as “My students . . . ” “In my class . . . ”
The language expressed by teachers indicated they prioritized the personal,
subjective experience of teaching with technology. The teachers referred to
distinctions of their class(es), particular students, and their schools. In comparison, terms such as e-learning, presented to teachers as ideal technology
practice, place the teaching approach or the technology as the central focus.
The intellectual resources provided for teachers are generally not informed
by empirical research or teachers’ priorities. Such terms are clinical and
detached from the messy realities teachers’ value and which inform how they
teach and the resources they use to support their teaching.
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An expectation in the research literature is that teachers will forget their
old practices and reinvent themselves as teachers. The expectation is also
that all teachers will adopt similar teaching approaches. Constructivist
teaching is often presented as the most appropriate approach to using technology for all teachers (Orlando, 2013a). Even in China, which has historically always used teacher-centered methods for hundreds (or thousands) of
years, teachers are now expected to forget that history and change to student-centered methods now that technology holds currency in classrooms
(Hu & McGrath, 2010).
In their critiques of educational technology, teachers in my studies did
not express the need to forget their past practices. In contrast, they consistently referred to their histories and their experiences as bringing credibility
to their understandings of educational technology. In their critiques of educational technology, the teachers referred to their pedagogical experience,
the succession of classes and subjects they had taught over the years, as well
as the schools they had taught at. The teachers made sense of educational
technology through their histories. They emphasized that their opinions
were reliable and accurate interpretations of educational technology because
of their pedagogical histories. The need to build on practices rather than
reinvent them is also expressed in the explanations and actions of teachers
in other studies.
These teachers saw use of selected tools and resources as allowing them
to do a better job . . . at what they already do, rather than allowing them
to do something completely new pedagogically. (Harris & Hofer, 2011,
p. 224)
Teachers’ critiques indicated they often positioned their credibility in contrast to educational authorities whom they viewed did not have the dayto-day experiences of teaching with technologies that they did. This is
explained in detail in the next section.
Reform Process for Educational Technology
Problematic for Teachers
In my studies, the educational authority’s reform process for integrating
technology in schools was a second object of the teachers’ critique of educational technology. Two issues were evident in their critiques, first was
the top-down process of reform for educational technology in schools.
The teachers stated they knew what worked in the classroom, yet were not
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consulted in change processes. As a result, they stated there were many
inappropriate decisions made for teachers regarding organization of technology and expectations for the type of technology to be used. For example,
one primary school teacher from Study 1 questioned why she was expected
to make extensive use of video conferencing facilities available for schools
to connect with each other when she was not permitted to use Skype. She
argued the cost and effort required for video conferencing was unjustified
when Skype is free.
Other studies show similar dissatisfaction by teachers of decisions by educational authorities regarding the organization of technology (Mueller &
Wood, 2012; Wright & Wilson, 2009). In a large-scale study of 60 teachers
in Turkey, Ciftci and Kurt (2012) found many teachers to be disillusioned
by the decisions made for them by management. The quote below represents
their thinking:
I am very happy that these computers are installed. I believe our school is
very lucky, but nobody is asking if we have enough space or resources to
support these sudden decisions. (p. 226)
Lack of support provided as part of the reform processes for educational
technology was problematic for teachers. The teachers emphasized that they
had no say in policy changes, yet were required to invest many hours into
making the plans imposed on their work. The teachers referred to deliberately disengaging with educational technology policy changes because they
disempower teachers. It was a political reaction against this process. The
teachers stated they were reluctant of continuing to place time into something they did not have ownership over.
Maintenance of technology was another problem for teachers. They argue
that they are not technicians and there is a need for continuous professional
hardware and software maintenance for technology to sustain its stability. A
primary school teacher from Study 2 explained:
The lows and frustrations are basically hardware . . . We’re not technology
trained, so when things go wrong we don’t have people here who can fix
them . . . If the department wants to bring in computers then, you know,
they’re so used to just throwing things at us and it’s another thing we
have to learn and budget for. (primary school teacher, Study 2)
Protests regarding lack of support of technology resources are evident in
many studies. The vice-principal in Ciftci and Kurt’s (2012) study argues for
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the need for MONE (Ministry of National Education) in Turkey to provide
support beyond the initial provision of technology resources. He stated:
Computers require a lot of maintenance. I think MONE (Ministry of
National Education) should have had a fund for computer maintenance
and upgrade. But nobody from MONE even visits us. If the maintenance
work is small, we try to deal with it using our resources, but we do not
have the money to do regular maintenance work. (p. 227)
Related to the teachers’ critiques of the reform process for educational technology was the change fatigue they expressed. The teachers referred to a
constant need to keep up with changes to the knowledge and needs of students, organization of school staff, new teaching practices, new leadership
priorities in the school, new teaching spaces, new resources—and functional
realignments. This continual interface with change demonstrates technology practices are just one of an interrelated mesh of contextual variables
teachers have encountered, problematized, and dealt with for many years.
There is not necessarily a resolution reached and a sense of achievement
gained as these changes are often not initiated or owned by the teachers.
Change fatigue (Orlando, 2014) is a likely outcome of such an environment
over a sustained period of time and has significant implications for the motivation, energy, and time for teachers for the development of their practices.
Dynamic Nature of Knowledge Important to
Teachers’ Uses of Technology
A third object of teachers’ critique of educational technology was that
knowledge is not static. In particular, they identified important gaps in their
own professional knowledge as the result of the integration of technology in
schools. The teachers’ reflections centered on their role as teacher, students’
knowledge, and the relationships between these two factors.
A constant comparison of their current professional knowledge with the
knowledge they considered now needed of teachers was evident in the teachers’ critiques. Many of the teachers conceptualized knowledge in terms of
sites of knowledge. As teachers, they considered themselves to be the senior
knowledge holders in the school. Students having more knowledge than
they did was a new and problematic situation as it countered the established
teacher-student roles of which they shaped their actions and ideas. This new
situation challenged their conceptualization of school hierarchy and the
teachers interpreted this situation in terms of loss of status in their school.
They understood that technology was bringing about the change. They did
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not always resist this change but reflected on what this meant for them and
their role. Some teachers’ critiques illustrated the burden of this insight and
the struggle they were working through regarding the knowledge gap they
identified in themselves, whereas other teachers’ critiques indicated actions
they considered necessary to move ahead.
The following evidentiary excerpts, each from a different teacher, indicate some teachers consider notions of teacher as the holder of knowledge
to be outdated. Instead, in reference to technology, they propose a more
equalized sharing of the learning space is what is needed in the classroom.
The teachers in Study 1 and Study 2 focused on student learning in their
critiques, emphasizing that they will not support their students if the teachers themselves do not move ahead in this area of knowledge. The following
represents the views of four different teachers in Study 1 or Study 2.
It’s okay not to know. How can we learn together? With reading you can’t
pretend that you can’t read but with technology you don’t always know.
(teacher, Study 1)
Teachers have to take the risk to bring technology into the classroom
otherwise teaching does not change. (teacher, Study 2)
There is no keeper of knowledge anymore because with technology it
keeps changing. (teacher, Study 2)
Having the confidence to let go of the idea of teacher as the holder of
knowledge, it’s a discovery thing. (teacher, Study 2)
The teachers’ critiques regarding sharing of learning and the need to shift
away from the concept of holder of knowledge stand in contrast to the presupposition that teachers do not have intellectual capability of their own
and need help to understand technology. Their reflections regarding the
position of knowledge in contemporary classrooms suggest deep rather than
superficial engagement and capability by teachers.
Critiques regarding who or what is the holder of knowledge also stand in
opposition to the ways technology is used in educational systems to privilege
particular bodies of knowledge. For example, results from standard testing are often tabulated using technology, communicated to the community
online, and then used by management to produce policy. This cumulates in
a privileged body of knowledge, which is at odds to the sentiments the teachers are expressing in their critiques here.
The teachers’ critiques regarding knowledge is also a pertinent point
regarding professional learning models provided for teachers. The dominant
model of professional learning available to teachers’ focuses on expanding
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teachers’ repertoire of classroom practices according to the constructions
of educational technology provided for them (Schwille & Dembele, 2007).
However, professional learning models, which aim to adjust or correct the
beliefs and behaviors of teachers, will not alleviate the teachers’ critiques
(Fay, 1987). Instead, they also position teachers as ill-informed and needing
guidance. A consequence of such in-service training is that they leave teachers feeling less empowered (Flint, Kurumada, Zisook, & Fisher, 2011); thus
exacerbating the dilemmas teachers are protesting against.
Active Engagement with Teachers’
Critiques to Advance Research
Critique has the task of diagnosing the problems and shortcomings that
prevent the realization of aims. Critique reveals problems in decisions made
regarding expected behaviors and thinking. In using a framework of critique, I have been able to identify the disconnection between the teachers’ ideologies, arguments, and language regarding educational technology
and that of the intellectual resources provided for them by research. When
compared with constructions of educational technology, misalignments
were evident in understandings of how technology could be used to support
student learning and the place and purpose of teachers in its use. Research
in the field of educational technology often concludes that teachers are not
engaged in technology. However when the content of their critiques is identified and acknowledged, it is clear that teachers are engaged.
While the teachers’ critiques may be interpreted as complaints, their
issues appear across a number of people and therefore become a public critique. The critiques are derived from teachers from a range of contexts with a
range of experiences with technology including those teachers making minimal use to those making extensive use. Their critiques are of significance
because they are well informed by the conditional labor of work (Singh,
Reid, Mayer, & Santoro, 2013). Collectively, the critiques speak of the privileged voice of researchers in educational technology. The teachers are speaking to a broader agenda and are a collective voice for change. Their critiques
show where some shortcomings in research in educational technology are.
The aim of this chapter was not to address the content of teachers’ critiques but instead to highlight the important body of knowledge they contribute to research in educational technology and how this new body of
knowledge may be used. Understanding and exerting critique as an end in
itself will not change the issues teachers are protesting against. To move
forward from the issues these studies have highlighted requires an active
response from agents in recognition of the implications of the critique. The
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teachers’ critiques provide a useful body of knowledge that research can
draw upon to rethink and refine conceptualizations of educational technology (Boltanski, 2011). This requires more than just listening, by those with
the power to make changes. Instead, it requires actively engaging with the
critique. Engagement requires taking a position toward the descriptive as
well as the prescriptive content of the critique (Heid, 2005). This process
starts with the constitution of the critiques themselves and is followed by
researchers integrating the teachers’ intellectual capital into theorizations of
educational technology. The argument is not that teachers’ knowledge be
valued above that of researchers but that teachers’ knowledge be regarded as
an equally valuable source of knowledge to inform research in educational
technology. Addressing and building on the issues teachers raise is the important contribution researchers can make to this field to take it forward.
Conclusion
This chapter responds to the issue of lack of movement in theory and practice in the field of educational technology. It explores the proposition that
while teachers’ committed engagement to educational technology is essential for capitalizing on the pedagogical potential of these resources, increasing recognition needs to be given to the importance of teachers’ critiques
of technology practices for the development of research and practice in this
field.
Critiques developed by teachers themselves in the course of their everyday engagement with educational technology have been collected and synthesized. In particular, these critiques relied on moments of dispute when
teachers expressed their claims and challenged the judgments made in constructions of educational technology provided for them. Teachers’ interpretations of educational technology indicate disconnect in areas including
technology practices and teachers’ critique regarding student learning, ubiquity of technology, developing teaching practices, management of technology, and hierarchical structures of knowledge. The breadth of these critiques
indicates that a serious problem is at hand in moving the field forward if
these critiques are not engaged with as a valuable body of knowledge to
inform theorizations in this field.
This chapter highlights that teachers’ understandings of educational
technology are important intellectual capital for researchers to use in their
theorization of educational technology. At present this field is criticized
for its disconnection with theory (Bennett & Oliver, 2011), other areas of
educational research (Underwood, 2011), and the day-to-day practices of
working in classrooms (Selwyn, 2011). As such the field is idealistic and
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its goals unattainable. Teachers’ critiques of educational technology have
been presented here to rethink and rework notions of educational technology with the aim of contributing to a contemporary renewal of practices
of emancipation for teachers. A framework of critique makes it possible to
reconcile disconnect between research and teaching practices. The analysis
presented here provides access to a credible and distinct body of knowledge
necessary for movement forward. A continued openness to the integration
of such knowledge into research will support understanding how this practice is actually panning out in today’s classrooms and why and how we can
actually develop it.
References
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Bulmer, M. (March, 2010). Technology for nurture in large classes. Fellowship Report.
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Ciftci, M., & Kurt, S. (2012). Barriers to teachers’ use of technology. International
Journal of Instructional Media, 39(3), 225–238.
Convery, A. (2009). The pedagogy of the impressed: How teachers became victims
of technological vision. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 15(1), 25–41.
Ertmer, P., & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. (2010). Teacher technology change: How
knowledge, confidence, beliefs, and culture intersect. Journal of Research in
Technology Education, 42(3), 255–284.
Fay, B. (1987). Critical social science. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Flint, A., Kurumada, K., Fisher, T., & Zisook, K. (2010). The perfect storm:
Creating an alternative to professional development. Professional Development in
Education, 37(1), 95–109.
Friesen, N. (2009). Rethinking e-learning research. New York: Peter Lang.
Harris, J., & Hofer, M. (2011). Technological pedagogical content knowledge
(TPACK) in action: A descriptive study of secondary teachers’ curriculum-based,
technology-related instructional planning. Journal of Research on Technology in
Education, 43(3), 211–229.
Heid, H. (2005). The domestication of critique: Problems of justifying the critical
in the context of educationally relevant thought and action. In F. Heyting &
C. Winch (Eds.), Conformism and critique in liberal society (pp. 12–28). Oxford:
Blackwell.
Heyting, F., & Winch, C. (2005). The role of critique in philosophy of education: Its
subject matter and its ambiguities. In F. Heyting & C. Winch (Eds.), Conformism
and critique in liberal society (pp. 1–11). Oxford: Blackwell.
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Hu, Z., & McGrath, I. (2011). Innovation in higher education in China: Are teachers ready to integrate ICT in English language teaching? Technology, Pedagogy
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Mueller, J., & Wood, E. (2012). Patterns of beliefs, attitudes, and characteristics of
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Orlando
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of Education and Work, 22(3), 193–204.
CHAPTER 5
Digital Play: What Do Early
Childhood Teachers See?
Susan Edwards, Joce Nuttall, Ana Mantilla,
Elizabeth Wood, and Sue Grieshaber
Introduction
Educational technology research has traditionally focussed on the potential
technologies have for supporting teaching and learning across a range of
contexts. In the main, this work has attempted to understand the impact of
technologies on student learning and/or approaches to teaching. While technologies were emerging as a new significant aspect of postindustrial communities (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006), such research was appropriate, because
what the technologies could do and the impact they might have on learning
was largely unknown. However, technologies are now such an integrated
aspect of daily living and educational experience in many contexts that this
research focus is increasingly irrelevant. Selwyn (2010) argues this point
cogently, suggesting that educational technology research needs to mature
into a “critical” approach so that the social and cultural contexts in which
technology is located and articulated to educational settings should form
the focus of research. Core aspects of taking a critical approach involve what
Selwyn (2010) refers to as 1) developing context-rich analyses; and 2) asking
“state of the actual” questions. Context-rich analyses focus on understanding
the various settings that contribute to educational technologies, including in
homes, classrooms, and policy. Asking state of the actual questions involves
studying what happens when a technology meets a classroom, rather than
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Edwards, Nuttall, Mantilla, Wood, and Grieshaber
simply asking “what is the potential impact of this technology on learning?”
A critical approach to educational technology recognizes the social and cultural aspects of technological evolution and seeks to understand how these
aspects intersect with traditional pedagogical approaches.
In early childhood education, taking a critical approach to educational
technology is a relatively new idea. Previous research associated with
technologies in the early years has not drawn extensively on research and
methodologies associated with the field of technology education more
broadly. This is because it was thought that using technologies would
somehow damage young children’s play and therefore interfere with
achievement of the developmental outcomes associated with play (Cordes
& Miller, 2000). In early childhood education there is a strong commitment to the relationship between play, learning, and development, with
play understood as promoting children’s imaginative capacity, leading to
and supporting the emergence of symbolic thought, enabling children
to self-regulate their behavior, and contributing to language and literacy
skills (Aronsson, 2010; Broadhead, Howard, & Wood, 2010). While this
concern was later challenged (Clements & Samara, 2003), technologies
and play in early childhood education still have an uneasy relationship,
with scholars such as Yelland (2011) arguing that the concept of technological play remains undeveloped despite 30 years of research effort
directed toward the use of technologies in early childhood classrooms.
In this chapter, we argue that early childhood technology research
would benefit from a critical approach to education technology by refocussing attention on the context and the state of the actual in early childhood education, instead of focussing only on the effects of technologies
on early education. We begin by considering the evidence researchers have
about what technologies young children use and where they are most likely
to use technologies. We introduce into this discussion the questions that
arise for teachers out of the intertextual relationship between technologies,
digital media, and popular-consumerist culture. We then report on a recent
study where we worked with preschool teachers in Melbourne, Australia, to
understand how they recognized and interpreted the relationship between
technologies, media, and popular culture in terms of children’s play and
the implications of these interpretations for their thinking about children’s
learning.
The Early Years Context and the State of the Actual
One of the most frequently cited studies on young children’s technology use is the Vandewater, et al. (2007) examination of the digital media
What Do Early Childhood Teachers See?
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experiences of children aged from birth to six. In this study children
were identified as engaging with a range of digital media and technologies, including televisions, computers, videos/DVDs, and console games.
The Digital Beginnings study (Marsh et al., 2005) in the United Kingdom
similarly identified high levels of use of television, computers, games, and
DVDs by children aged approximately three years, and identified the
importance of the emergence of mobile phone use for young children.
The Digital Beginnings report also examined young children’s interests in
popular culture in relation to their preferred television programs and websites, noting that characters such as Barbie, the Tweenies, Postman Pat,
Dora the Explorer, Noddy, Spiderman, and Thomas the Tank Engine were
popular with preschool-aged children (Marsh et al., 2005, p. 37). These
early reports hinted at what has come to be recognized as a complex relationship between children’s technology use, their media consumption, and
their interests in popular culture (Carrington & Hodgetts, 2010). From a
critical perspective, such research is limited toward identifying what technologies children use, where they use technologies, and the relationship
between technologies and media-informed consumer culture. The more
nuanced aspect of critical technology research regarding “how” children
use technologies in cultural terms is not as evident in the early childhood literature. Notable exceptions to this includes the work by Edwards
(2013), the later work of Marsh (Burke & Marsh, 2013), and efforts by
O’Mara and Laidlaw (2011) and Plowman, McPake, and Stephen (2008),
all of whom have an explicit focus on understanding how technologies
mediate meaning making for young children in terms of a context-rich
perspective.
By the late 2000s, research outside early childhood education was
increasingly focussing on the internetworked relationship between technologies and the delivery of digital media via technologized platforms
(Drotner, 2009). At the same time, the capacity to capitalize on children’s
participation in popular culture through the marketing of products associated with their favorite media characters, enabled by these internetworked
relationships, expanded rapidly (Goldstein, 2011). This led to the notion of
intertextuality (Cook, 2009), wherein technology, media, and products—
such as branded toys, clothing, and even food that young children used and
consumed—were understood as relationally constituted (Gutnick, Robb,
Takeuchi, & Kotler, 2011; Marshall, 2010). More recently, intertextuality
has become a focus for researching young children’s play in contemporary
contexts in minority world settings. This has seen a marked shift away
from studying young children’s play with technologies (Kafai, 2006; Silvern,
2006) toward consideration of the nature of children’s intertextualized or
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“digital” play. Emerging research in this area increasingly argues that young
children’s play can no longer be separated into “real” play or “digital” play
(Burke, 2013; McPake, Plowman, & Stephen, 2012; Zevenbergen, 2007).
There is also evidence that the categories of “traditional” and “popular culture” play are increasingly converging. For example, Plowman, McPake,
and Stephen (2010) report on a child integrating Lord of the Rings merchandise into his play, then downloading and printing images of characters from the Lord of the Rings website in order to expand the range of
characters he had available in his play. Marsh (2010) argues that digital
play should be understood on a continuum of activity from nondigital to
digital-and-media-informed experiences, because children themselves do
not make a fundamental distinction between the two. Edwards (2014) also
argues that play movements across Marsh’s (2010) nondigital to digital
continuum provide opportunities for children to create real/virtual play
“mash-ups” that represent their meaning-making responses in intertextualized contexts. Critical educational technology research is therefore focussed
more on the nature of children’s digital play as a meaning-making process
than on understanding what technologies children use. This is perhaps
inevitable, given the increasing difficulty of separating young children’s
technology use from their media consumption and engagement with popular culture.
An important area of early childhood education research is the extent
to which understandings about what constitutes digital play are articulated to the curriculum. Traditionally, technology research in early
childhood education has focussed on describing how technologies can
be used by teachers for pedagogical purposes (Bolstad, 2004) and identifying the range of professional learning needs associated with teacher
uptake of technologies in early childhood settings (Blake & Izumi-Taylor,
2010; Chen & Chang, 2011). The problem here is that such research has
focussed on the technologies and potential use of the technologies rather
on how the technologies are used by children in terms of their contextual experiences (O’Hara, 2010). This is problematic for early childhood
education because the curriculum is largely orientated toward the belief
that children’s play forms the basis for their learning and development
(Platz & Arellano, 2011). Teachers’ understandings about, and interpretations of, children’s play therefore form the basis of teacher decision making about the experiences they will offer to support children’s learning
(Sheridan, Howard, & Alderson, 2011).
This is the point at which teachers and researchers reach a paradox. On
the one hand, contemporary research outside classrooms shows the emergence
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of mashed-up digital play as children’s meaning-making response to their
intertextualized experiences of technologies, media, and popular culture.
Yet, inside early childhood classrooms, technologies are not recognized for
the purpose of curriculum planning as “play.” This paradox persists, despite
teachers’ commitment to basing the curriculum on children’s lived experience of their home, community, and early childhood education setting. We
argue that this conundrum is at least one of the reasons why the concept of
digital play has remained undeveloped in early childhood education, despite
more than two decades of research into the role and use of technologies in
early childhood education. In the next section of this chapter, we report on
how we are attempting to examine this claim by conducting research with
early childhood educators into what they recognize as play for the purpose
of curriculum planning in early childhood education when they observe
children using digital technologies. In this way, we hope to be able to base
future research on a sound understanding of Selwyn’s (2010) state of the
actual.
The Study
The study involved three (female) teachers and five boys from three suburban preschools in southeast Melbourne. The teacher sample was derived
from a cohort of teachers with an invitation to participate in a study about
technologies and popular culture in early childhood education. Three
teachers self-selected for participation. The teachers then identified two
children each as potential participants in the study. This included four
boys and one girl. The fifth male child was a sibling of one of the preschool children. The female child was unwilling to participate, and so
in recognition of ethical practices for researching with children did not
engage in data collection (Phelan & Kinsella, 2013). Our starting point
for determining what teachers recognized as play was Marsh’s (2010) concept of a nondigital to digital continuum. We presented the teachers with
video-recorded examples of the boys playing with three different but thematically related toys, comprising nondigital, traditional (generic) toys,
trademarked (consumer) toys, and digital games in the form of an application on an iPad tablet.
The boys participated in the study by allowing us to film their play. Two
of the boys were aged five years, two were aged four years, and one was three
years old. Each child was invited to choose either a farm set or a train set.
They were then given a set of plastic farm toys or a wooden train set (the traditional, generic end of the continuum), according to their choice. One boy
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chose the farm set, while the others each chose the train set. The children
were invited to show a researcher how they played with the set, who asked a
series of prescripted questions during the children’s engagement with these
artifacts. A second researcher filmed the activities. A third researcher also
engaged with the children during the filming, while the researcher asking
the scripted questions also participated in nonscripted conversations with
the children. Three of the boys were video recorded individually, while two
brothers were filmed together. Video recording occurred either in a room
adjacent to the children’s main preschool room or within the main room at
a time when the preschool was closed to other children, and the children’s
teacher and a parent (the mother, in all cases) were also present but not
involved in the filming.
When the children indicated they had tired of using the generic artifact, they were provided with a thematically related consumer artifact.
For the child using the farm set, this was a Peppa Pig figurine and some of
her fellow characters from the Peppa Pig television program (currently the
highest-grossing children’s television program in the world; see Andrews,
2010). Children who selected the train set were given a set of Thomas the
Tank Engine™ trains and railway track. Again, the children were invited
to show the researchers how they played with the artifacts and their activity was video recorded as both researchers interacted with the children.
When the children indicated they had finished with these artifacts, they
were provided with the final artifact. This third artifact was in the form
of thematically related application software (i.e., an “app”) preloaded onto
an iPad. These included the Peppa Pig Happy Mrs Chicken™ app and the
Thomas and Friends: Engine Activities™ app. The apps were selected as
they aligned with the consumer artifacts. Each app was largely didactic in
its offering, with the activities involving sorting colored chickens, coloring Thomas the Tank Engine images, or completing train puzzles. If the
children lost interest in the Peppa Pig and Thomas the Tank Engine apps
after a few minutes, they were invited to explore other more open-ended
apps on the iPad to sustain their engagement with digital artifacts for at
least 15 minutes. Three of the children used more than one app. Table 5.1
summarizes the gender, age, and range of artifacts engaged with across
the continuum for each child, including apps other than those that were
thematically related to the generic and consumer based play.
Individual interviews were arranged with the teachers following the video
recording of the children’s play. During these hour-long sessions, the teachers were asked to view the video recordings of the children from their own
preschool and comment on what they recognized as play for each of the three
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Table 5.1 Gender, age, and selected artifacts across the continuum engaged with
by the participating children
Child
Gender
Age Generic
Ethan
Male
4 Farm set
Tom
Male
4 Train set
Jacob
Male
5 Train set
Maxwell
Male
5 Train set
James
Male
3 Train set
Consumer
Digital
Peppa Pig stuffed
toy and Peppa’s
friends and brother
stuffed toy
Thomas the Tank
Engine trains and
track
Thomas the Tank
Engine trains and
track
Thomas the Tank
Engine trains
and track
Peppa Pig Happy
Mrs Chicken
Thomas the Tank
Engine trains
and track
Thomas & Friends:
Engine Activities
Thomas and Friends:
Engine Activities
Cranky’s Story
Thomas and Friends:
Engine Activities
Peppa Pig Happy
Mrs Chicken
Cranky’s Story
Thomas and Friends:
Engine Activities
Peppa Pig Happy
Mrs Chicken
Cranky’s Story
episodes. They were also asked to describe what characterized the activities
they recognized as play.
An hour-long focus group discussion was then conducted with all three
teachers, during which they were asked to review a composite video recording of the three episodes of play showing children from each preschool.
This meant the teachers were now also viewing footage of children from
preschools other than their own. The teachers were provided with a sheet
of printed paper that contained a table for each play episode and asked to
record on the sheet what they recognized as play and what characterized the
activities they recognized as play. Following the viewing of the composite
recordings, the teachers participated in collaborative analysis of the data,
mainly by examining together (and with the researcher facilitating the focus
group) what they had recorded on their sheets. The aim of this session was
to provide an opportunity for the teachers to react to and build upon the
responses of each other, thus producing more elaborated insights than those
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generated in the individual interviews (Wilkinson, 2006). These individual
and focus group interviews were also video recorded and transcribed for
subsequent analysis.
Our approach to data analysis had two phases. First, we looked deductively (Hatch, 2002; Robert-Holmes, 2011) at the teachers’ responses to
concepts we had explicitly presented them with, including “play,” “digital technologies,” and “curriculum.” We then employed inductive coding (Creswell, 2013) of the same interview and video transcripts, chiefly
looking for repeated words or phrases, or for repeated examples of meaning making that were either directly related to our research questions
or which we understood to have arisen spontaneously during the interviews and focus group. These interpretations were triangulated (Creswell,
2013) against the notes the teachers had made on their response sheets at
the focus group. This was to identify any commonalities between our coding and the teacher notes about what they recognized as play. Our central
analytic focus was to determine what the teachers recognized as play for
the purpose of curriculum formation, and the extent to which an understanding of digital play was evident in what the teachers understood to be
characteristic of children’s play.
The State of the Actual: What Did the
Teachers Recognize as Play?
The focus of the research was on understanding what the teachers would recognize as play because play is understood to form the basis of curriculum provision in early childhood education. An important finding to arise from our
analysis was that while the teachers recognized the children’s use of all of the
artifacts of play, that they did not accord the same value to each example of
play. Here, not all play was equal, with the traditional activities in particular
viewed as the most “play-like.” In commenting on the children’s play with the
traditional and consumerist toys, the teachers emphasized the tangible nature
of what children were doing, such as touching and manipulating the play
materials as characteristic of “real” play. As she watched the video of one of
the boys building a train track with the basic train set, Pamela commented:
Now that he’s got some more interesting, interactive toys, the play will
start to build. So having something to actually touch and something that
moves.
Both Pamela and Wendy (another of the teachers), went on to point out the
learning they thought might arise from this type of play:
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Pamela: His whole body is engaged in the play. And using both his hands
to actually manipulate the toys. What he’s doing now, there over the
tunnel, is learning activities like over and under and through. So
there’s a process there, just through his play.
Wendy: It’s like a puzzle really, isn’t it. Sort of figuring out where all the
pieces go.
The third teacher, Lyn, went even further to explain how she would capitalize upon this type of play pedagogically:
If I was going to take that further and turn it into a learning experience,
I would perhaps sit with a group of children. Four or five children and
the train set and perhaps talk about the shapes, the tracks, just start with
a pile and talk perhaps about what we could do with them. And then see
if that way they can use a bit more planning in and what they are going
to do.
Although the teachers made these comments independently (i.e., during their individual interviews), collectively they provide a textbook
example of an early childhood pedagogy where teachers begin by making play materials available, then observe sensitively to see how children are responding to the materials, and then intervene to leverage the
play experience for educational purposes, particularly the promotion of
valued concepts (in the above transcript excerpts these included shape,
problem-solving, fine-motor manipulation, spatial awareness, and intentionality). What is explicit in the comment from Pamela is the idea that
play is associated with the almost automatic learning of concepts such
as over, under, and through. Having his whole body and both his hands
engaged in the play seems to be the prerequisite for “learning” these
spatial concepts. However, as Wood (2007) pointed out, children “will
not spontaneously learn the concept of floating and sinking, volume
and mass without educative encounters with more knowledgeable others” (p. 125). As this child is aged four, it is highly likely that he knows
and understands these concepts. There is little mention of language
here, something that was important to the third teacher, Lyn. This is a
pedagogy that assumes that the play materials available to the children
embody these concepts. Teachers know and can dis-embed these concepts
to bring them to children’s consciousness, provided they can intervene
at the right moment.
In the case of the consumerist toys, the teachers were aware that these
artifacts embodied not only potential concepts but prior meanings in the
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form of cultural scripts drawn from the boys’ lives with the Thomas the
Tank Engine train set:
They have a role that he’s identified before, so he’s able to talk about
their role, whereas, the other train, there’s no commercial kind of value
to it, he just used [it] to run up and down the tracks. Yeah, he has previous knowledge of what their role is, like Thomas’s role and whatever the
green one [train] is.
Anne went on to make an interesting distinction in her interpretation of
this boy’s play:
I see more of play when he’s entertaining himself by running the tracks,
the trains, up the track. But at the moment he’s more engaged in
explaining the Thomas characters to Ana or Scott [the researchers].
When questioned by the interviewer “Is it still play?” Anne responded:
I’m thinking not, from what I’m seeing, because . . . in the first instance
with the train with no logo, he wasn’t really interested in talking to
Scott or Ana, he’s just more intent on setting up his track and, you
know, running his hand along, which, I think, that’s play. But now
[with the consumerist train set] he’s more interested in explaining what
the pieces are for and how they work, he’s not really playing with them
as such.
Our interpretation of Anne’s comments is that, for her, children’s play
involves a level of imagination and autonomy that is constrained by the
prior scripts or meanings children can attribute to consumerist toys. As
Anne watched this child explaining these toys to Ana and Scott, she made
a final comment:
But there’s value in that as well. There’s value in him explaining to adults
what he’s got in his hand [but] is it play?
In turning to the teachers’ interpretation of the children’s use of the iPads,
we anticipated that the teachers would make similar or even more emphatic
comments about these video records. This was indeed the case. As Pamela
watched two of the boys using the iPad, she commented:
I think you get to a point where there’s no lateral learning, there’s no
creativity and there’s no room for moving out of that play, because the
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play is just with the iPad and the program. And I think after about ten
times, you’d probably get a bit fed up with that program and then move
onto something else.
This comment is consistent with the interpretations the teachers’ made of
the children’s play with the traditional and consumerist toys, including the
need for toys to have the potential for teachers to intervene sensitively to
support learning. Pamela continued:
I guess my question would be, would you be able to use—because we try
to scaffold—from a teaching perspective, you can’t really scaffold the
children’s learning with that and stretch their thinking and imagination. Where with the train set, I could do a lot of scaffolding, which is
just bringing in some information, getting the children to talk, to think,
to question. Whereas this [the play on the iPad] is contained within
itself.
Although Pamela’s interpretation might have been different if we had presented the children with iPad apps that demanded different behaviors,
including greater engagement with others, her point is an important one.
Teachers recognize play in the preschool not only as play per se but as play
that has the potential to be capitalized upon for learning, a view Wood (2013)
has identified as a “technicist” version of play, aligned with neoliberal discourses of educational play. Here play is understood and used to realize play
for educational purposes rather than for its intrinsic value. This means that
when looking at the digital play, it was difficult for Pamela to understand
the somewhat constrained app activity as play because it could not be readily
converted to play that realized learning.
So far, the data we have presented could be characterized as the teachers
talking about the children’s interaction with the toys. We categorized the
teachers’ comments about children’s intentionality and goal orientation,
problem solving, sense of humor, identification with consumerist characters, and cooperation with peers, as well as other forms of social interaction as interaction with the toys. However, a second characteristic of the
teachers’ statements about the video response material was their repeated
reference to the concept of engagement across all three play types. Within
this category, the teachers talked about the children’s emotional connection with the toys, the fun, and interest they displayed in using the toys,
the level of interactivity made available by the toys, and how long the children persisted in playing with each toy. As she watched one of the boys
move onto the iPad, Lyn made a comment that suggested that she carefully
judged “levels” of engagement in children’s play and distinguished between
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engagement as extended time spent using the toy and engagement that fulfills an educational purpose:
The iPad is highly engaging for him [but] there’s no real creativity
involved. There is thinking involved but it is thinking to complete a task.
It is not thinking, you know, the storyline or “Where am I going with
this play?” It’s thinking to complete a task.
Pamela underscored Lyn’s perspective when she commented on the video
footage of one of the boys playing with one of the supplementary apps,
which involved helping a monster cook food:
I think we need to be a bit careful about that type of play, if that’s what
we’re going to call it. Or is it just engagement? . . . It’s a form of having
fun, it’s a form of interaction with the computer . . . But is it play?
Soon afterward in the same interview Lyn returned to this point:
With this one [the iPad] I can’t see a lot of language skills happening. It’s
fun, but there’s not a lot of that interaction I suppose if another person
came in, they’re just watching . . . But maybe that could be built into it,
if an adult came along and said, “Well, you need to share” but, because
of this—I think he would find it really hard, because he’s in control of
that and this little fellow likes to be in control, and he likes to have something to himself . . . I keep thinking play is learning, and what do we learn
through play? And this one here [the video excerpt], there’s not a lot of
those social skills, which I went back to, as the sharing, turn taking, verbalization. Language skills are quite important for children as well and
I can’t see a lot of that actually happening, because the animated fellow
there is not really giving much back other than eating and saying he likes
it. So I think there’s a limited amount of learning in it.
Again, it is important to acknowledge that a different choice of apps might
have resolved Lyn’s concerns somewhat. The task we are undertaking here,
however, is not to identify the characteristics designers need to build into
apps to satisfy preschool teachers’ orientation toward educational play, but
to understand what the teachers recognized as play as a basis for curriculum
provision. Here, a critical approach to educational technology research in
early childhood education suggests that focussing on what teachers understand as play shifts the focus from researching what technologies could be
used in early childhood settings to whether or not teachers are likely to use
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technologies if these artifacts do not align with their conceptions of play
and how play is linked with learning. The state of the actual for early childhood teachers may be that technologies represent artifacts associated with
less valuable forms of play than more traditional materials. In this case, the
problem of technological uptake in early childhood settings is not one of
professional learning so much as it is the need to reconceptualize what might
constitute digital play.
Conclusion
Our intention in this chapter has been to reflect on the state of the actual in
relation to preschool teachers’ thinking about educational technologies. Our
research strategy differs from previous studies because our starting point is
not the role of educational technologies but the fundamental nature of preschool education in our cultural context: first, that play is the cornerstone of
the curriculum and that this play involves children using culturally valued
artifacts such as toys; and, second, that the principal resource children bring
to this play is their experience in their home and community contexts. If
teachers struggle to recognize consumer and digital activity as play associated with learning they are unlikely to implement such experiences into
the curriculum, regardless of how much professional learning they might
undertake. This is not to say that teachers are unwilling to learn, but rather
that a critical perspective on educational technology in early childhood education might need to reconceptualize the problem of technological integration in terms of what teachers recognize as play for the purpose of enabling
a curriculum associated with children’s learning. This would be instead of
continuing to identify and describe how technologies could be used within
early childhood education settings. Pamela, Lyn, and Anne were eager volunteers for this pilot project and remain engaged with our ongoing research,
as both participants and critical friends. Their responses to our early efforts
to understand their life worlds as preschool teachers provided us with a
“context-rich” avenue for learning more about the extent to which understandings about what constitutes digital play are articulated with the early
childhood curriculum.
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childhood practice. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 8(1), 19–29.
CHAPTER 6
Youth Breaking New “Ground”:
Iconicity and Meaning Making
in Social Media
Mark Evan Nelson, Stacy Marple,
and Glynda Hull
Introduction
This chapter argues for a semiotic approach to understanding and productively facilitating the interaction and learning that young people do via
social media. As an organizing analogy for what follows, we first call forth
the enduring Indian parable of The Blind Men and the Elephant. This story,
many will know, describes the initial encounter between six unsighted sages
and a pachyderm, an exotic creature of which none of the men have any
prior knowledge. The essential premise is that each of the men differently
identifies the beast, based only upon his particular tactile experience of it.
Touching the elephant’s flank, one man explains it as “very like a wall,”
as nineteenth-century poet John Godfrey Saxe’s version has it. The man
who feels the trunk recognizes the elephant’s snake-like quality; a tusk is
perceived to be a “spear”; and so forth. The important lessons, for present
purposes, are that 1) what an unknown something seems like can fundamentally shape a person’s interpretation of what that thing itself is, and that
2) a thing and that which it resembles are really more subjectively and partially related than one might otherwise believe. These are ideas that resonate
closely with C. S. Peirce’s (1935, 1940/1955) influential theory of “iconicity”
in human meaning making, which this chapter engages and operationalizes
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Nelson, Marple, and Hull
as a critical lens through which to look afresh at learning, literacies, and
global digital media.
As we go on to demonstrate, the concept of iconicity can be usefully
applied as an analytic and pedagogical tool for understanding how young
people learn with, from, and through literate practices involving internationally networked, digitally supported forms of representation and interaction. Through ethnographic case studies and multimodal textual analysis,
we have examined the formation of perspectives on the part of youth onto
unexpected terrains of digital, intercultural communication via social media,
and we argue on this empirical basis that, just as with the storied Blind Men
and the Elephant, iconicity plays a critical role in shaping these foremost
impressions and, importantly, the learning that ensues. We further suggest
that one key to productive and thoughtful—what Silverstone (2007) termed
“hospitable”—global, multimodal dialogue within such new media practices
and contexts is to always seek for alternative communicational “grounds,”
the inceptive interpretations upon which iconic representations and subsequent meanings are founded. We agree with Selwyn (2010), Warschauer
(2004), Buckingham (2003) and other scholars of new media in education
who problematize the emphasis typically placed on digital technologies per
se and the presumed general effects of their use. And we take seriously the
recommendation of “a broadening of the academic ‘technological imagination’ to include issues of democracy, social justice and empowerment”
(Selwyn, 2010, p. 66). The challenge, then, is to critically reinterpret easy
assumptions about what technologies are and do, toward a reimagining of
what digital tools and digitally mediated practices may signify within individual and social lives.
This is one line of inquiry within a larger project involving the participatory development of an online social network (called “Space2Cre8”) of
teenaged youth living in India, South Africa, Norway, the United States,
and other nations. The project explored how collaborative meaning-making
work was undertaken and how multiple forms of mediation and dimensions
of difference (e.g., languages and script systems, communications media,
cultural codes, personal feelings, and opinions) were negotiated by young
people within and without the online network.
Social Media and Meaning-Making Youth
Social networking, of the present digitally mediated sort, has existed for just
over a decade. According to boyd (2008), Friendster, launched in 2002, was
the first site that “popularized the features that define contemporary social
network sites—profiles, public testimonials or comments, and publicly
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articulated, traversable lists of friends” (p. 121). Obviously, since their inception, social networking platforms and practices have grown tremendously in
prevalence and importance around the globe. Founded in 2004, Facebook,
at the time of this writing in early 2014 claims well over 1.2 billion monthly
active users, sharing several billion comments, photos, links, and other items
of content every day (Facebook Newsroom, 2014). Reportedly, too, among
the most active participants on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other
online communities are teenaged youth. In 2012 in the United States, for
example, 81 percent of over 2,000 teenagers surveyed identified themselves
as regular users of social media sites (Madden et al., 2013). In China, by
comparison, the most popular social media platform, QZone, reported more
than 600 million registered users as of January 2014 (Kemp, 2014). Because
under-eighteens are technically not permitted to join the QZone community,
it is probably difficult to precisely determine how many users are youths.
(The same is true of Facebook, of course, and that has not deterred the many
millions of teenaged users of that site.) However, findings from a recent
large-scale GlobalWebIndex (2013) survey indicate that nearly 20 percent of
Chinese teen respondents were active QZone users, with other Chinese sites
(e.g., Tencent) also drawing significant numbers of members.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the great scope and rapid expansion of social
media use among youth have instigated a raft of scholarly research. One
principal line of inquiry has weighed the opportunities and the risks
involved in online sociality (Barnes, 2006; boyd & Hargittai, 2010; Fuchs,
2011; Lusk, 2010; Madden et al., 2013; Tynes, 2007; Utz & Kramer, 2009).
Barnes (2006), for instance, investigated privacy issues and the exchange of
personal information within social networking communities, describing the
concerning sense of false security that youth often feel in revealing personal
information to those they never actually see. Research by Madden and colleagues (2013) suggests that this tendency toward sharing personal information widely, and often with unknown others, generally persists, notably
causing little concern among youth themselves.
Another strand of research into social media use among young people
examines the construction and interpersonal negotiation of identities in
online spaces and communities (Barker, 2009; Brake, 2008; Davis, 2012;
Hull & Nelson, 2009; Kirkland; 2009; Perkel, 2008; Turkle, 1995, 2011;
Valkenberg & Peter, 2008; Zhao, Grasmuck, & Martin, 2008). Brake
(2008), Kirkland (2009), and Perkel (2008), for example, probed the confluence of social, personal, and material factors that influenced the design and
presentation of personal profile pages on MySpace. A contribution of prominent media scholar Sherry Turkle’s (2011) work has been her cautionary take
on digitally mediated identities and relationships, which, she argues, can
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promote a kind of connectedness that approximates a face-to-face association, but lacks a deeper interpersonal investment.
A third focus of social media research, though not exclusive to the experiences of youth, has been on the larger social patterns and processes that
characterize social networks (boyd, 2007; Papacharissi, 2009; Patchin &
Hinduja, 2010; Sylvan, 2006). A important earlier study by Sylvan (2006)
and colleagues, applying what they termed “social network analysis,”
tracked and analyzed user interactions within the international “Computer
Clubhouse Village” community, to understand broad patterns such as “flows
of innovation,” that is, how ideas are adopted, or not, within a “community
of distributed learners” (p. 7).
Our work mainly straddles the latter two foci. Yet to be substantively
addressed in either of these areas, though, are specific semiotic questions as
to the nature and implications of young people’s interactions within social
networks. What are the underlying meaning-making processes that shape
young people’s digitally mediated social experiences? How do social networking tools and practices afford and constrain meaning making? How
do online and offline experiences semiotically intersect, that is, reflexively
shape the meaning-making potentials of one another? This research engages
with just such questions, integrating conceptual tools from semiotics and
communication theory with multisited ethnography (Marcus, 1995).
Our objective has been, borrowing Marcus’s phrase, to “follow the metaphor,” to “trace the social correlates and groundings of associations that are
most clearly alive in language use, print, or visual media” (p. 108) across
physical and virtual contexts of communication. In practical terms, we
sought to construct fine-grained, empirically based interpretations of how
digitally mediated meaning making work was done among young people sitting both side-by-side and on different continents (cf. Leander, 2008), youth
with closely convergent and also widely divergent experiences and interests.
The principal research question guiding the project was articulated thus:
How do youth in different contexts understand and negotiate interactions
that are mediated in different ways through social media technologies and
practices, and to what effects?
Semiotics, Iconicity, and Ground
We theoretically locate this work within a broadly social semiotic framework, which, as expressed by van Leeuwen (2005), is concerned with “the
way people use semiotic ‘resources’ both to produce communicative artifacts
and events and to interpret them . . . in the context of specific social situations and practices” (p. xi). We qualify this alignment as “broad” because
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we find it helpful to draw not only on the Hallidayan systemic-functional
framework most clearly associated with social semiotics (cf. Halliday, 1973,
1978; Hodge & Kress, 1988; Kress, 2003, 2010; Kress & van Leeuwen,
1996/2006, 2001; O’Toole, 1994; Unsworth, 2002, 2008), but also on what
Hodge and Kress (1988) call “mainstream semiotics”—in this case, the work
of Charles Sanders Peirce (1935, 1940/1955).
Among other philosophical problems, Peirce was interested in unpacking
the logic of how meaning may be conveyed by signs. While Saussure (1966)
conceptualized the sign in a bipartite way—as a union of sign form or vehicle (like the red octagon of a stop sign) and concept (such as the notion of
a “mandate to stop”), roughly—Peirce’s sign, as with other aspects of his
semiotic theory, consists of three parts, adding something like “real-world
interpretation” to the abstract form and concept of Saussure. Perhaps best
known among Peirce’s ideas on semiotics is the triumvirate of icon, index,
and symbol, which describes different ways of characterizing the relationship between a given sign form and its object.
The icon, for Peirce, is a type of sign relation defined by resemblance:
the resemblance of the sign form, or “signifier” in Saussurian terms, to the
abstract concept, or “signified,” for which it stands. In Peirce’s words, “an
Icon is a sign which refers to the object that it denotes merely by virtue of
characters of its own, and which it possesses, just the same, whether any such
object exists or not” (p. 102, italics in original). Hodge and Kress (1988)
put it more simply, explaining icons as “picture-like signs which either are
or resemble what they signify” (p. 26). So, concrete examples of iconic sign
relations might be an elephant’s tail signifying a snake or its tusk signifying
a spear, as in the parable with which we began.
The index, by contrast, is governed by a relation of causality or contiguity, or, as Peirce has it, “an Index is a sign which refers to the object that
it denotes by being really affected by the Object” (p. 102, italics in original). Imagine now the elephant’s tusk standing for impalement or danger.
In Peircian terms, the tusk generates or determines a sign (“interpretant,” in
Peirce’s nomenclature) of its object (e.g., impalement), by directing attention
to the physical or causal connection between the long, sharp tusk and the
act of being impaled. The tusk is not impalement itself, of course, but an
obvious, natural relationship exists between them, such that the former may
be taken to “point” indirectly to the latter (no pun intended), as the name
index would suggest.
Finally, a symbol is a sign in which the relationship between the sign
form (or what Peirce calls the “representamen”) and the concept (or “object”)
is one of true convention, that is, a nonnatural, socially determined, and
recognized connection. As an illustration, consider once again the elephant’s
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tusk, but as regarded within the Kingdom of Benin, in nineteenth-century
West Africa. In that context, elaborately carved elephant tusks were symbolic signifiers of great political status (Art Institute of Chicago, 2013), and
it was mutual social agreement—not fear of impalement—that maintained
a relation between that ivory artifact and the abstract concept of power.
Semioticians, after Saussure (1966), discuss this kind of conventional relation as “unmotivated” or “arbitrary” (cf. Harris, 2003; Kress, 1993).
Returning to the icon, we would point out—as Umberto Eco (1978)
and Peirce himself also have—that the idea of resemblance is not hardly as
simple as it may seem. When we look at an image of an elephant’s tusk, there
seems little doubt that it represents “tusk”; however, this is an act of “abduction” (1935, p. 105), or interpretive judgment, rather than an objectively
given or unmediated truth. An elephant’s tusk is whatever any individual
sees and knows it to be, and her interpretive faculties expand with greater
life experience and learning.
Importantly, then, the icons that we each construct in our engagements
with the world are rooted not in self-evidence or natural fact, but in a
“ground.” Interpreting Peirce, Hanks (1996) explains, “a sign, or representamen . . . stands for some object in the world by virtue of an idea, or ground ”
(p. 42, our emphasis). So, the ground, the “idea,” describes the nature of
the sign relation itself; in the case of iconic representation, what an icon
signifies depends upon what any one person thinks the sign form resembles. Ultimately, then, it becomes illogical to suggest that anything looks
like anything else in absolute or objective terms. Resemblance, as with all
meaning, is constructed in the moment, determined in large part through
personal, social, and cultural experience. This is the essence of the semiotic
concept of ground.
This may seem a counterintuitive or even trivial point, but we hope to
show that it is a consequential point indeed, for at least one important reason. Iconicity is a semiotic experience of what Peirce calls “firstness,” an
entree to other forms of further meaning making, particularly indexical and
symbolic forms. The first iconic act of recognition in any instance of meaning making is the stimulus to further acts: indexical connections to feelings,
impressions, past experiences; invocations of symbolic codes and customs,
and so on. In sum, iconicity sets the stage, or stakes out the ground, for further meaning-making work. Each resemblance one perceives is the singular
ingress to a unique course of interpretations. An understanding of elephantas-spear prefigures a different course of further impressions and interpretations than elephant-as-snake or elephant-as-elephant might, for instance. So
where one starts, the ground from which one sets forth, really does matter,
as the case studies we next present specifically illustrate.
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Research Design: Space2Cre8.com, a Youth
Social Networking Platform
Space2Cre8 was initiated in 2007 at the University of California, Berkeley.
This project grew out of prior work with Bay Area youth on digital storytelling, digital music making, and other creative literacy programs (Hull,
2003; Hull & Katz, 2006; Hull & Nelson, 2005, 2009; Hull, Kenney,
Marple, & Foresman-Schneider, 2006; Nelson, Hull, & Roche-Smith,
2008). Interested in the increasingly global, mobile quality of youth media
and culture, and inspired by the writings of Arjun Appadurai (1996), for
example, the notion of “cultural flows”; Paul Willis (1991, 2000) and his
theorizations of “symbolic work” and “symbolic creativity” among youth
and young adults; as well as the new media and multimodal literacy theories of Gunther Kress (2003) and others working in a social semiotic vein,
we imagined a project that would engage youth in doing and sharing creative work both individually and collaboratively, and beyond the boundaries of their respective local contexts. Sites of participation were established
in an after-school program in an urban Christian middle school in the San
Francisco Bay Area (“Bay”—a pseudonym, as with the names of all sites
and participants), a privately funded afternoon school program for working
teenaged girls in Northern India (“Pradesh”), a suburban public middle
school in Norway (“Ny”), and a public middle school in rural South Africa
(“Kaap”).
Practically, we aimed to create a social networking platform that youth
at these sites could interact within and contribute to meaningfully. Basic
functions of the site included image and video sharing, wall posting, blogging, in-site messaging, friending (i.e., creating invited subnetworks of personal connections), and the formation of groups. After much investigation
into various out-of-the-box social network options available at the time (i.e.,
Ning.com), we opted for a custom Joomla platform using a variety of thirdparty plug-in applications. Security, customizability, and access to backend usage data were the main concerns that warranted this more involved
solution.
The social network platform was designed so that site-use statistics and all
user-generated content (images, videos, messaging logs, emails, wall posts)
were accessible and traceable by researchers for purposes of qualitative and
quantitative analysis. All program participants and their parents/guardians
were fully apprised of and consented to these data collection procedures, and
the informed assent of the participants themselves was also obtained.
In addition to data captured by the website, there was at each location at
least one ethnographic researcher who routinely video recorded participant
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interactions, administered surveys, conducted interviews, and took field
notes on each program session. Periodically, too, key researchers traveled to
the various sites to conduct follow-up observations and interviews with focal
participants. The analysis described below derives from an iterative process
of open and comparative thematic coding of textual and visual-pictorial
data sources, aided by Atlas.ti qualitative analysis software.
Data and Analysis
Next, we present data and analysis from qualitative case studies that illustrate the kind of complex semiotic work that youth perform as they navigate
the multimodal terrain of digital spaces and develop global relationships
online. Common to these cases are “literacy events” (Heath, 1988) in which
the youth participants encountered digital texts whose intended messages
were opaque or inaccessible, prompting them to iconically construct personally relevant meanings for themselves. Below we describe these young
people’s initial semiotic engagements and the subsequent processes of meaning making that they undertook. (All names are pseudonyms.)
Case One: “I Was Cussed Out”
Early on in the course of their participation on the Space2Cre8 site, two
participants, Manuel and Norman from the Bay School site in California,
unexpectedly received messages from participants at the Ny School site in
Norway via the private messaging function. These Norwegian youth were
unknown to Manuel and Norman at that time. The message they sent was
“Hva skjer bruri,” which, when translated from somewhat slangy Norwegian,
is equivalent to something like “How’s it going, buddy?” And to the initial
surprise and puzzlement of the researchers, in each case the message was
immediately construed to be an insult. When these participants raised their
concerns in group discussions during program time on site, the following
on-site exchanges ensued:
A) Email to Manuel
Transcription conventions: Description of action—[]; overlapping speech—
spaced out ellipses ( . . . )
Facilitator : Um, someone mentioned that someone cussed you out? Or
something on the Internet? Yeah. From somewhere?
Norman: Are you sure about that?
Marquis: On Space2Cre8?
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Manuel: [Manuel nods affirmatively.]
Facilitator: On Space2Cre8.
Norman: Did you actually see what they said?
Manuel: It was in some foreign language!
Norman: OK, you don’t know what they’re saying.
Facilitator: How do you know it was cussing you out?
Manuel: It was in another language.
B) Email to Norman (approximately one month later)
Facilitator: Okay, Norman thinks he’s being cussed out on Space2Cre8.
[The facilitator turns to Norman.] Can you explain to us why?
Norman: ‘Cause . . .
Facilitator: . . . Now, just listen . . .
Norman: . . . There’s this person. Look, she said “buure.” And then it
says, “havar scure yur.”
Marquis: That’s the same thing what happened to Manuel.
Manuel: How do you know you’re getting cussed out? [Manuel walks
over to Norman’s computer.]
Facilitator: Okay, oh. Interesting.
Marquis: It can be anything. It can be like “we wanna be friends.”
While numerous accounts of online bullying have made headlines in
recent years, this type of activity did not occur on Space2cre8. In fact, as
is indicated by the final comment, by a youth participant named Marquis,
there was no ostensible cause for either Manuel or Norman to believe that
they had been cussed out. Additionally, after analyzing these boys’ online
interactions, we concluded that there were no textual antecedents to these
events or other contextual factors that would have suggested antagonism
of any kind. Naturally, too, there was no intonation pattern in the written
message that might have provoked excitation, nor was there emphatic punctuation, like exclamation points. What sense, then, can be made of Manuel
and Norman’s initial interpretations? What sort of semiotic work do we see
Manuel and Norman doing when confronted with this foreign-language
text?
In the classroom video from the day that Manuel reported being cussed
out, the program facilitator asks the students to discuss why Manuel might
have thought he had been disrespected. In response, a number of students
recalled moments when adults or strangers used unfamiliar languages to
express displeasure with their actions. One student also recalled encountering a man on the street who spoke to him in what he took to be a Chinese
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dialect (in which the student was neither conversant nor literate), which he
assumed to be an insult, although, when asked by the other students to
elaborate he could neither further explain nor support this interpretation.
Forming a composite analytic picture of these events, we considered the
kinds of meaning-making work that Manuel, Norman, and other youth do
when they confront opaque foreign symbols within their own life-worlds.
We asked, how do youth make the interpretive, transformational move from
the unfamiliar to the familiar? Most striking and curious here is that these
young people did not simply accept the opacity of the foreign words—à la
“I don’t get it!”—but, rather, created an alternative meaning for themselves
that was rooted or “grounded” in the familiar.
From a Peircian vantage, we might see that Manuel and Norman constructed meaning in the Norwegian text based not on the meanings that it
might symbolically (read conventionally) encode, which they could not access,
but rather on iconic qualities of the words themselves. These words bore a
resemblance—in their impenetrability and strangeness—to other inaccessible linguistic symbols that these boys had encountered in the past, which
seem to have been perceived as “withholding” intended meanings for disrespectful purposes. On a Peircian view of meaning making, the approach to
any act of signification is sensorial in nature. As with the blind wise men
of the Indian parable, the implicit questions are: what does it feel, look,
or sound like, and in what ways does the object or artifact resemble those
objects or sensations or ideas that I have encountered in the past? This is
the domain of the icon, the domain of resemblance. Manuel and Norman
constructed the negative associations that they did because of an initial
experience-based impression of what “hva skjer bruri” looked and felt like to
them, as they read and sounded out the words. Past experiences with opaque
language, then, predicted the ground upon which their understanding of
this text was built, and the assumedly aggressive intentions that attended it.
In the next case, the experience of a participant at the Ny site evidences a
similar disposition.
Case Two: “They’re all Foreigners”
One interesting challenge that researchers and facilitators at all of the
Space2Cre8 sites identified involved the interpretation of visual images
posted by or of youth from other sites. Shifted across time and space on
the social network, the possibilities of pictorial meaning seemed to greatly
expand (Nelson, Hull, & Roche-Smith, 2008), resulting in unintended,
often problematic interpretations. The following interaction, documented
by the ethnographic researcher at the Norwegian Ny site, exemplifies the
type of image redefinition or “resignification” (Butler, 1997) we have often
Figure 6.1
The South African participants at Kaap.
Figure 6.2
The American participants at Bay.
Figure 6.3
The Indian participants at Pradesh.
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observed (cf. Iedema’s [2003] notion of “resemiotization” and Bauman &
Briggs’ [1990] “reappropriation”).
On the home page of Space2cre8, at the time of this research, was a banner that rotated through presentations of group pictures (see figures 6.1–
6.3) of youth from each of the participating sites. This particular feature was
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rolled out a few months into the project; so while the youth previously had
access to images of individual participants, and had exchanged various digital artifacts via the network, they had not seen group photos of the members
at the other sites. The interaction below, captured on video, occurred on the
first day that these images were viewed by the Norwegian participants. As
the images cycled through on the smart board at the front of the classroom,
the facilitator talked with the students about the network members depicted
in each photo. (Italicized portions of the conversation below were translated
from the Norwegian by a Norway-based researcher.):
Facilitator: You are so many. [The facilitator speaks in English. Looking
at the smart board, she refers to a group picture of the Ny participants.
An image of the Kaap group (figure 6.1) then appears, followed by a
photo of the Bay students (figure 6.2). The facilitator points at the
photo of the Bay participants.] They are the Americans.
Kalila: They are all foreigners! [Kalila points emphatically at the whiteboard as the image of the Bay participants (figure 6.2) is replaced by
the image of the Pradesh students (figure 6.3).]
Elisa: Is it girls only? [Arlinda refers to the image of the Pradesh
students.]
Laith: They are not allowed to have boys there.
These group photos stimulated particular interests and comments on the
parts of the students that the individual profiles and photos had not. The
Ny students attended to what they termed the “foreigner” status of the other
students, as well as to their uniforms, remarking that they wished that their
school had its own uniform.
In conversation with Kalila, the Norwegian researcher discovered that
when exclaiming “they are all foreigners” and pointing at the rotating
images, she was not merely stating the obvious, that is, that the participants
at other sites were not Norwegian nationals; rather she was calling attention to the fact that none of the members at Kaap, Pradesh, or Bay were
Caucasian in appearance. Kalila herself was a second-generation Norwegian
of Pakistani descent, and the researchers explained that some Norwegianborn students from migrant families would, at times, refer to themselves as
“fremmed,” or foreigner.
This instance is particularly remarkable because Kalila already well knew
that the students she saw were full-fledged citizens of their respective countries. Many program activities to that point had focused on learning about
the other countries and localities through the exchange of digital media, like
photos and digital stories. Thus, the participants at each site were explicitly
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positioned as “experts” on their own locale. Knowing this, then, what can be
made of Kalila’s identification of the other students as “foreigners”?
Our interpretation is that Kalila, like Norman and Manuel, forgot, for
that moment, the nature and purposes of the network—a space in which
to learn about and build relationships with youth in other countries—and
the knowledge she had gained to that point about the other sites and participants. She seems to have been surprised, too, that only in the Norwegian
group picture were Caucasian individuals visually represented (photographs
of the Ny participants cannot be included here due to local research ethics
restrictions). In trying to account for Kalila’s “foreign” perception of the
other international participants, we surmised, and the Norwegian researcher’s observations also confirmed, that Kalila connected the youth in India,
South Africa, and the United States—immediately, visually, iconically—
with non-Caucasian people in Norway, like herself. Relevant entailments
of Kalila’s experience as a Pakistani-heritage member of Norwegian society
seem to have been instantaneously brought to bear in order to familiarize, or “domesticate” perhaps, images whose meaning potentials fell outside of Kalila’s normal expectations, again exemplifying a kind of semiotic
regrounding, whose function was coping with opaque textual representations, transferred across boundaries of time, space, and culture.
Case Three: “He Should, Like, Try to Get His Stuff Together”
Case three involves an online cultural information treasure hunt at the Bay
site. Participants were challenged with gathering information about the culture of participants at the Pradesh site in India, with whom they were planning to exchange digital stories and other multimedia creations. One of the
tasks required students to find a popular Indian music video. What one
student found, on YouTube via the search terms “Indian music video,” was
a parody of a Bollywood-style song-and-dance number, sung in Urdu, titled
“May he Poop?” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOgALTFzFbQ). The
creator of the YouTube video subtitled the original and prefaced it with the
statement: “This is not a real translation. It’s just what I think the words
sound like.” The creator then produced nonsensical lines such as “May he
poop on my knee?” and “Mustard my hole with a genie, babe,” and “All
come see with the finny-D.” Irresistibly absurd to the adolescent participants, the video became an instant sensation and spread virally among the
Bay youth throughout the program day.
Again, one of the main objectives of the Space2Cre8 work is to provide
youth with opportunities and tools for unpacking content encountered
online and exploring cross-cultural communication; and the facilitators at
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the Bay site used this video as a vehicle for eliciting students’ thoughts
and feelings about so-called mash-ups, parody, and mockery, and cultural
sensitivity. The next day another music video parody was shown to participants in conjunction with “May He Poop.” This was a farcical interpretation of Beyoncé Knowles’s hit song “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” by
American pop idol Joe Jonas (of the Jonas Brothers), in which Jonas dons
a unitard and sings, dances, and gestures in the same distinctive manner
that Beyoncé famously does in her music video. The facilitators offered
this juxtaposition in order to put the Urdu video into perspective for the
American youth participants, to bring it closer to home, so to say. In the
discussion that followed, the students came to and expressed the opinion
that the “May He Poop” video, though humorous at first, should actually
be characterized as “mean” and would likely be received as disrespectful
by their network-mates in India. The Bay program facilitator—herself a
native speaker of Urdu, coincidentally—asked the youth to explain their
thoughts:
Facilitator: I wanted to know, what made everyone think that the first
one [“May He Poop”] was mean-spirited. What about it?
Shawn: It was just the way they made fun of the language, and how
they’re probably taking a song that was serious into, something that is
trying to be a joke and it is really not. We don’t know if she was talking about something spiritual . . .
Tina: . . . like God . . .
Shawn: . . . or God or something. It could have been anything, but
seeing as how the guy who made it thinks that it’s a joke. He never
knows what it really is, so I think he should, like, try to get his stuff
together.
In this case, as with the previous two, students were confronted with
meaning-making resources whose conventional meaning potentials were
unfamiliar. This multimodal text presented a rich symbolic admixture of
language, gestures, costumes, and music, which was culturally quite distant
from the experience of these young American students. The actualization of
the expressive intent behind the video, that is, the audience taking it as it was
meant, depended upon the accessibility of its symbolic content; and those
conventional significances were obviously not accessible to the students as
ready resources or “available designs” (New London Group, 1996) for meaning making, the Urdu language probably least of all.
Again too, the students’ approach to the unfamiliar text was through
iconicity, the resemblance of the Urdu words (more accurately, the acoustic
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shapes of the words) to English words, as suggested by the creator of this
mash-up. Iconicity was what afforded the humor, and in this way, these
students immediately oriented to this text as a kind of parody of itself. Any
further meanings and semiotic linkages that they initially drew, then, were
constructed based on the farcical conceptual foundation of “poop,” “mustard,” “genie,” and so on.
Yet, through the facilitated group discussion, the students were able to
revisit and resee the text, to sidestep their first impressions and notice the
resemblance of aspects of the text to other, more varied aspects of their own
experiences—fundamentally, to see the people represented in the video as
potentially like themselves. In this way, they were able to further imagine
the potential symbolism in the strange words, music, and movements. The
students became able to wonder whether these features that were initially
comical could also speak to issues like spirituality and religion, issues with
which the Bay students themselves were concerned, educated in a Christian
tradition as they were. In discovering a new iconic approach to the text,
these American students “broke new ground,” that is, established new criteria for resemblance, and so also created new potentials for further more
positive interpretations.
Discussion
In a seminal essay on the perception of artistic works, Pierre Bourdieu
(1993), expanding upon Panofsky, identifies two levels of apprehension and
understanding of all cultural objects. The first and more superficial level,
Bourdieu explains, depends on
“Demonstrative concepts” which only identify and grasp the sensible qualities of the work (this is the case when a peach is described as velvety
or lace as misty) or the emotional experience that these qualities arouse in
the beholder (when colors are spoken of as harsh or gay). (p. 218, our
emphasis)
In order to reach the second level—that which Bourdieu calls the “sphere of
the meaning of the signified”—“we must have ‘appropriately characterizing
concepts’ which go beyond the simple designation of qualities and . . . constitute a genuine ‘interpretation’” (pp. 218–219). Recalling once again the
Indian parable with which we began, one sees that any number of conclusions about elephants, and elephant-ness, can be reached on the basis of
“demonstrative concepts”; but to really know an elephant, that is, to form
an “appropriate characterization” of it, one must look past its snake- and
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spear- and wall-like qualities and see it for the functions it actually serves,
the roles it performs, the relationships it maintains, the habits it enacts, its
preferences, feelings, strengths, and vulnerabilities. One should know how
others see it and, if possible, how it regards itself (not to overextend the
metaphor). The difference between the “naïve beholder” and the literate
interpreter of cultural objects is “that the latter is conscious of the situation”
(Bourdieu, 1993, p. 218).
Each of the three cases above features young meaning makers confronted
with unfamiliar textual resources, and their initial impressions were formed
via a process of transporting these texts into the realm of the familiar, that
is, forming iconic linkages to their own life experiences. In each case, too,
the youth had already begun to develop a nuanced sense of the individual
and cultural characteristics associated with Space2Cre8 members at other
sites, through various program activities and interactions; however, this
contextual, situational knowledge was momentarily suspended, preliminarily eclipsed by demonstrative (read iconic) perceptions. But it would be a
mistake to suggest that these youths’ initial impressions were, in any sense,
wrong; the meanings that they constructed were certainly valid and founded
on the basis of personal experience. Even in case three, in which it seems that
the Bay participants uncritically accepted the antic music-video, the farcical meaning potential of that text would not have been received by the Bay
participants if they had not been able to detect on some level the disjuncture between the ludicrous subtitles and its content as understood within an
Urdu-speaking context.
However, the most crucial step is to reach beyond what a text looks,
feels, or seems like and explore other aspects of meaning potential, to sympathetically imagine what other significances might be discovered and
motivated. Through sharing and discussing their understandings, the youth
became alert to the inchoate nature, the firstness, of the impressions they
had formed, which is most clearly seen in case three. Awareness of these first
resemblance-based impressions provided the semiotic catalyst for regrounding them, through further negotiation and information seeking, ultimately
leading to expanded, more nuanced understanding.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we want to suggest that iconicity, and semiotics at large,
offers useful tools for understanding, and helpful meta-language for teaching and learning, networked multimodal meaning making, and new media
literacies more broadly. Due principally to their increasing access to and
interaction on the Internet and other mobile communication platforms,
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our students are more and more likely to be confronted with what are to
them exotic codes and unfamiliar meaning-making resources, especially
in multimodal combination. But these “foreign” texts are never objectively
opaque or impenetrable. Unfamiliar though these resources are, they are
always “read,” first iconically, through the lens of an interpreter’s own
experience, and familiarized thereby. As the cases we have presented show,
languages and other modes of communication still have meaning to us,
even if we don’t know what they mean in the conventional or symbolic
sense.
Iconicity, seeing resemblance, is the stimulus to making meaning, but
resemblances, as we hope we have also demonstrated, are multiple and fluid.
To enable twenty-first-century youth to effectively and hospitably communicate across linguistic, cultural, and textual boundaries—and so stand
to profit from the “productive diversity” (New London Group, 1996) that
new digital technologies, like social media, promise to facilitate—they
must always be seeking and breaking new ground: discovering alternative
likenesses and points of comparison, and progressing from these varied
iconic trailheads into new and broader terrains of knowledge, insight, and
empathy.
Acknowledgment
We gratefully acknowledge the Spencer Foundation for providing the funding that made this research possible.
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CHAPTER 7
The Scripted Sandbox: Children’s
Gameplay and Ludic Gendering
Nicola Pallitt and Marion Walton
Introduction
Game theorist Roger Caillois introduces his classic discussion of the pleasures of “mimicry” or playful performance with a short vignette showing
how children imitate adult behavior through play:
For children, the aim is to imitate adults. This explains the success of the
toy weapons and miniatures which copy the tools, engines, arms, and
machines used by adults. The little girl plays her mother’s role as cook,
laundress, and ironer. The boy makes believe he is a soldier, musketeer,
policeman, pirate, cowboy, Martian, etc. (Caillois, 1961/2001, p. 21)
Although Caillois does not remark on it, gender is key to his illustrative
examples. His depiction of girls ironing and laundering and boys playing
pirate or Martian remind us of gender inequalities and asymmetries, the
importance of play in gendered identities, and also how children’s play and
gendered expectations have changed since Caillois wrote this in the 1960s.
In Caillois’s account, boy and girl children are born preferring different
models for their mimetic play. At the same time, the toys around them are
also gendered, either implicitly or explicitly. In Caillois’s world, girls imitate
their mothers, while boys have a far wider range of role models. Caillois’s
boys’ range into traditionally masculine domains of police, army, and pirate
ship, while girls’ imagined selves are tethered to the domestic space.
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Pallitt and Walton
We believe that games studies needs to develop better explanatory models
for the relationship between children’s pretend play and their digital games.
Caillois’s notion of mimicry derives from his studies of “mimetism” in insects,
who imitate their environment to provoke fear (Caillois, 1961/2001, p. 20).
He argues that the appeal of mimicry is the pleasure of abandoning the self
to otherness (Hendricks, 2007). But this model of environmental imitation
is not enough. Instead, we argue that, through games and play, children
engage tactically with the gendered meanings and power relationships in
their environment. We explore the relationships between gendered representations in game titles and gender performance (Butler, 1990, 1993) in
children’s play and term this process “ludic gendering,” which includes both
digital and nondigital play.
From this perspective, gender itself is a performance (Butler, 1990, 1993;
Pelletier 2007) and is transgressive as well as mimetic. If children are “doing
gender” as they play, does it matter that boys and girls are positioned so
asymmetrically by digital games, and that they stigmatize one another’s
play? To explore these questions, we draw on feminist approaches to children’s play (Carr, 2007; Pelletier, 2007; Willett, 2007) and build on the
existing insights of playground studies (Burn & Richards, 2014; Opie &
Opie, 1969; Thorne, 1993; Willett et al., 2013).
This chapter further challenges Caillois’s binary by exploring children’s
gender transgressions, and their tactical uses of mimicry or playful and
parodic performances while playing digital games. Here we find it helpful
to remember de Certeau’s (1984) distinction between the strategies of the
powerful and the tactics of the powerless. This requires us to look not only
at gendered market strategies in game titles but also to focus on children’s
use of gender tactics to establish and disrupt gender boundaries and assert
their own power through play.
A critical ethnographic approach helps account for gendered power
dynamics in children’s play and between children and the adult world. This
means setting aside simplistic assumptions about the “educational” value of
children’s play. The public meanings of children’s play are often sanitized by
adults, who tend to read play developmentally, according to a “rhetoric of
progress” (Sutton-Smith, 1997, p. 116) and to inscribe playgrounds as utopian spaces (Burn, 2014). By contrast, children’s meanings, or the “hidden
transcript” (Sutton-Smith 1997, p. 116) of their play, often involves aggression and sexuality (Jopson, Burn, & Robinson, 2014; Marsh & Bishop,
2013; Richards, 2013). While dominant gender strategies certainly shape
children’s play preferences, we also focus on the complex narrative and relational dynamics motivating children’s play and their gendered identity performances around digital games. Caillois’s vignette highlights the role of
Children’s Gameplay and Ludic Gendering
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toys, revealing how commercial strategies collude with familial practices to
provide resources and templates for everyday play and gender identities. Such
normative gender strategies endure through the regulation, rewards, and
architecture of institutions such as schools, and toyshops, the architecture of
stories, games, and websites, and through gendered discourses and embodied performances of families, classrooms, religions, and playgrounds.
Nonetheless, even gender-normative mimicry is a transgressive form of
play, in that “acts of mimicry tend to cross the border between childhood
and adulthood” (Caillois, 1961/2001, p. 21). Children’s mimicry not only
imitates adult authority, but also mocks it, sometime transgressively (to
extend Bakhtin’s (1981) insight), often interleaving parody and emulation
(Marsh, 2008). Child folklorists Opie and Opie’s (1969) pioneering ethnographic research on children’s lore, language, and singing games highlights
the interconnections between mimicry and parody in children’s play, its
historical shifts, and relation to media references. Likewise, South African
township children’s musical games reflect their environments, parody adults,
and explore cross-gender interactions and sexual roles (Harrop-Allin, 2010).
Recent playground studies in the United Kingdom show how contemporary children’s media-referenced pretend play not only acknowledges and
emulates digital culture but also mocks it (Burn & Richards, 2014; Willett
et al., 2013).
As children play with digital games, their tactical uses of mimicry include
counternormative performances silenced in Caillois’s highly conventional
account. While such gender transgressions are perhaps more memorable, we
have tried to ensure with this account that the normativities of dominant
gendering practices remain in focus.
Researching Children’s Gameplay
This chapter reports on a study by Nicola Pallitt of after-school play settings
in suburban Cape Town, South Africa, where groups of middle-class children (ages 4–13) engaged in supervised play with digital games. The children’s
interactions in peer groups, their play experiences, and their interpretations of
games as media artifacts were all focal elements of the study. In this chapter
we discuss a children’s holiday club hosted in the gym hall of a boys’ primary
school in Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs. We discuss observations conducted
during two different time periods. The December 2010/January 2011 holiday
club was attended by 8 girls and 24 boys. The April 2011 holiday club was
attended by 4 girls and 14 boys. This imbalance in the number of girls and
boys, and the fact that almost all of the children attended single-sex schools
contributed significantly to the children’s interactions (Pallitt, 2013).
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Nicola spent 42 hours at the December 2010–January 2011 holiday
club and 30 hours at the April 2011 holiday club. During observations, she
recorded children’s digital gameplay on video, and used questionnaires,
interviews with children, game demonstrations (when children brought
their own games and handheld consoles to the holiday club), and a play
schedule to document children’s gaming.
A play schedule was used as a way to manage turn-taking on the holiday
club laptop and PlayStation. Children wrote down their names, the name/s
of their play partner/s, and the title of the game they wanted to play. This
schedule was also used later in the analysis of play patterns as discussed
in Pallitt (2013). Each “turn” on the play schedule was defined as a “play
episode”.
The majority of the children at the holiday club attended the boys’ school
where the holiday club took place The others attended coed, mainly private
schools. The holiday club’s organizers charged parents R130 (18.11 US dollars or 10.97 British pounds) per day. As a point of comparison, the median
monthly household income in South Africa in 2008 was only R760. The
group was thus economically privileged, disproportionally white, and generally from middle- to upper-middle-class suburban homes. Their parents
included doctors, lawyers, university lecturers, a professional photographer,
a graphic designer for a nation-wide restaurant franchise, business owners,
and consultants.
At home the children had easy access to gaming consoles, home computers, smartphones, and satellite television. More than half played on gaming
consoles as well as family computers. At the holiday club, the Nintendo Wii
and PlayStation 2 were the most popular platforms, along with computer
and Internet games. A few had a PlayStation 3 or Xbox at home. Handheld
consoles (PSP and Nintendo DS) also featured, with Nintendo DS a particular favorite among girls. In the South African context, the group’s easy
access to consumer electronics reflects their relative economic privilege.
Consequently, their experiences of digital gaming are quite different to
those of most South African children (Walton & Pallitt, 2012).
Digital Games, Gender Preferences, and Borderwork
Overall, the children’s play with digital games reproduced the genderseparated play they were accustomed to at largely single-sex schools. Boys
and girls preferred different game genres (see figure 7.1). Boys played many
genres, but preferred racing (especially Burnout Paradise and Need for Speed)
and action genres (Ratchet and Clank). Girls played a wide range of games,
including some action games (Bratz Rock Angels), but never played the racing
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40
27
18
12
9
10
10
8
0
Boys
Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls
Action
Racing
Karaoke
Sandbox
Other
Adventure
Figure 7.1
Play episodes by genre.
games on offer. They most often played Karaoke games (especially Disney
Sing It and Sing It Party Hits) or popular sandbox game The Sims 2. While
the term sandbox games is used within the gaming industry to refer to a
genre of digital games also known as “open world” games where players are
able to customize elements of the game world and create their own play, we
argue that all games are scripted sandboxes. Digital games are scripted systems but children also create their own social script during play.
Both boys and girls enjoyed Little Big Planet, another sandbox game,
which was one of the few games associated with cross-sex play at the holiday
club.
Digital games are particularly gender-polarized, and ludic gendering
encompasses media, narrative, and gameplay. Commercial children’s media
constructs a gendered market, and so it is not surprising that both children’s
gameplay preferences and their media-referenced play follow suit. As Carr
(2007) explains, distinctions in taste reflect both children’s prior access to
particular titles and gendered cultural practice. Digital gameplay also makes
its way back to the playground (Burn, 2013, 2014), where media references
to masculine figures, action, and combat featured centrally in boys’ playground games (Willett et al., 2013).
Playground researchers in the United Kingdom found that “avid players”
in particular had strongly gendered play preferences, with boys preferring
sports and play fighting, and girls preferring hula hoops, skipping, singing,
dancing, and clapping games (Willett, 2013a). At the holiday club, distinctly
gendered preferences for particular genres coexisted with considerable flexibility across genres for both boys and girls.
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Our findings also echo Pelletier’s (2007) findings in a game design project. Pelletier follows Butler (1990) in arguing that gendered representations
do not simply express subjectivity but perform gender and help bring it into
being. She found that games, infused with gendered associations, become
signifiers in boys’ and girls’ everyday performance of masculinity and femininity. Their game designs were part of this performance. We read the gendered play preferences at the holiday club in this way and also as tactical
responses to the gym-hall space.
Boys far outnumbered girls, and different games were available on the
laptop and PlayStation 3. As a result, two gendered spaces were defined in
the gym hall. First, a large group of boys clustered around the centrally situated PlayStation 3 around action, racing, and sandbox games. Second, a far
smaller group of girls clustered around the laptop in a corner, often playing
karaoke. This corner became defined as a “girls only” space. As a result,
boys’ play dominated the gym hall. Occasionally the boys also moved into
the girls’ only space and “hijacked” the girls’ gaming.
The gendered gaming spaces were not clearly demarcated, as, for example,
single-sex toilets might be. The spaces nonetheless sparked the kinds of interactions found on coed playgrounds, such as where boys disrupt girls’ clapping
games by parodic participation (Willett, 2013a). When boys approached their
area, the girls would often chase them away, telling them “Girls ONLY!” On
occasions when girls wanted to play Sing It Party Hits on the PlayStation 3,
they asked the organizers to take the boys for a swim or to send them to play
outside, claiming they were too shy to sing in front of the boys.
These invasions and exclusions can all be seen as examples of “borderwork” (Thorne, 1993) where the children construct or reaffirm gender
boundaries. Like other cross-sex interactions, they helped to define the
meaning of gender at the holiday club. It is worth speculating how a different spatial arrangement, different game titles, or the availability of additional consoles might have changed the dynamic.
The children’s gender tactics were not only spatial. Their selections of
particular game titles can thus be seen as a form of ludic borderwork, with
games defining gendered territories, particularly in the case of racing and
action games. The gendered imagery in the games, the fast-paced gameplay, and the boys’ playful interactions constituted a collective performance
that helped to signify a masculine-gendered zone around the PlayStation 3.
Ludic gendering worked by eliciting particular performances and advertising the play relationships on offer. Thus, the racing and most of the action
games signified “boys only,” while the karaoke and sandbox games invited
cross-sex play.
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Gender tactics thus also involved embodied social interactions and commentary. Another aspect of gender performance was the virtual gender tactics, where in-game actions and events were used to signify gender. Thus
ludic gendering involves a complex interplay between the gendered signifiers
on offer in games and children’s own gender performances during play.
Furthermore, both gendered game signifiers and children’s playscapes
are closely connected to social constructions of places of danger and times
of crisis. Burn (2014) makes the connection between children’s playscapes
and the “heterotopias” or transgressive real places of the adult world such as
ship, prison, or barracks (Foucault & Miskowiec, 1986). We argue that these
heterotopias are also gendered. These cultural asymmetries are significant in
that such places of danger or threat provide the settings and stories for many
digital games, fuelling military or science fiction fantasies that invert and
contest the rules of everyday reality.
If we go back to Caillois’s vignette of girls’ and boys’ imitative play, boys’
games and toys signify the importance of particular heterotopian dangers
and thrills for masculine identity performance. For Caillois, girls’ play was
replete with propriety, disconnected from “boyish” narratives and from
those other, more feminized and sexualized heterotopias that feature in
Foucault’s account—honeymoon, or brothel. By contrast, girls’ play choices
in this study suggest a broadening of options for feminine identities, as they
ranged into the spaces of adventure and danger while gravitating toward the
digital versions of rhythmic and singing games that traditionally constitute
girls’ playground preferences (Willett, 2013a).
As we go on to discuss, sexuality and romance also played a role in the
ludic gendering we observed, both as challenges to the single-sex borderwork customarily practiced by the group, and in their broader cultural significance as liminal social states.
Representing Relationships in Games
We present three play episodes from the holiday club to illustrate how children represent relationships and sexuality during gameplay. In the first
example, one of cross-sex play with Little Big Planet, children used the game
as a stage to perform a mock heterosexual marriage, extending playground
activities such as borderwork, and an interest in heterosexual interaction in
their digital play.
Another sequence of cross-sex play with The Sims 2 is used to explore
why the game evoked stigmatized associations of “girliness.” It also reveals
children’s negative responses to male Sim characters (known as Sims), whose
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masculinities deviate from the hypermasculine norm in the action games
popular with boys.
As we describe above, boys played The Sims 2 partly as a gesture of control of the girls’ territory. During cross-sex gameplay, much of the attention
of both boys and girls focused on policing masculinity.
We also consider an example of same-sex play with The Sims 2, where
the holiday club girls use the game to explore a ludic version of sexuality.
In this distinctly transgressive play episode, they try to make their Sims
“WooHoo,” or have sex. While kissing games and playing with heterosexual courtship rituals are popular forms of Western cross-sex play (Thorne,
1993), children playing at sex is considered taboo. Such play oversteps
the boundary between childhood and adulthood, in that access to sexual
knowledge is regarded as an important boundary marker between children
and adults (Jackson & Scott, 1999). Although sexualized performances are
seldom encountered in more regulated school playground spaces (Burn,
2014), the ethnographic archives of children’s playground culture do
reveal sexually explicit rhymes, jokes, and other such transgressive material
(Jopson, Burn, & Robinson, 2014).
A Vampire Wedding and a Skateboard Honeymoon
At the holiday club, children’s in-game play with sexuality and relationships
echoed other playground preoccupations. We present a vignette to illustrate
the role of digital gameplay in cross-sex borderwork associated with romance
and sexuality.
At one time at the holiday club, the children’s interest in weddings
peaked in response to playground tensions between girls and boys. At the
time, Tara (12 years old) had been reprimanded for pinching the boys in the
playground. Tara’s response, “Okay, I’ll kiss them next time,” is a reminder
that an interest in romantic narratives can be used by girls to activate gender
boundaries and thus constitutes a form of aggressive borderwork (Thorne,
1993), albeit one that is more socially acceptable than other, more physical
forms of aggression. Tara then initiated a kissing game with the boys, where
she would chase them and play-kiss them if she caught them.
This kissing game arose from Tara’s particular history of playground
interactions with boys at the club. The organizers told Nicola that, at every
holiday club, Tara staged a mock wedding. Every year, Tara “married” one
of the boys in a wedding ceremony where she took charge of the ritual. She
draped herself in a white cloth “veil” to mark her new status and would later
end the “marriage” by donning a black piece of cloth. During Nicola’s observations, Tara decided to stage another pretend wedding. This time she was
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to be “married” to Mark (12 years old). After the ritual, as the couple were
about to play-kiss in the playground, one of the boys threw a water balloon
at Tara’s face. Tara cried, and the wedding game was interrupted.
We can read this incident as the boys wresting control away from Tara by
disrupting the romantic narrative that she directed. Play with romantic rituals such as weddings or kissing are a distinct type of cross-sex playground
interaction (Thorne, 1993), but are also related to the family play discussed
by Willett (2013b). The boys’ disruption of the wedding script thus returned
them to their preferred mode of cross-sex interaction, enacting the kind of
borderwork that allowed boys to perform masculinity, by using physical
aggression to disrupt girls’ play and appropriate their space. After this disruption, the children nonetheless continued to be interested in romantic
play, extending both the wedding ritual and the mock aggressive borderwork into their digital gameplay with Little Big Planet.
In Little Big Planet, character models are gender-neutral “sackpeople,”
and gender is downplayed. Players can nonetheless customize their characters in various ways, and can add accessories to signify gender. The game’s
model of gender is particularly flexible in that hairstyles and choices of
clothing of “sackboys” and “sackgirls” became the primary gendered signifiers for children in the study.
After the playground wedding, Tara and Archie (9 years old) played Little
Big Planet together. Mark (12 years old), Tara’s former groom in the wedding
game, and Joey (8 years old) both watched and contributed to the gameplay
throughout. At one point, Mark instructed Archie to dress his sackperson
in a tuxedo. Initially, Archie resisted the older boy’s attempts to direct his
play, and chose a white fairy dress, perhaps jokingly signaling aggression by
transgressing gender norms. The assembled children all laughed, but Archie
eventually gave in to Mark and dressed his sackperson in the tuxedo.
The tuxedo prompted a suggestion from Joey that Archie and Tara’s characters should get married. Mark took control again, “Tara, go get dressed
in that wedding thing.” In response to Mark’s direction, Tara dressed her
sackperson in the white dress and Archie chose a little black hat for his character. Tara then added her own touch to the wedding ensemble by dressing
her character in a red cape. Mark argued that the red cape was unsuitable for
a bride, prompting Tara to find a wedding veil instead.
Here the children’s gender performance “cites” gender norms (Butler,
1990/1993), in that they use the game’s character customization options
to change the gender-neutral “blank page” of the game and inscribe it with
gendered meanings. In addition, Archie’s choice of the white dress suggests
it was important for the player’s sex to match the game character’s gender.
Archie’s choice was rejected without much discussion, and play settled into
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a normative gender dimorphism, with Tara cast as the bride and Archie the
groom. The group configured a heteronormative wedding couple in black
tuxedo and a black top hat, and a white wedding dress and veil respectively.
Thus despite the unspecified gender of the models and the children’s freedom within the game to customize the characters in any way they wanted,
they chose to represent a conventional “white wedding.” Their tableau nonetheless complicates Caillois’s (1961/1971) binary in several ways—the digital toy was designed with customizable gender, boys and girls were playing
together, and boys were briefly free to explore wedding and romance themes
in their play. Their gaming may have been gendered, but the relationship
between their mode of play, their self-understanding, and self-presentation
was neither predictable nor stable over time, a point argued by Pelletier
(2007) in her discussion of the UK game designs.
The children’s playful approach, the sackpeople’s unrealistic appearance
and incongruous details such as Tara’s red cape also sent up romantic conventions. An adult bride and groom made from sacks and controlled by
children constitutes a double-voiced (Bakhtin, 1981) parodic performance,
mimicking “the other,” in this case adults. The performance from one perspective is playfully aspirational, from another insulting.
The parody or Mark’s leadership stopped boys from resorting to the kind
of borderwork seen in the playground wedding. Instead Mark used his directorial role to shift the wedding from family play or romance to horror: “Now
you must become a vampire—make your teeth vampires.” Archie gave his
sackgroom a skeleton skin under his tuxedo. Joey protested the disrupted
family, “How can a human marry a skeleton?”
As Burn (2014) points out, horror taps into the gothic energies of
another heterotopia that intrigued Foucault, the cemetery. Linking wedding and grave, the vampire teeth and skeleton intensified the parody.
Without a parodic element, the wedding narrative might have been overly
associated with domesticity or girls’ culture. Instead, the vampire theme
linked to horror, one of the boys’ preferred game genres. Mark persisted
in orchestrating this heterotopic scene, assuring Joey that the skeleton suit
was appropriate for a “vampire wedding” and directing the reluctant Tara
and Archie to make the vampire sackpeople “hold hands,” as detailed in
transcript 1:
Mark: Wait—you hold L2, now you hold R2 and like make yourselves
look like you’re holding hands. Just do it.
[Archie hits Tara’s sackgirl instead, the children laugh.]
Mark: Just hold hands! I want to see what they look like. No, just do
it—move your hands down. Stop it Archie!
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[Archie makes his sackgroom run around in the background, he does not
want to hold hands with his sackbride. Joey hums the wedding march.
Archie gives in and comes closer and they try to make their hands
touch. Tara hits Archie’s sackboy and they all laugh.]
Mark: Don’t! I want to see what it looks like.
Archie: I don’t.
Mark: Now go close, now do it.
Joey: You may kiss the bride!
Mark: Go a little further away. There we go. [But Archie runs away.] No,
go in front of her, then she’s not able to hit you.
Transcript 1: Kiss or Hit the Bride? Tara, Archie, Mark,
and Joey Play Little Big Planet (Holiday Club, April 8, 2011)
Transcript 1 shows Mark’s struggle to maintain the directorial role in
the face of resistance from both Tara and Archie, who reasserted gender
boundaries, this time within the game space, just as the boys had earlier
disrupted Tara’s control of the playground “wedding.” The children resist
their allocated roles in Mark’s romantic vampire wedding tableau by hitting
one another’s characters and destroying the potentially romantic staging by
running across the screen. Mark, assisted by Joey, persisted, advising Archie
to use parallax and the game engine’s rules for combat to thwart his bride’s
aggression and simulate a romantic scene, “go in front of her, then she’s not
able to hit you.”
Soon afterward, the newly wed vampire couple completed the “Skateboard
Freefall” challenge, and Tara’s sackbride won first place. Archie said jokingly, “I don’t like you bride, why did you win?”
This episode illustrates the children’s pleasure in both establishing and
disrupting gendered performances and heteronormativity. It also suggests
the range of gender tactics they employ as they compete and collaborate
in the joint performance. The wedding tableau is a contested space as children resisted Mark’s attempts to control the “script.” Nonetheless, they all in
various ways tactically appropriate the central heteronormative script. The
power struggles of marriage are also suggested when Tara won the skateboard freefall level. When Archie said, “I don’t like you bride, why did you
win?” he may have been implicitly reprimanding Tara for stepping out of her
expected subservient place as “bride” in a patriarchal marriage and beating
him in the game.
Burn argues for a heterotopia of play where children’s games flow
between digital and physical playgrounds. He notes that the flow from firstperson shooter games to the playground is unidirectional in that children’s
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playground practices do not change the gameplay (Burn, 2014). He speculates that this is a potentially two-way influence and indeed this chapter
shows how cross-gender play in the sociodramatic family games and heterotopic honeymoons of the playground also extends into plots enacted in
“sandbox” or “dollhouse” games such as Little Big Planet.
Even the sandbox is scripted. In this example, despite the somatic neutrality of the sackpeople, the game subtly reinforces Western conventions
and heteronormativity. It encourages matching “bride” and “groom” identities through the “white wedding” outfits, and provides no resources for weddings from other traditions. Moreover, the ubiquitous availability of combat
mechanics (the hitting animation) allows children to disrupt the romance
genre as long as their sackperson is close enough to another character. This is
how Tara resists Mark’s appropriation of her romantic script and how Archie
reasserts his own control of the boy/girl boundary.
Hence ludic gendering can be seen to participate in broader social
processes whereby social relationships and semiotic resources interact to
orchestrate gender performances. Gender arises through socially contested
semiotic systems and power relationships, reminding us that somatic gender
performances (including those in games) are not only a matter of “choice”
or individual preference.
The more complex gendered architectures in The Sims 2 allow further
insights into the processes of ludic gendering.
Gendering and Normativity in The Sims 2
As a gendered artifact, The Sims 2 presented a complex nexus of potential
meanings for childhood and adulthood, masculinity and femininity, class,
work, family life, and sexuality. While acknowledging the broadly Western
and consumerist middle-class version of life configured by this dollhouse
game, our discussion focuses on meanings associated with gender, sexuality,
and the child/adult binary.
As we have seen, the sackpeople models in Little Big Planet are gender
neutral. By contrast, masculine and feminine identities are hard-coded into
The Sims 2. Apart from pregnancy, which requires separate models, adult
Sims are designed with dimorphic gendering—there are male and female
versions of “thin,” “fit,” and “fat” bodies, each with its own 3D model and
textures. Unlike clothing in everyday life or in Little Big Planet, an item of
Sims clothing is gender-flagged and cannot be worn by Sims of either gender. Despite the fact that the holiday club children enjoyed both transgressing and affirming gender boundaries through cross-dressing play, this was
not possible for them in The Sims 2.
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The Sims 2 is “Teen” rated because its ludic gendering simulates sexuality
and encourages forms of sexual play. The game stays within the boundaries
set by this rating by restricting explicit representation of nudity or sexual
activity through pixilation. Like dolls, Sims are not anatomically correct:
the meshes and textures only represent “barbie doll” genitals. Needless to
say, player-created nude patches can be installed to add missing details.
Simulated sexual and romantic interactions between Sims thus take place
in the context of these somatic and sartorial normativities. Nonetheless, in
this series, sexuality has always been treated somewhat counter-hegemonically. Although the initial version of the game (The Sims) did not allow
same-sex marriage, it departed from exclusively heteronormative narratives
of domestic life. All Sims were bisexual in that they were coded to be able
to enter into relationships with any other characters in the game, and recent
versions include same-sex marriage and a pre-made same-sex couple. In The
Sims 2, once Sims had a good relationship and were in a suitable setting,
they could WooHoo, which is the game’s euphemism for sex (symbolized by
fireworks and concealed by blankets or other furniture).1 After The Sims 2,
female Sims could become pregnant. WooHoo did not carry the risk of
pregnancy unless the player elected to “Try for a baby.” Male Sims could also
be impregnated, but this only happened rarely, as a result of alien abduction.
Needless to say, homophobia, child abuse, rape, prostitution, and disease
simply did not exist in this sexual system.2 The system both models and
diverges from the cultural norms and physical laws governing embodied
gender performance. As we will now illustrate, this ludic gendering of the
Sims sandbox provided a playspace for what Caillois (1961/2001) terms both
paidia (free improvisation) and ludus (rule-observance).
Playing with Masculinity
Although many boys enjoyed playing The Sims 2, and several reported playing it at home, it bore a feminine stigma. For example, Carl (11 years old)
said that, although he had a copy of The Sims 2 at home, it was “girly”. The
term girly is a form of verbal borderwork that broadly stigmatizes young
women and femininity. Carl might have used the word to index the game’s
domestic mise-en-scene or traditionally feminine gendered forms of play,
such as playing dolls and dress-up. The girly epithet might also have been
applied because the game was popular with girls, both in general, and at the
holiday club in particular. Spatially, play with The Sims 2 took place on the
girls’ side of the boy/girl boundary, signifying different things in boys’ and
girls’ performances of masculinity and femininity.
These publicly disparaging attitudes did not stop the boys from playing
or enjoying The Sims 2. They legitimated this play through borderwork, by
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claiming access to the girls’ play area. The boys’ preferred strategy for gaining access to the game was to wait for girls to select the game, and then to
intrude on the girls’ play turns. Legitimated by this borderwork, their pleasures often involved establishing a sense of masculinity before their peers, or
disrupting girls’ play through parodic participation.
Carl and the other boys gained considerable enjoyment from the
“dress-up” part of The Sims 2. In particular, boys enjoyed ridiculing the (in
their view) inadequately masculine Sim characters. For example, during one
play session, a group of three boys and two girls laughed hysterically while
customizing a male Sim. On this day, as often happened, the boys had interrupted the girls’ play turn. Maggie (10 years old) controlled the mouse, Carl
(11 years old) sat on her left, and Kathy (10 years old) sat to her right, with
Johan (9 years old) at her side. Mark (12 years old), Maggie’s brother, sat on
a chair behind them.
The boys commented on Maggie’s selection of outfits for her male Sim
(underwear, pajamas, swimwear, and sportswear). Carl remarked that one of
the pairs of pants looked like skinny jeans, and that boys do not wear skinny
jeans. He exclaimed, “These clothes are so gay!” A short while later, Maggie
was going through the swimwear options for the male character, when the
children’s comments suggested further ways in which he (and thus Maggie)
failed to perform idealized hypermasculine corporeality:
Carl: Swimwear! Speedos! Speedos! [he sees these as Maggie goes
through the list of options. Maggie clicks on the green Speedo and
the boys laugh. She then clicks on a blue pair, and then a blue and
orange pair.]
Maggie: He looks like a nerd.
Carl: Look at his butt! [Maggie chooses a black and orange pair, the boys
laugh again. She clicks on a blue and black pair in the same style.]
Johan: Joh! Another g-string!
Maggie: It like makes it look like a . . . [Maggie clicks on the red Speedo
and turns the Sim around, the boys giggle at the Sim looking at himself. Maggie clicks on the red and orange shorts.]
Mark: Aw. [Maggie goes to the sportswear and clicks the different color
tracksuits quickly.]
Transcript 2 (Holiday Club, April 7, 2011)
Carl’s direction for the other boys to look at the male Sim’s “butt” suggests that the boys were awkward about, but also enjoyed, the represented
male nudity. Maggie seemed to share the boys’ interest in stigmatized forms
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of masculinity and she played to their prejudices by lingering on certain
options and clicking through others quite quickly. She deliberately selected
options she knew would amuse them, and even rotated the Sim so that they
could laugh at his body. Maggie joined the boys’ game of policing masculinity, her word “nerd,” echoing (though perhaps softening) Carl’s dismissive
“gay.”
As discussed above, The Sims 2 provides a range of male body types,
but their undressed state and the thin-fit-fat models were not within the
boys’ preferred space of hypermasculinity. The “fit” models of the male Sims
(which resembled Ken dolls) were risible enough to be stigmatized as gay.
Perhaps the boys’ implicit comparison was between the nude, narcissistic,
metrosexual Sims and the heavily armored, heroically masculine bodies and
combative animations of hypermasculine “heavy heroes” (Burn & Schott,
2004) from combat games such as Call of Duty, and other teen- and adultrated titles, such as games from the Grand Theft Auto series. By comparison,
the domesticated middle-class Sims go to work rather than taking on heterotopian roles as soldiers or gangsters.
The boys may also have been “othering” the male Sim character to affirm
their own heterosexuality. Childhood Studies researchers, such as Epstein
(1998) and Ingraham (1994), have theorized compulsory heterosexuality in
schools where boys identified as feminine are often the targets of homophobic harassment. In this case, the male Sim cannot fight back, nor can his
feelings become hurt. Thus, the children may be exploiting the opportunity
to engage in a form of group teasing. Frank et al. (2003) argue that the
language of homophobia is part of children’s everyday lives. The term gay is
often applied to boys who play with girls, and is used to stigmatize anything
(behavior, clothing, or other objects) classified as undesirable by boys. Thus
even the limited metrosexuality possible in the dimorphic Sims universe
was judged too much, given boys’ comments about g-strings, speedos, and
skinny jeans.
Thus boys also used aggressive borderwork or homophobic comments
tactically to legitimate their access to the stigmatized and overly girly pleasures of the game. Such tactics might not be needed for similar play at home.
For girls, lesbianism seemed to have limited power to shock, with one group
of girls setting out to create a “lesbian family.” By contrast, the boys were
preoccupied with distancing themselves from anything perceived to be gay,
perhaps as a way of establishing a more secure position in a “homophobic
male culture” (Buckingham & Bragg, 2005). Girls are allowed more gender
flexibility than boys, as Willett and other scholars have pointed out, and it is
more risky for boys to cross gender “borders” than it is for girls (Willett et al.,
2013, pp. 47–48). The following example reveals how the ludic gendering
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of The Sims 2’s sexual system activated age and gender boundaries as well as
liminal pleasures.
“Make Them Woo-Hoo”: Girls Playing The Sims 2
By default, the girls chose to play with an interracial couple in The Sims 2.
In contrast to their interest in cross-dressing and consternation regarding
the gay male Sims, the skin color of the Sims seemed a nonsalient detail to
them. In this play episode, Maggie (10 years old), Tara (12 years old), and
Mandy (9 years old) played together, much as they usually did, focused on
the smaller laptop screen in the corner. They were also very secretive about
their gameplay: this episode is thus literally a “hidden transcript” (Scott,
1990).
They used the digital video camera on Nicola’s cell phone to record their
play, zooming in to focus on important details in the game. On one occasion, Maggie became very excited about two Sims, exclaiming “they like
each other!” (Holiday club, The Sims 2, April 7, 2011). Tara, the Sims expert
in the group, clicked on the male Sim, and paired him up with a female,
selecting “kiss” and then “smooch” from the menu of ludic love.3 The girls
enjoyed testing the various options for romance and intimacy between the
Sim characters, zooming in as Tara made the Sims kiss and then “make
out,” all the while distancing themselves with exclamations such as “gross,”
“weird,” and “ewww.” Tara then made the two Sims get into bed together,
and tried unsuccessfully to use the WooHoo command to make them have
sex. Impatiently, Mandy exclaimed, “Make them flippin WooHoo!” The
girls spent some time trying different strategies to see “how far they could
get,” with the ultimate goal of manipulating the game system to make the
Sims have sex. Tara eventually articulated the ludic gendering at work in
the game system, explaining to the others that the Sims did not “know each
other” well enough yet, not enough at any rate for them to WooHoo.4
The girls’ appropriation of The Sims 2 has continuities with family
role-play, dating games, and other sexual play documented in research on
children’s sexualities (Best, 1983; Renold, 2005). This can be framed developmentally, as a form of peer pedagogy. For example, Best (1983) describes
children’s sexual learning as a hidden curriculum that takes place away from
the watchful eyes of adults, arguing that children find ways to hide sexual
activities from adult surveillance.
At the same time, given the marked peculiarities of ludic sexuality in The
Sims 2, we could be asking how “educational” this curriculum really is. After
all, menu buttons and a strict economy govern Sims’ progress from romance
to WooHoo, which inevitably boosts the Sims’ moods. This has very limited
resemblance to human sexuality. Moreover, the sine qua non of WooHoo is
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a suitable setting; most often it requires the player to purchase specific items
of furniture in the game. Foucault and Miskowiec explain something they
call the crisis heterotopia (Foucault & Miskowiec, 1986), which provides a
temporary sacred or forbidden space for individuals in crisis. They give the
example of how, historically, the “honeymoon trip” provided a time and
place (or “no place”) for a woman’s deflowering (p. 4). Arguably, in The Sims
2, the accoutrements of suburban life and consumer fantasy, such as double
bed, hot tub, closet, cars, or elevators are the places where sexuality is sequestered, thus adding a class dimension to the game’s ludic gendering. This
middle-class setting also helps to explain why the differences in skin colors
of the children’s Sims couple went unremarked. Twenty-five years after bans
on interracial intimacy and marriage were lifted in South Africa, for this
group of privileged children at least, interracial sexuality has no stigma when
the whiteness of class privilege is inscribed everywhere in the environment.
The tactical dimensions of the girls’ sexual game are also worth exploring—
particularly the ways in which they signaled the exclusiveness of their play.
They covered the screen when the younger boys approached, shooing them
away, only allowing Tara’s older brother, Mark to view the make out session.
Applying this “age restriction” in their borderwork they sequestered their
own private heterotopic space, while signaling their maturity.
Conclusion
This chapter explores ludic gendering, or the ways in which children at play
with digital games perform gendered identities tactically in relation to one
another and in interaction with the resources available in digital games. As
other scholars have pointed out, these performances do not take place in
isolation, but are animated by the tensions and power of culturally significant heterotopias. We saw these heterotopias at work in Caillois’s original
formulation of the role of mimicry or pretend play. We have detailed some
of the gendered dimensions of the heterotopias, particularly as they influence girls’ play in contemporary society. Our study adds to other playground
studies of children’s play, and we have highlighted how, in the half-century
since Caillois’s sketch, the possibilities for gender-appropriate play for girls
have broadened dramatically, although their right to claim the space to play
can be threatened in cross-sex interaction. Despite the unsettling of gender
binaries, certain normativities remain tightly circumscribed, notably in relation to gender dimorphism and compulsory heterosexuality in the case of
the masculine identity play of the boys in this study.
By observing children negotiating gameplay together, we were also able
to develop insights into the gendered aspects of mimicry in children’s digital
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play. This involves a great deal more than the process of imitation or giving up the self to otherness as imagined by Caillois, and requires active,
tactical, and often transgressive forms of identity performance. The term
“gender tactics” has helped us to combine Butler’s (1990, 1993) notion of
gender performances, de Certeau’s (1984) distinction between the strategies
of the powerful and the tactics of the powerless, and Thorne’s (1993) concept of borderwork as it pertains to the tactics children use to activate gender
boundaries. We use this term to describe how children perform their gender
identities in tactical ways, playing with and negotiating their position in
relation to peers and the ludic systems that represent gender and sexuality. Here children perform gendered interpretations of particular game titles
that are themselves designed and marketed strategically to index and systematize particular gendered identities.
No less than in Caillois’s era, then, ludic gendering still involves negotiating a complex discursive and performative system of intersectional boundaries constituting masculine and feminine, adult and child, race and class, and
various sexual identities. In particular, we argue that the markedly masculine ludic gendering of action adventure games and racing games activates
powerful heterotopic energies. These connect with boys’ playground games
and relationships, occasionally also triggering the borderwork characteristic
of coed playgrounds. By contrast, spaces demarcated for exploring femininity assumed the form of crisis heterotopia, temporarily activated, hard to
reach, and sequestered from view amid the trappings of suburban life and
middle-class consumer fantasy in The Sims 2.
For the most part, the children’s gender tactics primarily reproduced
existing gender identities and power relations. Despite games also providing a space for transgression, this study confirms the importance of hypermasculinity and heteronormativity for this group of children, as additional
“sources of orderliness” (Hendricks, 2009), which interact with the ludic
systems regulating children’s digital activity. At the same time, if we compare the rich dynamics of the play episodes discussed above to Caillois’s
oversimplified picture of gender socialization, the complexity and historicity of gendering is apparent. For this reason we argue that games should be
considered as spaces of possibility for gendering, where children appropriate and negotiate the repertoires, discourses, and heterotopias of the adult
world.
Notes
1. Woohoo derived from the “playing in bed” interaction from The Sims Livin
Large, where it was an attribute of the vibrating heart double bed.
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2. This has not stopped fans from depicting all of these eventualities on YouTube.
3. Options included “peck,” “make out,” “smooch,” “up arms,” “tender,” and
“romantic.”
4. According to a popular guide, optimal Woohoo requires about “‘5 good dates’
at your house. (3 have dinner or lunch, 1 have fun.)” (Puppylove123, Sondra
C, Nicole Willson, & Maluniu, and 3 Others, n.d.).
References
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin, Texas:
University of Texas Press.
Best, R. (1983). We’ve all got scars: What girls and boys learn in elementary school.
Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Buckingham, D., & Bragg, S. (2005). Opting in to (and out of) childhood: Young
people, sex and the media. In J. Qvortrup (Ed.), Studies in modern childhood:
Society, agency, culture (pp. 59–78). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Burn, A. (2013). Computer games on the playground: Ludic systems, dramatized
narrative and virtual embodiment. In R. Willett, C. Richards, J. Marsh, A. Burn,
& J. Bishop (Eds.), Children, media and playground cultures: Ethnographic studies
of school playtimes (pp. 120–144). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Burn, A. (2014). Children’s playground games in the new media age. In A. Burn &
C. Richards (Eds.), Children’s games in the new media age (pp. 1–30). Farnham:
Ashgate.
Burn, A., & Richards, C. (2014). Children’s games in the new media age. Farnham:
Ashgate.
Burn, A., & Schott, G. (2004). Heavy hero or digital dummy: Multimodal playeravatar relations in FINAL FANTASY 7. Visual Communication, 3(2), 213–233.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. London:
Routledge.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex.” London:
Routledge.
Carr, D. (2007). Contexts, pleasures, and preferences: Girls playing computer
games. In S. Weber & S. Dixon (Eds.), Growing up online: Young people and digital technologies (pp. 151–160). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Caillois, R. (2001[1961]). Man, play and games. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press.
de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Epstein, D. (Ed.). (1998). Failing boys? Issues in gender and achievement. London:
Open University Press.
Foucault, M., & Miskowiec, J. (1986). Of other spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27.
Frank, B., Kehler, M., Lovell, T., & Davison, K. (2003). A tangle of trouble:
Boys, masculinity and schooling—future directions. Educational Review, 55(2),
119–133.
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Harrop-Allin, S. (2010). Recruiting learners’ musical games as resources for South
African music education: Using a Multiliteracies approach. PhD thesis, University
of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Retrieved from http://wiredspace.wits.
ac.za/handle/10539/8894?show=full
Hendricks, T. S. (2011). Caillois’s man, play and games: An appreciation and evaluation. American Journal of Play, 3(2), 157–185.
Ingraham, C. (1994). The heterosexual imaginary: Feminist sociology and theories
of gender. Sociological Theory, 12(2), 203–219.
Jackson, S., & Scott, S. (1999). Risk anxiety and the social construction of childhood. In D. Lupton (Ed.), Risk and sociocultural theory: New directions and perspectives, (pp. 86–107). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jopson, L., Burn, A., & Robinson, J. (2014). The Opie recordings: What’s left to be
heard? In A. Burn & C. Richards (Eds.), Children’s games in the new media age
(pp. 31–52). Farnham: Ashgate.
Marsh, J., & Bishop, J. (2013). Parody, homage and dramatic performances. In
R. Willett, C. Richards, J. Marsh, A. Burn, & J. Bishop (Eds.), Playground cultures: Ethnographic studies of school playtimes (pp. 196–212). Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Marsh, K. (2008). The musical playground: Global tradition and change in children’s
songs and games. New York: Oxford University Press.
Opie, I. A., & Opie, P. (1969). Children’s games in street and playground. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Pallitt, N. (2013). Gender identities at play: Children’s digital gaming in two settings in Cape Town. PhD thesis, University of Cape Town. Retrieved from http://
oatd.org/oatd/search?q=pallitt&form=basic
Pelletier, C. (2007). Producing gender in digital interactions: What young people
set out to achieve through computer game design. In S. Weber & S. Dixon (Eds.),
Growing up online: Young people and digital technologies (pp. 131–149). New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Puppylove123, Sondra C., Nicole Willson, & Maluniu and 3 Others. (n.d.). How
to fulfill a happy life on Sims 2 (for beginners): 30 Steps. Wikihow. Retrieved
July 17, 2014, from http://www.wikihow.com/Fulfill-a-Happy-Life-on-Sims-2(for-Beginners)
Renold, E. (2005). Girls, boys and junior sexualities. London: Falmer.
Richards, C. (2013). Agonistic scenarios. In R. Willett, C. Richards, J. Marsh, A.
Burn, & J. Bishop (Eds.), Playground cultures: Ethnographic studies of school playtimes (pp. 170–195). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Richards, C. (2014). Rough play, play fighting and surveillance: School playgrounds
as sites of dissonance, controversy and fun. In A. Burn & C. Richards (Eds.),
Children’s games in the new media age (pp. 85–109). Farnham: Ashgate.
Scott, J. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Sutton-Smith, B. (1997). The ambiguity of play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
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Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls and boys in school. Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Walton, M., & Pallitt, N. (2012). Grand theft South Africa: Games, literacy and
inequality in consumer childhoods. Language and Education, 26(4), 347–361.
Willett, R. (2007). Consuming fashion and producing meaning through online
paper dolls. In S. Weber & S. Dixon (Eds.), Growing up online: Young people and
digital technologies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Willett, R. (2013a). An overview of games and activities on two primary school
playgrounds. In R. Willett, C. Richards, J. Marsh, A. Burn, & J. Bishop
(Eds.), Playground cultures: Ethnographic studies of school playtimes (pp. 21–50).
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Willett, R. (2013b). Superheroes, naughty mums and witches: Pretend family play
among 7–10 year olds. In R. Willett, C. Richards, J. Marsh, A. Burn, & J. Bishop
(Eds.), Playground cultures: Ethnographic studies of school playtimes (pp. 145–169).
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Willett, R. (2014). Remixing children’s cultures: Media-referenced play on the playground. In A. Burn & C. Richards (Eds.), Children’s games in the new media age
(pp. 133–152). Farnham: Ashgate.
Willett, R., Richards, C., Marsh, J., Burn, A., & Bishop, J. (2013). Children, media
and playground cultures: Ethnographic studies of school playtimes. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Ludography
PC Games
Bratz: Rock Angelz. 2005. Mega Entertainment Inc.
Disney Sing It. 2009. Disney.
Need for Speed: Undercover. 2008. Electronic Arts.
Need for Speed: Pro Street. 2007. Electronic Arts.
The Sims 2. 2004. Electronic Arts.
PlayStation 3 Games
Burnout Paradise. 2007. Electronic Arts.
Disney Sing It: Party Hits. 2010. Disney.
Little Big Planet. 2008. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.
Ratchet and Clank: Tools of destruction. 2007. Sony Computer Entertainment
Europe.
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CHAPTER 8
The (Mis)Use of Community of
Practice: Delusion, Confusion, and
Instrumentalism in Educational
Technology Research
Michael Henderson
Introduction
It is not uncommon to find that educational technology publications are
undertheorized or uncritical of adopted frameworks. In many cases the literature is simply descriptive with only passing reference to an analytical or
theoretical construct. This condition is particularly evident in the use of
“community of practice” (CoP) in educational technology research. In these
studies, CoP is often erroneously used to describe both an aspirational state
of harmonious collaboration and an instrumentalist strategy to be enacted
upon learners to achieve externally defined goals, such as the rapid adoption
of technologies. The process of how CoPs form and function and the process of how CoPs achieve transformative change are usually underexamined.
Therefore, there is a substantial body of literature and a corresponding tradition of research that ignores or treats as peripheral the complex relationships
between technology, individuals, the collective, and a given sociocultural
context over time. A less generous commentator might even claim that, at
best, it reflects a dominant delusional ideology of education as a harmonious
enterprise and, at worst, a disingenuous or willful ignorance of factors such
as power relations, resistance, inequality, personal and socially negotiated
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histories and trajectories, and contested identities. This chapter explores
the possible reasons for, implications of, and future strategies regarding the
delusion, confusion, and instrumentalism of CoP in educational technology
research.
While this chapter specifically deals with the use of CoP in educational
technology research, it is symptomatic of the field in general. Indeed,
Selwyn (2012) argues that educational technology research is unhelpfully
Pollyannaish, and that we need to move from rhetoric to reality by producing accounts of the compromised and inconsistent realities of technology
use in education. In doing so, Selwyn calls for several actions, including
the need to reflect more accurately the complex social milieu of education
and technology, and resist the dumbing-down of theories. Selwyn’s call to
arms is taken up in this chapter. It is argued that CoP can be a valuable
theory in helping researchers to interrogate the social milieu, particularly
that of the educational workplace and professional learning settings (e.g.,
Brouwer, Brekelmans, Nieuwenhuis, & Simons, 2012; Henderson, 2007;
H. Hodkinson & P. Hodkinson, 2004; Hong & O, 2009). It is also contended that CoP has been so broadly and uncritically adopted in educational
technology literature that it has become a buzzword; almost meaningless
apart from the lingua franca understanding of its constituent words.
The implications of this are made all the more worrying by the popularity of the term CoP, as indicated in table 8.1. CoP is widely used across
Table 8.1 Search results for CoP in research literature
Database
Keywords
Google
Google Scholar
Community/ies of practice
Community of practice
Community of practice +
education
Community of practice +
education + technology/
online
Community/ies of practice
Community/ies of practice +
technology/online
ERIC (ProQuest)
A+ Education
(Informit)
community/ies of practice
community/ies of practice +
technology/online
Other criteria
Results
About 3,820,000
About 49,400
About 45,200
Published in
last 3 years
Published in
last 3 years
Published in
last 3 years
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About 39,100
About 13,500
2253
2049 (91%)
954
787
340 (43%)
81
The (Mis)Use of Community of Practice
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research disciplines including education (Koliba & Gajda, 2009). However,
as table 8.1 indicates, within education research, the term CoP is strongly
associated with educational technology. Thus it is argued that the “misuse”
of CoP is now a well-established part of the educational technology landscape and consequently there is a need to stand back to analyze the cause
and consider future strategies.
Accordingly, a literature review was conducted to identify the ways in
which CoP was being used and, in particular, the way in which the authors
have drawn on CoP in framing up their research, justifying their methodology, and interpreting their data. The literature review included 30 peerreviewed articles and 4 government reports published over three years in
2010–2012. The 30 articles consisted of the first 10 peer-reviewed articles
offered by three different scholarly databases (ERIC, A+ Education, and
Google Scholar) using the search terms of “CoP” and “education.” In addition, a search was conducted using Google to find publically available
government reports produced by Australian State and Federal education
departments that used CoP and related to educational policy, initiatives,
or curriculum and published in the last three years. The first 4 reports
were selected to provide an example of the use of CoP in the public sector. Of the resulting 34 sources, it is significant to note that 50 percent
(16 articles and 1 government report) specifically focussed on educational
technology.
The analysis of the literature was guided by several questions. First,
what was the heritage of the use of CoP in the source, and in particular,
were explicit links to theory made? Second, was the use of CoP consistent
with that heritage? Third, how did the article treat sociocultural contexts
and learning, for instance, did it silence or overly simplify the complex
nature of sociocultural practices? As a result of the literature review, three
areas of misuse along with causes and implications, have been identified.
First, CoP is often interpreted as a synonym for “community,” with arguably unhelpful connotations of harmony and purpose, and thereby used
to reinforce implicit values, if not hidden agendas, rather than engage in
critical research of the sociocultural context and processes. Second, the
fragmented and contested theoretical landscape of CoP has resulted in
a confusion of language, concepts, and processes that has weakened the
overall validity of research findings. Third, the complex concepts within
the original conceptualization of CoP as a critical framework of sociocultural interactions are understandably resistant to instrumentalism which,
particularly in the context of intervention-based research, necessarily
results in the oversimplification and uncritical application of concepts.
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Delusion: CoP—A Synonym for Community
Community of Practice is frequently confused with, or used as a synonym
for, an untheorized notion of community. In the analysis of 30 peer-reviewed
articles and 4 government reports, 35 percent (n = 12) applied CoP without
useful reference to the theory and clearly equated it with a romanticized
vision of community colonized by an arguably delusional ideology of home,
harmony, homogeneity, regeneration, innovation, and unified purpose. The
(mis)use of CoP as a synonym for romantic notions of community ignores
the messy reality of situated learning and the significant value of CoP as
an analytical framework to understand that reality. Worryingly, this small
sample seems to be indicative of the way in which CoP is applied elsewhere
in the educational technology field.
Indeed, there appears to be a general consensus in the research literature
that there is 1) a positive connection between community, new media, and
education, including workplace and professional learning; 2) no uniformity
in the way in which community is described; and 3) no clear explanation
of its role or the process by which it is apparently instrumental in the production of positive outcomes (APEC Education Forum, 1999; Dede, Breit,
Ketekhut, McCloskey, & Whitehouse, 2005; Downes et al., 2001; Johnson,
2001; Roberts, 2006; Rovai, 2002; Wallace, 2003). The term community
has been popularized and often applied to any identifiable group, especially
those on the Internet, such as “learning community,” “online community,”
and “gaming community.” Even a decade ago, Grossman, Wineburg, and
Woolworth (2001) questioned the value of the term, claiming “it is clear that
community has become an obligatory appendage to every educational innovation” (p. 942). Similarly, Brown (1999) pointed out that “Community is quite
possibly the most over-used word in the Net industry . . . The term has been
diluted and debased to describe even the most tenuous connections, the most
minimal interactivity” (p. 3). Despite the intervening years, the situation has
not improved (for discussion, see Samaras, Freese, Kosnik, & Beck, 2008;
Stuckey, 2007; Westheimer, 2008). As Amin and Roberts (2008) note, there
is now a body of literature with such lack of specificity about CoP, partly
due to the “careless use of the word community” (p. 355) that our ability to
analyze or even distinguish situated practice is severely limited.
At the heart of the problem is that community is an appealing concept
and that the phrase community of practice stirs the imagination even without reading the theory. Indeed, the choice of using the word community in
CoP has received some criticism since it has such strong positive overtones
(for discussion, see Brown & Duguid, 2001; Cox, 2005). Samaras et al.
(2008) explain that “the notion of community is a conceptually appealing,
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one because it suggests a comfortable, socially supportive context” (p. xvi).
However, this appeal is rarely made explicit. Instead, community is used
without critical consideration of the values such a choice implies, let alone
the implications as to how that choice influences the success criteria of an
educational initiative. For instance, Wallace (2003) noted in a review of
the CoP literature that while there was no common definition of community it is most often used to connote collaboration and thereby promotes a
simplistic idea of how people engage with each other over time. It is therefore of great concern that Westheimer’s (2000) warning a decade ago that
“Virtually everyone is in favor of community, and in this head-nodding
agreement lies the obfuscation of consequences that come from ideological
choices” (p. 102), continues to ring true.
The romanticized notion of community permeates the research and other
literature dealing with CoP and educational technology. It has strayed far
from its origins as a theory of situated learning (Amin & Roberts, 2008) in
which members “are connected by more than their ostensible tasks [and] are
bound by intricate, socially constructed webs of belief, which are essential to
understanding what they do” (Brown, Collins, & Duguid 1989, p. 34). In this
sense, CoP originates in Lave and Wenger’s research in the 1980s on situated
learning, and detailed in their subsequent book, Situated learning: Legitimate
peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991). However it was not until
Wenger’s 1998 book, Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity, that the construct of CoP was developed in greater depth. Drawing on
this foundational thinking, striking contrasts can be immediately seen with
the delusional ideology of harmonious enterprise that seeps into so much of
the literature. For instance, instead of harmony or homogeneity in member
participation, a community’s practices can be aggressive, competitive, and
emotionally detached and yet they can find a way to be cohesive (Wenger,
1998). Similarly, instead of the assumptions made in professional and academic publications that CoP implies a state of regeneration, innovation, purpose, and reflexivity, a truer reading of CoP would recognize that it is as
much about the power of the status quo as it is about evolution of practice.
Clearly this means that studies that use CoP as a synonym and thereby do not
take time to explore the richness of the negotiated social activity and knowledge construction risk undermining the validity of their findings.
Confusion: Fragmented Theoretical Landscape of CoP
It is not surprising that there is a fractured theoretical landscape. Not
only does the original 1998 conceptualization of CoP contend with commonsensical notions and appeal of the word community—and the word
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practice, which connotes “doing” rather than “being”—but also has to
contend with criticisms of being too abstract and consequently too difficult to operationalize (Storberg-Walker, 2008). Therefore, educators and
educational researchers, especially those who are interested in innovation
or change, seek simpler formulations that they can implement or research.
This (mis)use has also contributed to the ongoing debate over whether CoP
is a theory, framework, or analytical tool (Koliba & Gajda, 2009). The
application of CoP has been extended to encompass new meanings that
were not part of Lave and Wenger’s (1991) original ideas (Amin & Roberts,
2008; Mittendorff, Geijsel, Hoeve, de Laat, & Nieuwenhuis, 2006).
The most obvious and problematic example of this is Wenger’s own
participation in the reframing of CoP as a structural model for leveraging organizational knowledge (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002).
This application of a social learning theory to business management has
caused some researchers to question the validity of CoP as a useable construct (Wallace, 2003) while causing other researchers to confuse the later
work as simply a further refinement of Wenger’s 1998 framework (Andrew,
Tolson, & Ferguson, 2008; Cremers & Valkenburg, 2008; Guldberg
& Mackness, 2009; Klein & Connell, 2008; Kopcha, 2010; LiaBraaten,
Rustin, & Sullivan, 2004). However, other researchers (Amin & Roberts,
2008; Berntsen, Munkvold, & Østerlie, 2004; Contu & Willmott, 2003;
Cox, 2005; Fernando, 2008; Thorpe, 2003), including myself (Henderson,
2004, 2006, 2007, 2008; Henderson & Bradey, 2008), contend that these
variations should be carefully considered as separate frameworks or theories
of social activity. Cox (2005) succinctly asserted that Wenger et al.’s (2002)
conceptualization of CoP “is genuinely a different concept from that proposed in [Wenger, 1998], not just a change of tone or position; it is simply a
different idea” (p. 534). Indeed, they have similarities, as do all discussions
of community, but their conceptualization of process and agency are significantly different.
In essence, the 2002 structural model has recast the CoP theory from
being about situated learning as a sociocultural process to CoP as a product of organizational structure and agency (for lengthy comparisons of the
1991, 1998, and 2002 conceptualizations of CoP, see Amin & Roberts,
2006; Cox, 2005). Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder (2002) propose that
their structural model allows the cultivation of communities of practice as
a means to managing organizational knowledge. It was specifically devised
as a guide to managing knowledge. Indeed, the book’s jacket states that
“communities of practice can be leveraged to drive overall company strategy,
generate new business opportunities, tie personal development to corporate
goals, transfer best practices, and recruit and retain top talent” (Wenger
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et al., 2002). The text even offers a formula by which managers can calculate the return on investment in CoP strategies in monetary terms. Despite
the apparent difference between the two main conceptions of CoP, there
continues to be confusion within the research literature with a bleeding of
ideas between the two.
The fractured nature of the CoP theoretical landscape, and the resulting
confusion, is illustrated in table 8.2, an analysis of 30 peer-reviewed articles
and 4 government reports published in the past 3 years. While all 34 documents stated that they used CoP, only 16 of them were clearly grounded in
a reading of the theoretical literature (albeit, superficially in some cases) and
did not confuse the 1998 conceptualization of the theory with the work in
2002. However, 6 of the 34 used concepts from both conceptualizations,
treating them as the same theory without acknowledgement of the potential
conflict. In addition, 12 used the term CoP and occasionally some keywords
from the 1998 or 2002 works, but clearly drew on a variety of conceptualizations of CoP stated or implied that are not justified by either theory.
Lindkvist (2005) and Handley, Sturdy, Fincham, and Clark (2006)
agreed that the phrase is continuing to evolve and the ambiguity is problematic. Consequently, the research literature is “hardly coherent” (Lindkvist,
2005, p. 1191). Nevertheless, Roberts (2006) predicted that “Over the coming years, as communities of practice are applied and studied in an increasing number of organization contexts, we will gain a deeper understanding
of the strengths and weaknesses of the approach” (p. 637). However, this
prediction continues to be unrealized due to two reasons. First, the majority
of research appears to be illustrating the existence of a CoP, or naïvely attributing outcomes to an assumed CoP, rather than rigorously investigating its
process (for discussion, see P. Hodkinson & H. Hodkinson, 2004; Johnson,
2001; Koliba & Gajda, 2009; Wallace, 2003). Second, the lack of theoretical
Table 8.2
Theoretical foundations of CoP literature
Theoretical foundation of
the paper or report
Education with no
technology focus
Educational
technology research
Total
Lave & Wenger, 1991;
Wenger, 1998
Wenger et al., 2002
Both frameworks 1998
and 2002
None
Total
6
9
15 (44%)
1
3
–
3
1 (3%)
6 (18%)
7
17
5
17
12 (35%)
34
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rigor in the research literature, particularly the careless use of stated or
implied conceptualizations of CoP, undermines any trust researchers can
place in the findings, and thereby limits its usefulness in terms of further
developing the theoretical construct. An example of this is the research by
Mittendorff et al. (2006) who embarked on a promising research project to
develop a framework by which we could better identify CoP characteristics
within different groups. Unfortunately, in their exposition of how they built
their research tool, they confuse Wenger’s 1998 framework as the combination of domain, community, and practice, which wholly belong to the
CoP structural model of Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder (2002). Until the
research literature begins to focus more on the process (and not just proving
instrumentalist success) and is more rigorous in the way in which the term
CoP is applied, the research findings will continue to be suspect.
Instrumentalism: Fitting the Theory to a Strategy for Change
There is a strong drive for instrumentalism, especially in the field of educational technology. Thus it is not surprising that CoP is frequently applied as
a strategy to cause desirable outcomes, such as the rapid adoption of technology. An analysis of the 34 documents provides some indication of this, in
which 79 percent (n = 27, 23 articles, 4 reports) applied CoP as an instrumentalist strategy to achieve institutional or professional learning goals.
This included 8 of the 15 articles grounded in the 1998 conceptualization.
However, the complex, and arguably embryonic, concepts within the 1998
conceptualization of CoP resist operationalization (Herrington & Oliver,
2000), resulting in oversimplified applications.
For instance, Handley et al. (2006) argued that the terms participation
and practice are particularly ambiguous and seem to overlap in their meaning. They pointed out that, according to Wenger’s (1998) application, participation can occur at any time and that it is not something that members
can turn off simply because, for example, they go home at the end of the
day. Similarly, practice is not only the thing that members do but also the
ways in which they understand what they do. Consequently, Handley et al.
(2006) argued that practice should be redefined as simply “activity,” while
participation should be considered “meaningful activity” (p. 651). They
argued that this makes the theory easier to operationalize. However, it is
also apparent that Handley et al. (2006) are addressing the theory from
an organizational management perspective where it is desirable to have
easily measurable (observable) outcomes to management interventions.
This approach silences critical concepts within the theory. For instance,
from a CoP (Wenger, 1998) perspective, knowledge is not a transferable
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symbolic representation of reality but, instead is “provisional, mediated
and socially-constructed” (Handley et al., 2006, p. 642). Consequently,
unlike some learning theories, CoP describes a situation where learning,
knowing, meaning, and the social world cannot be separated (Wenger,
1998) and cannot be simply interpreted or understood through observed
activity. Mittendorff et al. (2006) point out that CoP involves a process of
informal or implicit learning and consequently “results in tacit knowledge,
which is context specific, personal and difficult to communicate” (p. 299).
Although this makes CoP difficult to operationalize, it is also one of its
strengths, in that it explains why tacit knowledge resists being codified
and transferred (Handley et al., 2006; Mittendorff et al., 2006; Roberts,
2006). This simplified focus on activity shifts the attention from underlying processes of how codified, tacit, and embodied knowledge is acquired,
and thereby also limits the findings of any such work since the relationship
between the observable activity and the context or intervention cannot be
fully understood.
Community of Practice is frequently described as an intentional product
in the educational technology literature. However, for those studies adopting
CoP (1998) such a conclusion needs to be treated cautiously, having often
been drawn from an oversimplified notion of CoP driven by instrumentalist needs. According to Wenger (1998), practice is not a result of design
but a response to design. This means that, while a set of procedures can be
imposed by the institution, the practices surrounding those procedures are
a result of negotiated meaning by the community members. By assuming
that a CoP can be created and that it will pursue the externally driven goals,
researchers and practitioners necessarily ignore critical issues of negotiated
meaning, personal histories, and trajectories. The richness of the learning
environment is lost, and so too is the ability to more robustly explain the
process under enquiry. Instead, these studies and innovations should recognize that if they adopt a CoP (1998) theoretical stance, they cannot design
the learning but can design for an environment that will either facilitate or
frustrate emergent practices and identity (Wenger, 1998). According to CoP
(1998), the community, and therefore learning, cannot be designed, created,
and controlled.
The CoP structural model (Wenger et al., 2002), while appreciably more
accessible or “operationalizable,” risks the oversimplification of sociocultural processes involved in the ongoing negotiation of identity and practice. It focuses on CoP as a means by which organizational knowledge can
be managed. It dramatically simplifies the role of identity and the way in
which members negotiate their practices. In achieving a managerial guide,
it renders CoP down to an asset that can be leveraged without consideration
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of the deeply complex, sociocultural processes in which the members are
situated. For instance, Wenger, et al. (2002) argued that in order to overcome differences we need to achieve stakeholder alignment. First, I propose
that the managerial reference to members as “stakeholders” marginalizes the
focus of CoP as a sociocultural process. Second, according to Wenger (1998)
alignment is a mode of belonging where members’ identities are invested
in the community enterprise; this is a transformative process. However,
Wenger et al. (2002) suggest that stakeholder alignment is accomplished
by “engaging all players” and eliminating “barriers” (p. 124). Clearly, the
managerial role is to direct and shape activity and consequently, from a CoP
(1998) perspective, marginalizing the community members’ agency with the
potential risk of overlooking rich interactions of members negotiating practice. Although the 2002 structural model does consider CoP to be complex
and emergent, it also purposely limits itself to a simplified representation, in
particular that of business management of organizational knowledge.
CoP (Wenger, 1998) offers us a potentially valuable lens by which to
understand the complexity of situated learning within the larger social
milieu. However, Amin and Roberts (2008) noted:
The original emphasis on context, process, social interaction, material
practices, ambiguity, disagreement—in short the frequently idiosyncratic
and always performative nature of learning—is being lost to formulaic
distillations of the workings of CoPs and instrumentalist applications
seeking to maximize learning and knowing though CoPs. (p. 354)
Duguid (2008) and Lave (2008), early pioneers of CoP, both express concern about the implications of the instrumentalist approach. The complexity of situated learning is overlooked and the value of the research is
undermined.
Conclusion
The misuse of CoP is deeply entrenched and has such momentum in the
educational technology literature that there is little point in trying to sanction or prescribe one particular conceptualization. Cox (2005) came to the
same conclusion with respect to the way in which CoP has been used in
relation to management and organization literature. However, like Cox, I do
not believe the theory should be discarded. Instead, its validity is dependent
on researchers taking greater care in defining the theoretical foundation
being applied. Researchers need to be sensitive to the delusion of romanticized notions of community that have permeated the field. They also need
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to recognize the confusion within the literature as a result of the fractured
theoretical landscape, primarily represented by the 1998 and 2002 conceptualizations. All of these have implications for the design and analysis of
data that must adhere rigorously to a single framework of CoP. This also
means that findings should only be qualified by research literature founded
on the same theoretical basis. Finally, researchers also need to be critical of
interventionist interpretations. Any design that tries to cultivate a CoP needs
to be considered critically, with explicit elaboration of how the research conceptualizes the link between CoP and social activity. The concept of CoP
needs to be problematized rather than simplified.
References
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learning. A paper prepared for EU network of excellence dynamics of institutions and markets in Europe (DIME). From www.dime-eu.org/files/active/0/
Amin_Roberts.pdf
Amin, A., & Roberts, J. (2008). Knowing in action: Beyond communities of practice. Research Policy, 37(2), 353–369.
Andrew, N., Tolson, D., & Ferguson, D. (2008). Building on Wenger: Communities
of practice in nursing. Nurse Education Today, 28(2), 246–252.
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analysis of issues and trends in seven APEC economies. Singapore: Asia-Pacific
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Berntsen, K., Munkvold, G., & Østerlie, T. (2004). Community of practice versus practice of the community: Knowing in collaborative work. Paper presented
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Brouwer, P., Brekelmans, M., Nieuwenhuis, L., & Simons, R.-J. (2012). Communities
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Brown, J. (1999). There goes the neighbourhood. http://archive.salon.com/21st/
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Brown, J., & Duguid, P. (2001). Knowledge organization: A social practice perspective. Organization Science, 12(2), 198–213.
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learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32–42.
Contu, A., & Willmott, H. (2003). Reembedding situatedness: The importance of
power relations in learning theory. Organisational Science, 14(3), 283–296.
Cox, A. (2005). What are communities of practice? A comparative review of four
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Cremers, P. H. M., & Valkenburg, R. C. (2008). Teaching and learning about communities of practice in higher education. In C. Kimble, P. Hildreth, & I. Bourdon
(Eds.), Communities of practice: Creating learning environments for educators
(vol. 1) (pp. 333–354). North Carolina: Information Age Publishing.
Dede, C., Breit, L., Ketekhut, D. J., McCloskey, E., & Whitehouse, P. (2005). An
overview of current findings from empirical research on online teacher professional
development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Downes, T., Fluck, A., Gibbons, P., Leonard, R., Matthews, C., Oliver, R. et al.
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Duguid, P. (2008). Community of practice then and now. In A. Amin & J. Roberts
(Eds.), Community, economic creativity, and organisation (pp. 1–10). Oxford:
Fernando, A. (2008). From student to teacher: Using the theory of communities of
practice to understand and improve the process of pre-service teacher transition.
(Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Monash University, Australia.
Grossman, P., Wineburg, S., & Woolworth, S. (2001). Toward a theory of teacher
community. Teachers College Record, 103(6), 942–1012.
Guldberg, K., & Mackness, J. (2009). Foundations of communities of practice:
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Handley, K., Sturdy, A., Fincham, R., & Clark, T. (2006). Within and beyond communities of practice: Making sense of learning through participation, identity
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Henderson, M. (2004). Sustaining the professional development of teachers
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Henderson, M. (2006). Fostering community cohesion to sustain small scale online
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9–15.
Henderson, M. (2007). Sustaining online teacher professional development through
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Henderson, M. (2008). Relationships are more important than content: Designing
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Herrington, J., & Oliver, R. (2000). An instructional design framework for authentic learning environments. Educational Technology, Research and Development,
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Hodkinson, H., & Hodkinson, P. (2004). Rethinking the concept of community of
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Hodkinson, P., & Hodkinson, H. (2004). A constructive critique of communities of
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Johnson, C. (2001). A survey of current research on online communities of practice.
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Klein, J. H., & Connell, N. A. D. (2008). The identification and cultivation of appropriate communities of practice in higher education. In C. Kimble, P. Hildreth,
& I. Bourdon (Eds.), Communities of practice: Creating learning environments for
educators (vol. 1) (pp. 65–81). North Carolina: Information Age Publishing.
Koliba, C., & Gajda, R. (2009). “Communities of Practice” as an analytical construct: Implications for theory and practice. International Journal of Public
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Kopcha, T. J. (2010). A systems-based approach to technology integration using
mentoring and communities of practice. Educational Technology Research &
Development, 58(2), 175–190. doi: 10.1007/s11423–008–9095–4
Lave, J. (2008). Situated learning and changing practice. In A. Amin & J. Roberts
(Eds.), Community, economic creativity, and organisation (pp. 283–296). Oxford:
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
LiaBraaten, L., Rustin, J., & Sullivan, N. (2004). Communities of practice: A primer
for educators. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University.
Lindkvist, L. (2005). Knowledge communities and knowledge collectivities: A
typology of knoweldge work in groups. Journal of Management Review, 42(6),
1189–1210.
Mittendorff, K., Geijsel, F., Hoeve, A., de Laat, M., & Nieuwenhuis, L. (2006).
Communities of practice as stimulating forces for collective learning. Journal of
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Roberts, J. (2006). Limits to communities of practice. Journal of Management
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Rovai, A. (2002). Development of an instrument to measure classroom community.
Internet and Higher Education, 5(3), 197–211.
Samaras, A. P., Freese, A. R., Kosnik, C., & Beck, C. (Eds.). (2008). Learning communities in practice. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Selwyn N. (2012). Ten suggestions for improving academic research in education and technology. Learning, Media and Technology, 37(3), 213–219. doi:
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Storberg-Walker, J. (2008). Wenger’s communities of practice revisited: A (failed?)
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Stuckey, B. (2007). Growing online community: Core conditions to support successful development of community in Internet-mediated communities of practice. (Unpublished PhD thesis). Wollongong: University of Wollongong.
Thorpe, M. (2003). A report on the concept of communities of practice and its applicability to NCSL’s networked communities. Milton Keynes: Open University.
Wallace, R. (2003). Online learning in higher education: A review of research
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Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity.
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Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
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CHAPTER 9
Researching with Heart in Ed-Tech:
What Opportunities Does the
Socially Indeterminate Character of
Technological Artifacts Open up
for Affirming Emergent and
Marginalized Practices?
Julianne Lynch
Introduction
In this chapter I draw upon theoretical concepts broadly consistent with a
sociocultural view of technology to discuss a series of observations about
emergent digital practices and school learning, and to raise implications for
ed-tech research. Specifically, I seek to claim some space for—and to argue
the merit of—“close-up” studies of the actual (Selwyn, 2010): studies that
seek to document the diversity of doings that comprise technology use by
young people in and out of school. Three main arguments are made:
1. Conceptualizing technology as indeterminate provides more sophisticated and more generative lenses for seeing new technologies and
emergent practices than do more naturalized understandings of technologies as already-completed-things that can be known independent
of the context of use.
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2. Stories play an important role in what meaning we make from the use
of technological artifacts in educational settings, serving as agents in
what we authorize as valuable and what we see as possible. This is as
true for the stories produced by researchers as it is for stories told by
those teachers, parents, and students who participate in our research.
3. “Close-up” studies (Trowler, 2012) of marginalized practices can
provide alternative accounts to those that take an authorized center
as their starting point, thus affirming emergent practices and troubling tacit assumptions about schooling and the roles of educational
research.
First, I introduce the concept of technological indeterminacy and the
related notion of recontextualization. In this section I also own some of my
own biases and preferences in terms of research foci and research agendas,
drawing on the writings of de Certeau in a deliberate effort to focus on
positions and practices that operate in the margins. I then introduce the
role of stories within de Certeau’s theoretical project—their role as data that
reveals the practical politics of technology use, and their advocacy role as
both research participants and researchers seek to produce effects in the
world. Second, I provide a series of examples of technology use, drawn variously from formal research projects, informal observations, and secondary
sources. These examples are discussed in terms of the stories they might
support and the politics of those stories, with a view to arguing that some
tellings are more generative than others. In the final section, I raise implications for ed-tech research, arguing that ontologies based on indeterminacy
can support research agendas that move beyond the limitations of representational thinking by seeking to promote opportunities for educational
transformation.
Conceptualizing Technology as Indeterminate
The field of ed-tech research has been criticized for a predominance of studies that fail to adequately engage with the socially constructed nature of
technology (Selwyn, 2010) and that instead rely on and propagate narrow,
naïve, and misleading conceptions of technology (Bigum, 2012). Such studies often focus on the effects of technology on learning. Bigum (2012) reflects
that, “as each wave of ICTs has been taken up in formal education settings it
has been followed by a raft of studies that set out to examine improvements
and effects” (p. 20). Similarly, Selwyn (2010) describes a dominance of “an
(often abstracted) interest in the processes of how people can learn with digital technology . . . and [with] the design, development and implementation of
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‘effective’ learning technologies” (p. 66). Elsewhere (Lynch, 2006), I have
expanded upon this argument and provide a critique of “effect” studies that
treat technology as an already-made thing that is known without reference
to the context of use and which will have some determinable effect on the
learning of students. This emphasis on the learning effects of technology
emerges in a broader social science research context influenced by a privileging of what Trowler (2012) characterizes as the hypothetico-deductive tradition, where studies have as their goal the development of predictive theories:
“in Z conditions, if X happens then Y will follow” (p. 274). Such studies
are premised on deterministic views of technology; so, in Z conditions, if X
technology is introduced then Y will follow.
Although the influence of the hypothetico-deductive tradition in the
social sciences has been subject to academic critique for numerous decades
because it serves the status quo in education, stifles innovation, and serves
majority thinking (and majority groups) (Trowler, 2012), desires for predictive theories still dominate both popular and professional discourses of technology and schooling and are still a salient feature of mainstream ed-tech
research. Within education research, the desire to develop predictive theories goes hand-in-hand with a desire to build technicized understandings
of best practice (Trowler, 2012), thus serving neoliberal agendas of school
reform and school effectiveness (Anyon, 2009; Connell, 2009; Davies,
2003; Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2009). When we see technology
as indeterminate—as subject to ongoing material, semantic, and symbolic
negotiations—the pursuit of predictive theories of linear effects becomes as
nonsensical as the pursuit of a suite of teaching techniques that will ensure
improved learning outcomes.
The notion of technological indeterminacy can be found in numerous
theoretical traditions.1 I wish to revisit this concept and the related idea
that technology usage necessitates a recontextualization of the technological artifact—a neverending process through which the technology comes
to be. I have selected these particular concepts for focus here because of
the emancipatory possibilities that such a conception of technology offers:
seeing technology as essentially indeterminate positions users of technology as powerful shapers of technology. It is a view that is intentionally
provocative, throwing up a challenge to more naturalized views of technology as an already-complete product and of users as passive consumers
or receivers of technology (Lynch, 2003). I am particularly influenced by
the writing of de Certeau (1974, 1984) who deliberately sought to document sources of alterity found in everyday practice and in doing so privileged the agency of users, and challenged the producer-user dichotomy
(Ahearne, 1995).
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In everyday language, technology usually refers to material artifacts or
machines and, sometimes, to techniques. In this chapter, broadly consistent
with a sociocultural view, I use the term technology to refer to more than
the material elements of a tool (cognitive or material), machine, or a technique; technology is a purposeful endeavor and, therefore, it always has a
social aspect. It is the social aspect that makes a particular technical artifact
meaningful and that supports arguments that the meaning of technology is
always multiple, is always socially negotiated, and always involves relations
of power. Instead of seeing technology as an already-made product, the
concept of technological indeterminacy holds the meaning of a technological artifact to be relational, subject to continual negotiation and renegotiation. From this perspective, usage always involves a recontextualization,
where the materiality, intentionality, and micro-politics of a particular context of use inscribe the technological artifact as it emerges as a technology
in/through use. In his analysis of everyday practice, de Certeau’s (1984)
notion of “re-use” (p. 30) emphasizes the agency of users and “the secondary production hidden in the process of . . . utilization” (p. xiii), where users
of cultural artifacts appropriate them for their own diverse (and often divergent) purposes. Thus, the meanings of cultural artifacts, including those
we might popularly refer to as technologies, are destabilized; their meaning
is essentially indeterminate prior to the inscription of meaning through
usage.
If technology is essentially, by definition, indeterminate, then, I can
describe the features of a device—its dimensions, the materials it is made
of, the functions it affords (within the limits of my own imaginings or as
intended by the designer), but I cannot, in an abstract sense, describe its
meaning as a technology until it is contextualized, embedded within a larger
assemblage of objects, processes, intentions, impacts, and (of course) power
relations, and even then its meaning will be multiple and unstable. A particular manifestation of a technology may in fact be a fleeting phenomenon,
glanced momentarily over the shoulder of a teenager as she uses her smart
phone under her desk in a math lesson to plan her evening. Once the phone
is confiscated by the teacher and placed on a desk at the front of the room, it
sits there—the same device—but not as the same technology. It is now part
of an assemblage of consequences, a broader technology of control, serving different purposes all together, though possibly revealing the same set
of power relations, disrupted momentarily, but now reinstated. In his discussion of de Certeau’s writings, Ahearne (1995) characterized de Certeau’s
conception of texts (in our case, technological artifacts) as having “a peculiar
in-between status”: they only exist for users “in the act of appropriation, and
yet this act alters [them]” (p. 173).
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Numerous theorists have put to work concepts and terminology in order
to describe the indeterminate character of technology. Because of my interest
in “close up” studies of surreptitious and/or marginalized practices, and my
belief that the propagation and circulation of ideas and stories can make a
difference in the “reconstruction” of the world (Trowler, 2012), I’m attracted
to de Certeau’s (1984) conception of this type of recontextualization as an
underground consumption that sees consumers inscribing products with
their own agendas:
It seems possible to consider these products no longer merely as data on
the basis of which statistical tabulations of their circulation can be drawn
up or the economic functions of their diffusion understood, but also as
parts of the repertory with which users carry out operations of their own.
(p. 31)
This understanding of “products” and of consumption offers the potential
for positioning student- and teacher-consumers as innovators who opportunistically make products part of their own repertoire for action. The stories
recounted in this chapter provide examples of this type of production.
If we accept a degree of technological indeterminacy, then how a given
technological artifact might manifest is largely dependent on how it is storied into existence. In terms of the politics of technology use, this indeterminacy is a double-edged sword; it opens up the potential for user-generated
innovation, but it also brings with it the risk that (re)contextualization will
result in a “domestication” (Cuban, 1986) or “schooling” (cf. Illich, 1971) of
technology, bringing with it familiar power relations and patterns of success.
And maybe both are true and more, and that the degree of user-generated
innovation is in part a function of the stories that are told that unearth
it and make it visible. My own biases are apparent in the phrasing used
here: the schooling of technology is described as a “risk”; subversion as an
“opportunity.” Underpinning the arguments made in this chapter are my
own personal and professional history, biases, and agendas. These biases
include an interest in teaching and learning practices that empower young
people to be active authors of their own lives and agents in their own learning; that position students as sources of expertise and producers (rather than
consumers) of knowledge; and that are based upon or build upon authentic
links between the world of school and young people’s lives outside of school.
In addition, consistent with this interest, is a desire to undertake research
that supports teachers and schools in these types of agendas, particularly
with regard to traditionally marginalized and disadvantaged students. In
his discussion of the role of theory in research, Trowler (2012) identifies the
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approach to research that I am adopting here as the theory-as-emancipatory
perspective within which research and theorizing is seen as a political act,
where “the world is constructed and reconstructed through theory” (p. 277).
There is a synergy between such perspectives and the research work supported by what Thrift (2008) refers to as non-representational theories, de
Certeau’s project being an example of this, where research “can’t be measured in terms of its descriptive realism but should be judged in terms of
its ability to generate new possibilities in an encounter with the ordinary”
(Highmore, 2006, p. 17). This is research work that seeks to tell generative
stories of the particular, rather than to produce generalizable theories.
“Storying” Marginalised Practices
The notion of story is central to the arguments made in this chapter. In the
sections that follow, I present a series of stories, and I also discuss research
as a type of story-telling. For de Certeau, stories are understood as playing both a determining and a revelatory role in everyday practice, with the
determining role understood to be primary. Stories are productive, not representational in that they do not provide access to the real but enact a discursive production. In his writing about the relationship between theory and
practice, de Certeau (1984) argued:
In narration, it is no longer a question of approaching a “reality” (a technical operation, etc.) as closely as possible and making the text acceptable through the “real” that it exhibits. On the contrary, narrated history
creates a fictional space. It moves away from the “real” . . . it makes a hit
(“coup”) far more than it describes one . . . it produces effects, not objects.
(p. 79)
Stories produce notional boundaries of practice by “authoriz[ing] the establishment, displacement or transcendence of limits” (p. 123); they reveal the
perceived limits of practice as well as moments when limits are crossed and
reset.
So what are the connections between the productive role of stories,
technological indeterminacy, and the work of ed-tech researchers? The
answer to this question is at least two-fold. Close-up research that seeks
to investigate the micro-level happenings of educational technology necessarily draws on stories that are contrived as data—often a combination of stories constructed based on direct observation by the researcher
and those provided by research participants (teachers, students, parents).
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At a meta-level, as researchers, our analysis and reporting processes construct stories of the practices that are being researched. This is true of all
research, but is particularly apparent in research writing that focuses on
everyday practices as embodied, relational undertakings that are contextualized in place and time, where researchers self-consciously represent
their work as a particular telling of these practices.
So story telling is central to this type of work, as both a data source and
as an output. It is through stories that the recontextualization of technological artifacts—their realization in place and time as technologies—is
discursively produced. From the point of view of research that seeks to
challenge the status quo in schools and to support change, stories provide
insights into what is constructed as the limits of practice, as well as to
moments in time when those limits are challenged or crossed, when new
possibilities are imagined, and when new limits are negotiated. And at the
meta-level, the research stories we produce through the dissemination of
“findings” potentially produce effects in the “field” of ed-tech research by
bringing attention to and effectively amplifying the significance of innovations that are other to practices authorized by convention or by institutionalized expectations and requirements.
Three Stories: Affirming Marginalized Practices
In this section I provide a series of stories, each of which are discussed in
terms of the different ways that emergent (often marginalized and sometimes vilified) practices are discursively constructed. I examine them for
how the limits of authorized practice are produced, and for the telling of
moments when these limits are crossed. In doing this, I seek to affirm the
generative possibilities found within these stories in terms of founding a
space for recognizing the innovative work that often characterizes technology use. As emphasized in de Certeau’s work on everyday practice, the
types of practices that are foregrounded in this chapter are marginal in that
they are not ordained by the center, but they are not unusual or minority
practices—they may be minority in status, but they are major in their proliferation. The stories told here point to common everyday work that has
been normalized within some/many communities but which continues to be
constructed as marginal to the proper business of schooling. The examples
include observations of young children using iPads in unsettling ways in
their homes; a teacher realizing the challenge that new technoliteracies pose
to the established order in early years literacy education; and a school student’s neglected account of a micro-level innovation within an iPad app.
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Kids Using iPads: The Politics of Appropriation
and (Re)Deployment
In 2011, my twin sons each received a first generation Apple iPad for their
sixth birthday. I was charged with preparing the iPads, so downloaded a
range of apps, including a number of gamified early literacy and numeracy
apps—designated educational through their categorization in the Apple
App Store—as well as a number of doodling/drawing/art apps, a construction app, and some interactive books. I had expected the gamified literacy
and numeracy apps to be popular: they are produced to be suited to, and
to appeal to, children of this age. However, I was surprised to observe that
the bulk of these children’s time on the iPads was actually spent producing
their own “content” and saving it in the photo stream by taking a screen
shot (in fact, they showed very little interest at all in the “educational”
apps). Instead, they showed an unprompted interest in “making stuff,” and
in no time at all, and with no support beyond being shown how to save
an image of the screen, they were moving their products from app to app
in order to manipulate them and to take further screen shots. In less than
three months, I counted 788 images on one of the iPads, all user-generated
works of art and other visual constructions or snapshots of activities or
work in progress; the second iPad housed a similar number. Figure 9.1
shows one of these creations, an image first created in JellyDoodle™ (the
image of a heart, covered in candies, on a black background) and then
taken into FaceGoo™ where the image was pinched to create the distortion in what was originally a rectangular image, and the sunglasses were
added.
There are a number of things of interest here: first, the gap between
imagined use (my own as a parent) and actual use. I realize now that my
initial actions in preparing the iPads are similar to those I have observed in
teachers of children of this age whose first point of call for preparing classroom iPads for their students is to look for content; and the content that is
most obviously suitable for “educational” purposes are those that support
the learning of skills that are center stage of the early years classroom—
print-based literacy skills. I also realize that my initial actions were a feeble
attempt to be a good parent, and even at the time of writing (17 months
later), aware of the marvelous things that children can do with iPads and
of all the unintended, previously unimagined learning that has taken place,
I still have a nagging need to limit “screen time” and to try to direct their
usage toward some apps and away from others, based on my conception of
relative educative value, which is heavily influenced by “schooled” notions
of learning and learners.
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iPad artwork: Heart with candies and sunglasses.
A further area of parental concern was the way my children treated the
devices. Consider the photo shown in figure 9.2.
This photo shows how one of my children decorated the surface of the
iPad with faux jewels and a sticker. My first reaction as a parent charged
with guiding my children’s behavior was to doubt the wisdom of these decorations. To me, the iPad is “top-shelf” technology—it’s costly and it needs
to be treated with special care. To my son, it was yet another surface, no
different from other possessions that have been marked in this way. Given
the opportunity, users will make technological artifacts their own. Is this an
enculturation, a win for consumerism where the artifact becomes a fashion
accessory, or is this an appropriation and redeployment by an agentic young
person as he shapes his world, effectively a reinscription and assertion of
ownership or even authorship? Or is it both, and does it matter if it is both?
The image of the decorated iPad is evocative of earlier images. In her
study of the Minitel—a video-text system piloted in homes in Norway
in the 1990s—Berg (1994) noted how women were concerned about the
appearance of the device and how well (or not) it would blend with the
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Colonization of iPad exterior by a seven-year-old boy.
aesthetics and décor of their homes, and that they made use of the Minitel in
unintended (by the designers) ways to gather information about their neighbors. Instead of using this new technology in the way that was intended,
the women in Berg’s study adapted it to fit with their own needs and agendas. Berg describes how women’s use of the Minitel was constructed by the
designers as deviant and in derogatory terms.
Both the diamanté iPad and the Minitel serve as examples of a particular
type of consumption. Each story contains an authoritative and disapproving
character—the parent and the designer respectively, yet the users recruit the
technological artifacts to their own desires and use them as sites of negotiation of their own roles, identities, and territories (the “clandestine” (re)use
that de Certeau describes as characterizing everyday practice).
If we view technology as indeterminate and focus on (re)use and on what
young people do do with technology, then the stories that emerge are quite
different than those driven by a view of what ought to or might happen,
and their politics is different. Stories of (re)use foreground the creativity
and innovation of users and position them as producers of technology. In
both examples, rather than the technological artifact being a deliverer of
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content, it is objectified and becomes a product of the users’ desires. This
type of usage can be seen in all manner of contexts, particularly when the
affordances of the material artifact are such that the device can be put to
work in support of diverse projects. In fact, creative (re)use is arguably one of
the defining features of new forms of cultural production (Lessig, 2012) and
mobile learning (Pachler, Bachmair, & Cook, 2010). This can be seen both
in the innovative ways that users put to work technological artifacts and in
the ways they work with content, appropriating and redeploying it to create
new cultural products.
My children proved themselves capable well beyond my expectations
in terms of their facility with the iPads and their self-initiated innovation.
It is not uncommon for young people’s capabilities to be underestimated.
They are certainly underestimated by the formal curriculum documents
that define desired performance standards with information and communication technology (ICT). Both of my sons’ mid-year school reports
that came home in 2011 note in the area of ICT that these children are
“becoming more familiar with icons on the computer desktop.” Perhaps I
should not have been surprised about either: 1) my children’s interest in,
and facility with, the creation of stuff, or 2) their school reports’ failure
to recognize their abilities and interests. On the first point, multimedia
production, innovation, and improvisation are found (as they are with all
young children) in their play outside of the iPads in the nondigital world
(my distinction; not theirs). This sort of play is well documented in the
research literature on early childhood, as are the “cross-overs” (Edwards
et al., this volume) between traditional play objects and digital objects. For
example, O’Mara and Laidlaw (2011), observing their own children’s play,
describe play scenarios where the children assemble digital and nondigital
objects in innovative ways, noting that “the boundaries between ‘physical’
and ‘virtual’ blur with all play objects” (p. 150), and Davidson (2009), also
observing children’s use of technology in their own homes, notes how they
move seamlessly between media, modes, and channels, both traditional and
digital. Mavers (2007) frames this type of play as “semiotic resourcefulness”
and notes the un-school-likeness of young children’s “domestic literacy.” Each
of these authors note the challenge that such observations pose to formal
education practices and the opportunities offered.
However, despite this evidence of even very young children’s innovative
capacities with digital media, schooled notions of suitable and appropriate
behaviors and learnings have an extremely strong influence, and within
the framework of possibilities that governs the assessment and reporting
of learning in schools, there appears to be little space for recognizing these
capacities. If we use conservative curriculum frameworks as our starting
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points for storying children’s technology use, the stories told then risk
being contained by such frameworks, such that we fail to recognize and
then neglect to foreground and propagate the transformational opportunities. De Certeau’s theorizing invites us to start on the ground with what
people actually do and with the stories they tell about their practices. In
the story I have relayed above, there is discursive work apparent in the setting and the transgression of limits that raises questions about what does
(and what does not and perhaps ought to) count as “educational”; what
does (and does not) count as “appropriate use”; and about what does (and
does not) count as a meritorious learning outcome. Limits are also apparent in my attempts to codify iPad practices through terms like screen time
that fail to tell of the heterogeneity of these practices, and through the
distinction between digital and nondigital that belie the complex, relational, hybrid nature of technology use. These discursive limits point to
the authorized spaces that revolve around children’s use of iPads, and the
stories of transgression of these limits point to (and perform) possibilities
for storying new spaces.
Teachers and Students with iPads: Colliding
Constructions of “Literacy and Technology”
The previous section focused on observations of out-of-school technology
use by young children. In this section, I relay some observations made in a
school context with the same age group.
From 2010 to 2012, a colleague Terri Redpath and I had the opportunity to observe, and inquire of, how iPads were being used in a preparatory
(prep) classroom in a small school in rural Victoria, Australia. From a view
of technological indeterminacy, the iPads manifested in diverse ways—as a
surface for practicing print-based literacy skills; as an interactive book; as a
medium for surreptitious game play; as a toolbox for creating multimedia
products; and as a channel where products can be shared and communities
formed. Of particular interest to us, as teacher educators, was a story told
from the teacher’s (Monique) point of view of her efforts (sometimes successful, sometimes not) to recruit the iPads to her own interest in creating
a particular type of learning environment and particular types of learner
identities in her students. This story is told in detail elsewhere (Lynch &
Redpath, 2014) but is revisited briefly here in support of the arguments
being made—that the meaning of technology is always multiple; that different stories can emerge about the same technological artifact, or about the
same episode of usage; and that stories (“real” and imagined) have “real”
influence on imagined and sought possibilities.
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Monique explained to us on several occasions that her goals for teaching included supporting her students to become self-directed learners who
move seamlessly and as needed between media, modes, channels, and tools
as they practice and build upon their literacy skills. Across 2010 and 2011,
we documented some of Monique’s classroom practice—together with her
reported views and those of her prep students—with a focus on how iPads
were being used in the classroom. The story told in Lynch and Redpath
(2014) is one of Monique’s initial frustration at the limited ways she and
her students were using the devices (as an interactive space for practicing
print-based literacy skills and as a library of interactive books that served
as stimulus for a follow-up writing and comprehension exercise), and then
one of triumph where a learning activity is documented that has some
of the characteristics that Monique aspires toward in her teaching. The
learning activity involved students in the production of “alphabet books,”
where they each designed and created a number of images using a drawing app called Doodle Buddy™, then they each brought their images into
another app—Sonic Pics™—where they recorded voice-overs (matching
initial sounds with the drawn images) as they moved from image to image.
Each alphabet book was then exported as a movie to a YouTube channel from which it was shared with others, both within and outside the
school.
Mavers (2007), in her study of the home literacy practices of a six-yearold child, makes the distinction between becoming literate and being literate,
where much of the literacy work that children undertake in schools is about
becoming literate and developing skills that might be used for real in some
imagined future. In Monique’s reflections on the alphabet book activity, she
stresses that the learning focus of the activity from her point of view “wasn’t
about the sounds and the letters” but about enabling her students to create
and communicate a product and to realize the power that they have: “they’re
learning that they can do something and then show the world. At the start
they probably though it was about the sounds, but I think, now that they’ve
finished it, they’re sort of starting to think more about the applications that
they used and the power of it.”
In an interview with one of Monique’s students, he explains that the
alphabet book that he made could be used by other children to help them
to learn their blends (my word) and sounds. There was a focus in the activity on purposive meaning making (“technology as a medium for meaningmaking” [Burnett, 2010, p. 254]), rather than on learning decontextualized
skills in isolation or rehearsals for future meaningful contexts. The work
done with the iPads resulted in a product that held meaning for the producer and that was audienced in personally significant ways, and is therefore
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more about participation in a media culture than it is about preparation of
students for some imagined literate future.
Numerous stories could be generated in order to recount Monique’s practices in relation to the iPads. From the point of view of expectations around
the prescribed literacy block (Ohi, 2008), Monique’s initial use of the iPads
for practicing print-based literacy skills would be seen as consistent with best
practice, where the iPad is put to work as a “deliverer of literacy” (Burnett,
2010, p. 254). This version of the story would construct Monique as a “good
teacher” within contemporary discourses of teacher competency (Connell,
2009)—as a technician who functions as a conduit of ordained skills, and
would position the students as receivers of knowledge. This version would
relay the story that I briefly recounted (reconstructed) above as one of
degeneration, a divergence from the core business of schooling. In interview,
Monique demonstrated an awareness of this other story, “I did it in a reading
group time, so I pretty much—instead of doing guided reading—which was
a bit naughty—I used that time to show them the video I made that had the
instructions on how to do it.” Monique then went on to justify the activity
against traditional literacy goals, pointing out that it was indeed “a comprehension activity” and “a procedural text.” There are at least two ways to read
Monique’s justification. This other story, never actually told, can be seen as
a shadow on Monique’s reflections on a learning activity that was successful by its own standards but that does not align well with institutionalized
expectations. Alternatively, it can be read as an appropriation of authorized
discourses (about types of texts and types of literacy activities) and a (re)
deployment of institutionalized terms in the service of her own personal and
professional desire to position students as users of literacy, and as producers
of knowledge, who have a voice within communities of their own construction. This story (and the stories in it) points to teacher compliance and to
notions of literacy and appropriate literacy pedagogy as limits of authorized
practice. However, the redeployments (of resources, of class time) that cross
these limits suggest new possibilities for conceiving of teacher practice where
it is both compliant and innovative, where it both meets the requirements
of the authorized curriculum and enriches teacher and student learning by
crossing into new territories and allowing these to speak back to institutionalized practice and institutionalized notions of literacy.
A Clever Bit of My Brain: User-Generated Contexts and
New Forms of Cultural Participation
The story of Monique is also a story of the iPads that manifested in numerous ways in this particular classroom. I have referred to the iPad as a
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deliverer of literacy (after Burnett, 2010). Some iPad apps are more closed
than others (Lynch & Redpath, 2014), in that they are designed to deliver a
particular content or a particular experience. Within early years education,
this sort of app is typified by the gamified literacy app (e.g., reD Writing™,
Pocket Phonics™, and the ABC Reading Eggs™ mobile apps) noted here
and earlier in relation to my own children’s iPads. Closed literacy apps are
designed to guide users through activities that support the rehearsal of
print-based skills at increasing levels of difficulty, with the user rewarded
with tokens of achievement (digital stickers, chimes, points, cheers, certificates) for each success. This type of app is quite distinct in terms of design
from those that are intended to support the creation of a user-generated
product—an artwork, a photo story, or some other multimedia product
(e.g., apps such as Sonic Pics™ referred to earlier, Puppet Pals™, Art Set™,
Eden World Maker™). The closed apps are intended to stand-alone—their
architecture is such that an ideal user is imagined as staying within the
pathways defined by the app. Open apps are those that more obviously
lend themselves to usage that moves across numerous apps, platforms, and
networks (as seen with the alphabet books and in the artwork shown in
figure 9.1), depending on the needs of the production process. Within each
of these broad categories, we see variations of “openness” and “closedness”
represented by particular apps. In addition, there are other categories of
apps that can be analyzed in terms of the degree to which they are intended
to predefine user behaviors and the degree to which they are intended to
promote user choice, such as interactive books that offer differing degrees
of interactivity and of choice.
However, the concept of technological indeterminacy and de Certeau’s
conceptualization of everyday practice suggest that these built-in affordances can be subject to (re)use that are counter to what was intended in the
design. Pachler et al. (2010) argue that new media cultures, supported by the
convergence and ubiquity of mobile devices, challenge traditional notions of
audience and consumption, replacing them with participation and production, such that content is always fodder for further creation:
The relationship between producers and users of artefacts is becoming
increasingly blurred and the relationship of the user with the cultural
artefacts they engage with in the process of knowledge production is frequently one of re-use underpinned by a fundamentally different attitude
towards text as open, instead of fixed, and subject to constant modification, as well as text as comprising different modalities to be (re)contextualised according to specific situational requirements. (Pachler et al.,
2010, p. 12)
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And within this culture, production too has new meanings and evidences
new literacies, “favouring selection, ‘capture’ and transformation rather than
‘production from scratch’” (Pachler et al., 2010, p. 191). This is the culture
of remix, “where people participate in the creation and re-creation of their
culture” (Lessig, 2012) and, within this culture, closed environments like
those I have referred to above are open to counterplay (Apperley, 2010). In
the case of the iPad, the ability to capture a screen shot that can be brought
into another app, transformed, reused, recontextualized, and circulated
amongst a community generated by the user-producer means that all apps
are potentially available for appropriation and redeployment in the service
of any number of yet unimagined purposes. Even the most static ebook
or the most prescriptive game sequence can be excerpted from its original/
intended context, animated, annotated, and re-audienced with ease. Such
productions are supported by new literacies, known as transliteracy (Ipri,
2010; Thomas et al., 2007) or technofluency that include skills and dispositions that even very young children make their own very quickly, such as
moving between media, tools and platforms that combine traditional and
emergent literacy practices.
These types of complex media performances can be found in any classroom where children are given space and time to work with digital media, but
they are not always seen and are seldom the focus of stories about children’s
technology use in schools because they fall outside of the net of assessment
and reporting regimes. Even in a context where meaning making and innovation are explicitly valued, child-initiated innovation can be overlooked.
One of Monique’s students (Jack) was interviewed by the school principal
(Monique filmed the interview with her iPhone) about his alphabet book.
In the interview, the principal invites Jack to show his movie, to explain how
it works, and questions him about who might be able to view the movie on
YouTube and who might be able to use it and for what. This questioning is
intended to (and does) scaffold a celebration of the Jack’s accomplishment,
and a recognition that he has made something truly valuable. However,
even with this good intention, the interviewer fails to see this child’s userinitiated innovation. Jack tries to tell a story of innovation at the micro level,
his (re)use of one of the tools found within one of the apps. Told with much
excitement as an aside to an answer to one of the principal’s questions, Jack
explains how he used the eraser tool within the Doodle Buddy app to create
a letter “g” using negative space—“See I did coloring [child gestures coloring
action] all blue and then I used the rubber to rub out the shape of a ‘g’ [child
gesturing shape of ‘g’] . . . that was a clever bit of my brain.” In this story, Jack
is an innovator who is aware that his use is counter to the norm and he takes
pleasure in this knowledge. These stories, told in a moment, can so easily be
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overlooked because, although they sit within the field of an authorized activity (e.g., the learning activity as understood by the principal, and the tools
of the app as usually understood and used), they do not follow its rules. De
Certeau referred to this everyday innovation as “a creative swarm”:
Bubbling out of swamps and bogs, a thousand flashes at once scintillate and are extinguished all over the surface of a society. In the official
imaginary, they are noted only as exceptions or marginal events . . . In
reality, creation is a disseminated proliferation. It swarms and throbs.
A polymorphous carnival infiltrates everywhere. (de Certeau, 1974,
pp. 139–140)
Practice stories can provide access to the already present—but not yet
authorized—innovations that characterize everyday doings. De Certeau’s
work foregrounds everyday innovation as opposed to capital “I” innovation,
providing a basis for foregrounding stories of marginalized practices. Such
stories allow us to see practices—that to some may appear to be mere pockets of minor mischief (as misuse, as “off task”)—as potentially auguring a
new world order, where remix, and conscious and owned reuse, becomes a
new norm: no longer the exception but the intent. This supports the conceptualization of innovation, not as a scarce, costly, and definitive product, but as a common (everyday and everywhere) and ethereal practice that
characterizes everyday cultural operations (de Certeau, 1974). The everyday innovations that characterize young people’s technology use—as illustrated by the example of Jack—are ever-present but not seen; they operate
“below the thresholds at which visibility begins” (de Certeau, 1984, p. 93),
obscured by the authorial view from above that tries to shape practices and
outcomes (e.g., the view framed by a formal curriculum framework, or the
standpoint of a parent or a teacher or a developer, seller, or patron of iPad
apps). It is only through close attention to the story told by Jack that the
significance of his practices (his redeployment of the eraser tool)—and his
celebration of a moment of transgression/innovation (“the clever bit of my
brain”)—emerge.
Conclusion: Researching with Heart in Ed-Tech
In this chapter, I have embraced the notion of technological indeterminacy
as a theoretical device that can be used to promote and to help realize the
possibility that teachers and students can and often will do things differently. I argue that the construction and circulation of “stories” has an important role to play in the transformation of schooling through the production
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of counternarratives that affirm user-generated innovation. The three stories
told above are intended to serve as examples of tellings that affirm microlevel innovation while also exploring some of their politics in relation to
authorized and emergent practices. I have suggested that the types of practices described and discussed are no longer clandestine, quiet activities, but
constitute a less marginal and more public assertion, where users exercise
and claim power through the products they appropriate, objectify, and then
redeploy for their own purposes and in their own names. These new learnings and new learner identities are not deviations from a norm as there is no
norm. They have become as ubiquitous as the tools that support them, even
in the most marginalized communities (e.g., Rogers & Winters, 2010). This
is the story I wish to promote. And, although I cannot determine the effects
of this telling, I am hopeful that it will contribute to an emerging message
that there is a subsequent risk of schools becoming technologically irrelevant
if they proceed as if unaffected by such practices. Schools are not closed
platforms; they are part of a heterogeneous network and it is impossible to
keep indeterminacy out.
The way we conceive of technology has implications for the type of
research that we do and therefore what our research allows us to see and to
enact. I have advocated a conception of technology as indeterminate, and of
usage as necessarily a recontextualization that involves appropriations and
situation-specific (re)deployments. The recontextualization of technological
artifacts often results in a “domestication” of technology, where conventionalized practices, and institutionalized structures and processes that emanate
from an authorized center, define the types of uses that are ordained and
counted as the proper work of schools (Bigum, 2012). I argue here for a
proliferation of centers that emanate from the standpoint of users, and that
is obscured if our frame of reference emanates from elsewhere. I argue—
following de Certeau’s conceptualization of everyday practice—that technologies have been/are/will be “domesticated” but they will also be subject
to everyday user-initiated innovation. Both of these things happen, with the
latter being much more difficult for researchers to know. Close-up studies
of actual usage, and research writing that seeks to illuminate everywhereall-the-time innovation despite its marginal status, are critical if we are to
build new understandings of practice in an ed-tech field that is fraught with
the assumptions, agendas, and rhetorics of powerful stakeholders. There
are inherent risks in such a project, particularly for academic researchers
who seek to progress student-centered change agendas, but who write from
materially and institutionally privileged positions that are removed from the
practices being told. Indeed, there is a risk that my own tellings might (and
likely do) erase stories of alterity that I am unable (or unwilling) to witness.
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This is an inescapable bind of authorship that is only partially mitigated
(forgiven?) by explicit researcher reflexivity.
These issues concern both the ontological (how we conceptualize what
technology and technology use is) and the epistemological projects of educational research (what types of knowledge effects we seek to have). Studies
that seek to develop predictive theories through the implementation of pseudo-scientific designs are at risk of failing to attend to practices that might
inform change, and of failing to tell stories that might perform change.
There is a place for (and a need for) studies that seek to amplify moments
when ed-tech practices move outside of authorized practice, and that seek to
authorize such moments for their potential to speak back to the status quo
in schools. In this way, rather than seeking to construct a true representation of what is going on, the research story seeks to “[open] up a legitimate
theatre for practical actions” (de Certeau, 1984, p. 125, original emphasis).
Note
1. Including social semiotics as discussed by Nelson, Marple, & Hull and by Bigum
and Rowan in this volume.
References
Ahearne, J. (1995). Michel de Certeau: Interpretation and its other. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Anyon, J. (2009). Introduction: Critical social theory, educational research and
intellectual agency. In J. Anyon (Ed.), Theory and educational research: Toward
critical social explanation (pp. vii-ix). New York: Routledge.
Apperley, T. (2010). Gaming rhythms: Play and counterplay from the situated to the
global. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.
Berg, A.-J. (1994). Technological flexibility: Bringing gender into technology (or
was it the other way round?). In C. Cockburn & R. Furst-Dilic (Eds.), Bringing
technology home: Gender an technology in a changing Europe (pp. 94–110).
Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Bigum, C. (2012). Schools and computers: Tales of a digital romance. In L. Rowan
& C. Bigum (Eds.), Transformative approaches to new technologies and student
diversity in futures oriented classrooms: Future proofing education (pp. 15–28).
Dordrecht: Springer.
Bigum, C., & Rowan, L. (this volume). Gorillas in their midst: Rethinking educational technology. In S. Bulfin, N. F. Johnson, & C. Bigum (Eds.), Critical
perspectives on education and technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Burnett, C. (2010). Technology and literacy in early childhood educational settings:
A review of research. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 10(3), 247–270.
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de Certeau, M. (1974). Culture in the plural (trans. T. Conley). London: University
of Minnesota Press.
de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life (trans. S. Rendall). Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Connell, R. (2009). Good teachers on dangerous ground: Towards a new view
of teacher quality and professionalism. Critical Studies in Education, 50(3),
213–229.
Davidson, C. (2009). Young children’s engagement with digital texts and literacies
in the home: Pressing matters for the teaching of English in the early years of
schooling. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 8(3), 36–54.
Davies, B. (2003). Death to critique and dissent? The policies and practices of new
managerialism and of “evidence-based practice.” Gender and Education, 15(1),
91–103.
Edwards, S., Nuttall, J., Mantilla, A., Wood, E., & Grieshaber, S. (this volume).
Digital play: What do early childhood teachers see? In S. Bulfin, N. F. Johnson,
& C. Bigum (Eds.), Critical perspectives on education and technology. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Groundwater-Smith, S., & Mockler, N. (2009). Teacher professional learning in an
age of compliance: Mind the gap. Dordrecht, Springer.
Highmore, B. (2006). Michel de Certeau: Analysing culture. London: Continuum.
Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling society. New York: Harper and Row.
Ipri, T. (2010). Introducing transliteracy: What does it mean to academic libraries?
College & Research Libraries News, 71(10), 532–567.
Lessig, L. (2012). Remix: How creativity is being strangled by the law. In V. Madiberg
(Ed.), The social media reader (pp. 155–169). New York: New York University
Press.
Lynch, J. (2003). Why have computer-based technologies failed to radically transform schooling? Looking for the right question. Online Proceedings of the Annual
Conference of the British Educational Research Association (BERA), Edinburgh,
retrieved from http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00003272.htm
Lynch, J. (2006). Assessing effects of technology usage on mathematics learning.
Mathematics Education Research Journal, 18(3), 29–43.
Lynch, J., & Redpath, T. (2014). “Smart” technologies in early years literacy education: A meta-narrative of paradigmatic tensions in iPad use in an Australian
preparatory classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 14(2), 147–174.
doi:10.1177/1468798412453150
Mavers, D. (2007). Semiotic resourcefulness: A young child’s email exchange as
design. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 7(2), 155–176.
Nelson, M. E., Marple, S., & Hull, G. (this volume). Youth breaking new “ground”:
Iconicity and meaning making in social media. In S. Bulfin, N. F. Johnson, &
C. Bigum (Eds.), Critical perspectives on education and technology. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
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O’Mara, J., & Laidlaw, L. (2011). Living in the iworld: Two literacy researchers
reflect on the changing texts and literacy practices of childhood. English Teaching:
Practice and Critique, 10(4): 149–159.
Ohi, S. (2008). The teacher’s role in the research-policy-practice nexus. Australian
Journal of Education, 52(1), 95–109.
Pachler, N., Bachmair, B., & Cook, J. (2010). Mobile learning: Structures, agency,
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Rogers, T., & Winters, K. L. (2010). Textual play, satire, and counter discourses of
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York: Peter Lang.
Selwyn, N. (2010). Looking beyond learning: Notes towards a critical study of educational technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(1), 65–73.
Thomas, S., Joseph, C., Laccetti, J., Mason, B., Mills, S., Perril, S., & Pullinger, K.
(2007). Transliteracy: Crossing divides. First Monday, 12(12–3).
Thrift, N. (2008). Non-representational theory: Space, politics, affect. Abingdon:
Routledge.
Trowler, P. (2012). Wicked issues in situating theory in close-up research. Higher
Education Research & Development, 31(3), 273–284.
CHAPTER 10
Teaching the “Other”: Curriculum
“Outcomes” and Digital Technology
in the Out-of-School Lives of
Young People
Glenn Auld and Nicola F. Johnson
Introduction
The research on sociocultural approaches to pedagogy is full of teachers who
attempt to draw on “historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills” (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992, p. 133)
to engage their students in learning in the classroom. In the field of educational technology, research examining young people’s lives largely focuses on
school contexts, and tends to ignore the value of informal learning outside
of the school gate. In this chapter, the “other” (Lévinas, 1979) concerns the
formal curriculum outcomes performed in the out-of-school lives of young
people’s practices with digital technologies.
There have been many studies exploring student learning in informal spaces
outside of school (Bearne & Marsh, 2007; Buckingham & Scanlon, 2003;
Carrington, 2006; Johnson, 2009a, 2009b; Thomson, 2002). Some studies
have focused on how children and young people use mobile and digital technologies to mediate their learning in these spaces (Auld, Snyder, & Henderson,
2012; Carrington, 2005; Cawley & Hynes, 2010; Davies & Merchant, 2009;
Gee & Hayes, 2011; Honan, 2008; Nixon, Aitkinson, & Beavis, 2006). These
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suggest that teachers should be receptive to informal learning and use this as a
springboard for more effective school and classroom learning.
There is another narrative taking place in the context of this interest in
informal learning and that is the work of teachers. Becoming more and more
complex, the work of teachers includes coping with increasing demands for
compliance with standardized curricula, alongside imperatives for innovative and creative programs to engage students from diverse backgrounds.
In this chapter we attempt to marry these two elements of teachers’ work.
We seek to match the documented learning from previous studies of outof-school practices using digital technologies with the performance of curriculum outcomes.
We use Feenberg’s (2002) critical approach to technology as a framework
for exploring the informal learning of young people. A critical approach to
technology highlights “the social values placed on the design, not just use,
of technological systems” (Feenberg, 2002, p. 14). In the informal learning
environments we will be analyzing how young people are constructing their
social practices around technology. Such an approach aligns with Franklin’s
(1992) ideas of technology as practice where the focus is on justice, fairness,
and equality. So rather than looking at how technology artifacts are used in
a classroom to support learning, this study will explore the nuanced social
practices around technology that are controlled by young people in out-ofschool contexts and where the social practices include learning embedded in
the curriculum.
In this chapter we will be looking at a particular subset of social practices,
namely, the performances young people demonstrate with learning in the
curriculum. Southerton (2013) clearly identified the relationship between
practices and performances as being recursive: “practices configure performances, and practices are reproduced and stabilized, adapted and innovated,
through performances” (p. 339). These terms, borrowed from social theory,
inform our explanation of the practices involving digital technologies outside of school and the performances of curriculum within informal contexts.
However, we acknowledge how practices and performances do shape each
other.
What might appear to be a tension with our critical approach to technology is that, in this chapter at least, we are not challenging the content of the
curriculum. We consider challenging the curriculum content to be outside
the scope of this chapter, and have chosen instead to focus on performances
of curriculum learning by young people. We are suggesting that a core component of teachers’ work is to mediate the abstract learning in the curriculum for students in ways that they find engaging and sustaining. One way
to do this is for the teacher to link curriculum outcomes to students’ lives
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out of school, as demonstrated by researchers who have used the “funds of
knowledge” approach in their work (Moll et al., 1992).
This chapter considers four vignettes and identifies multiple outcomes
that are performed in the practices within everyday lives of children and
young people. In doing so, we draw upon the recently developed Australian
Curriculum (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority
[ACARA], 2014) and the national curriculum of Finland (Finnish National
Board of Education, 2012) to map the students’ informal learning outside
of school, and argue that these “other” student performances are enacted
learning with reference to the curriculum. Exploring the nexus between curriculum outcomes and the links with informal digital practices in these outof-school contexts could be critical in repositioning teachers’ professional
boundaries and reimagining students’ learning. Teachers could provide students more opportunities to map, and to recognize, their learning outside
of school and bring this into the classroom to add to the diversity of ways
students are negotiating their learning through the curriculum. If the students themselves can demonstrate ways they engage in curriculum learning
outside of school, these examples should be brought into the classroom as
part of the work of teachers.
In this chapter, we draw on the Australian Curriculum’s achievement
standards for particular curriculum areas (i.e., English, science, maths,
and history), citing the appropriate curriculum code and year level where
appropriate, as well as the relevant interdisciplinary “General Capability”
statements about essential skills. To demonstrate the international scope
of the practices, we also draw on the National Curriculum of Finland
(2014), introduced to Finnish schools in 2006, specifically the media skills
and communication and cross-curricula themes. The national curricula
of Finland and Australia are used here because they are both freely available online in a comprehensive, accessible format. Many curricula are not
publicly available and few are national. The process of mapping vignettes
against two curricula from different countries provides an insight into
how ICT (information and communication technology) learning has
been framed by curriculum documents, highlighting the interdisciplinary
nature of ICT use. In addition, it provides two descriptions of curriculum, internationalizing the debate and topic, and explores how effectively
young people’s performances can be mapped onto multiple curriculum
documents. We are using these two curricula as examples of this idea but
we would suggest this type of mapping could happen against any formal
and recorded curriculum. Elsewhere we focus particularly on connecting the Australian Curriculum, literacy learning, and the “middle years”
(Auld & Johnson, 2014).
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In our search for useful descriptions of previously conducted research
that we could map and compare against the curriculum documents, we were
concerned with finding authentic examples of young people’s out-of-school
technological practices, while also being able to obtain rich enough data in
order to appropriately match practice with curriculum statements. We present four brief vignettes whereby we utilize previously published research and
the descriptors contained therein to point to the curriculum outcomes that
might be evident in the forms of everyday, informal, out-of-school practice.
First, we draw on Dowdall’s (2009) descriptions of the practices of “critical
digital literacy” by one 14-year-old and two 13-year-olds in their design and
maintenance of their MySpace profiles. Second, we document an Indigenous
student’s mobile phone use as he discusses and learns from his mother in an
informal, community setting. Third, we draw on Gee and Hayes’ (2010)
account of two young women who “mesh” and “fit” The Sims clothing. Our
final vignette details two 13-year-old game players who demonstrate active
and collaborative problem solving (DeVane, Durga, & Squire, 2010).
Our discussion of these vignettes aims to point to the possible enactment
of formal curriculum within informal sites and practices of out-of-school
learning, albeit limited within the preceding commentary above. As we dip
into the vignettes, we do not have access to the raw data and transcripts
from the original studies. While this is a limitation of our approach, we
are using these as illustrative narratives to explore the process on how links
can be made between formal curriculum documents and the out-of-school
practices of young people using technology to construct their social practices. Lankshear and Knobel (2006) suggest that the complexity of classroom learning environments impose deep and subtle issues for curriculum
and pedagogy that require informed, principled, and imaginative responses.
We argue that a focus on a critical approach to technology where young
people are designing their social worlds using technology while performing
learning in the curriculum, will provide evidence of the kind of responses
proposed by Lankshear and Knobel (2006).
Vignette 1: MySpace and Critical Digital Literacy
In Clare Dowdall’s (2009) work on the enactment of critical digital literacy,
she focuses on how three young people, “Clare,” “Tom,” and “Sam,” created
and maintained their MySpace profiles. While MySpace has been surpassed
in popularity by Facebook in recent years, the rich descriptions provided
by Dowdall exemplify young people’s performance of the curriculum in
out-of-school settings. Dowdall claims that these young people’s MySpace
profiles are multimodal artifacts that represent identity and communicate
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purpose and engagement to their audience. Dowdall expounds how each of
the participants is a text producer who is doubly literate in terms of “skillsbased literacy” (Street, 1993), “digital literacy,” as well as interpretations of
“new literacies” (Marsh, 2005). Gee (2012) provides an insightful way of
understanding how meaning is constructed around texts by articulating
the “discourse” and “Discourse” associated with social practices of texts.
The discourse is the connected stretches of language that make sense, such
as letters in a word, words on a page, or pages in a book. The Discourse is
the values, attitudes, and power relations in a text that tends to intersect
with the identities of the readers. The meaningful communication within
these contexts in this first vignette demonstrates the Discourse (Gee,
2012) in which they are engaged, including a sense of how texts are made
powerful through what is included or excluded. Additionally, their participation, consummation, and collaboration in relation to the MySpace texts
display a critical digital literacy advocated as necessary by many formal
curriculums.
Dowdall goes on to articulate the textual practices used by one of the
participants, Clare, in her MySpace site. In our analysis we link Clare’s
social practices with technology to the General Capabilities of the Australian
Curriculum. Clare regularly changes her profile page and updates images on
her site. This enables her peers to know what she has been doing and what
she is thinking. In doing so, it appears Clare is understanding and using
aspects of language to suggest possibility, probability, obligation, and conditionality (Australian Curriculum—Literacy General Capability—Grammar
Knowledge, Year 8, level 6). Dowdall identifies that Clare uses a privacy
option so that her teachers and parents do not have access to the texts she is
publishing on her site. In doing so she is negotiating the Year 10 (level 6) ICT
Capability from the Australian Curriculum that states that students “assess
the risks associated with online environments and establish appropriate security strategies as required (for example modifying default parameters within
social networking sites)” (ACARA, 2014).
Another participant, Tom has several MySpace accounts. He has one that
is “open access” to showcase his band and another that is “closed” for his
friends. In doing so, he is demonstrating that he can use the different texts
for different purposes and audiences. We can link Tom’s practices to “media
skills and communication,” an integration and cross-curricular theme in the
Finnish Curriculum. Tom is demonstrating that he can “Develop [his] information management skills, and to compare, choose, and utilize acquired
information” (objective for basic, primary education). This is critical if he is
to develop texts using the same platform for different audiences. As Dowdall
notes, “Tom views social network sites as tools that fulfill different practical
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and recreational functions, such as keeping in touch with friends and publicizing his music” (2009, p. 49).
Both these examples suggest an achievement of formal curriculum outcomes beyond school. The outcomes are embedded in “getting something
for literacy” in their out-of-school lives. For Clare it is about negotiating
how she presents herself through text and images displayed on her profile.
For Tom the use of two different profiles on MySpace gives him opportunities to negotiate different texts for different audiences that shape his
current and future identities. The use of two profiles provides Tom ways
to experiment with networking with different groups of people and opportunities to engage in the world in different ways. If the informal learning
environments from outside of school were brought into school in a systemic
way, controlled by the students, their evidence of learning would change
in dramatic ways. Clare and Tom would have texts that captured times in
their lives and textual practices that matched these times, as part of the rich
and diverse ways they construct their identities with social media outside of
school. Teachers would have a valued resource for deconstructing textual
and visual practices with students as a way to move their learning from the
known to the unknown scaffolded by this textual deconstruction.
As Bearne and Marsh (2007) suggest, those involved in young people’s
education should not “close down possibilities for realizing identity” (p. 136)
in formal education settings. We are not suggesting young people like Clare
and Tom would give public performances of their entire social networking
profile in a classroom. But if Clare and Tom had opportunities to assess and
reassess their own writing on parts of their profiles or other people’s profile,
they would be well positioned to critique their current textual practices outside of school. Clare and Tom could be encouraged to bring samples of their
writing into classrooms to provide some fruitful learning around text, culture, and identity. Where teachers support what Boomer (1992) considers to
be a negotiated curriculum, they can use these out-of-school texts to identify
and “confront the constraints of the learning context and the non-negotiable
requirements that apply” (p. 14). We identify that teachers need to do this
in a respectful way that gives students an understanding of how and why the
texts would be used in the class before this work begins.
Vignette 2: Mobile Phones in an Indigenous
Australian Community
The second vignette is drawn from research conducted by Auld et al. (2012)
examining the use of mobile phones in a remote Indigenous Australian community. The article explores how phones can be seen as “placed” resources,
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following the work of Blommaert (2010) and Prinsloo (2005), which suggests artifacts such as phones are embedded in a web of diverse practices
dependent upon social location. While the study was based on a survey of
phone use, it also presented some dialogue between a child and his mother at
home where the mother taught her child how to download music and games
from an Internet site on her phone.
The first evidence we draw from this study relates to a child learning how
to play a recently downloaded game. The game consisted of matching blocks
of the same color to form rows that disappeared that were all the same color,
similar to Tetris. The child was instructed by his mother to try to match the
blocks that were the same color. The child used the ideas of color and the
responsive beep once the colors all lined up to learn how to play the game.
In the end the child concludes, “I know now to use the ones with the same
color” (Auld et al., 2012, p. 289). The learning of this game appears to be
aligned with “use media and communication tools in information acquisition and transmission, and in various interactive situations” (objective from
media skills and communication integration and cross-curricular theme,
basic education, Finland). The child in this vignette demonstrates he can
use the multimodal channels of communication to “learn” the game.
The second evidence we explore from this study involved the same child
purchasing a song via the Internet. This involved the child moving through
a series of screens after responding to links and imputing data in various
text boxes. The child was told to go to the BigPond website—a large telecommunication company’s online store for downloading movies and songs.
The child followed the mother’s instructions about how to scroll through
the songs and identify the chosen song for download. Part of this learning
involved playing a segment of the song before downloading to make sure
it was the appropriate song. At the end of the download, the child stated
“You showed me Mum, I know how to buy music now” (Auld et al., 2012,
p. 290). Although the language of interaction between the child and mother
is Ndjébbana, an Indigenous Australian language, the text on the phone was
in English. The child demonstrated an ability to navigate the online environment using the breadcrumb trail design embedded in the webpage. As
such, the child was understanding the breadcrumb trial for online texts (i.e.,
“Understand that the coherence of more complex texts relies on devices that
signal text structure and guide readers, for example, overviews, initial and
concluding paragraphs and topic sentences, indexes or site maps or breadcrumb trails for online texts” [ACELA 1763, English content description,
Language, Text structure, and Organization, Year 7, in ACARA, 2014]).
This breadcrumb trail is something the child used to scaffold the purchase of
the song. The mother used metaphoric language to describe the multimodal
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elements of scrolling and selecting the text on the phone. For example, she
says to the child, “Djawardaya, djé-yarra” (Go up that way) when referring
to scrolling up and to the right. Given the bilingual nature of this vignette
there are important elements of this learning that are not adequately represented in the Australian Curriculum. The Australian Curriculum does not
explore the complexity of bilingual learning around technology. All ideas of
multimodality, for instance, fall under the discipline knowledge of English.
The child in this vignette clearly mediated the images on the phone using
his first language, Ndjébbana, as part of his literacy repertoire. There is no
provision for this kind of learning in the Australian Curriculum.
Vignette 3: Designing Clothes in Passionate Affinity Spaces
The third vignette involves informal learning by young people in their use
of computer games in out-of-school contexts. The work by Gee and Hayes
(2011) explores the language and learning of young people in the digital age.
The authors suggest that the learning around digital popular culture is often
part of “passionate affinity spaces,” which “require some people associated
with the space to have a deep passion for the common shared endeavor”
(p. 69). Passionate affinity spaces encompass a range of social practices such
as distributive knowledge systems, capacities for participants to consume
and produce texts, welcoming new participants, and supporting a variety of
movements through the knowledge in online spaces (Gee & Hayes, 2011).
One of these passionate affinity spaces explored in the text is a homework
class of young people learning about new technologies. The homework class
includes Jade, a high school student, who became interested in designing
clothes from pictures of real clothes using Photoshop. To do this, Jade needed
to know about file extensions and a range of design language such as “hue,”
“saturation opacity,” “spread,” and “noise.” Through accessing online tutorials and networking with peers, Jade learned about the different icons and
tools required to manipulate the images in the various software programs.
Jade’s learning to use the software program aligns with the basic education objectives of the following integration and cross-curricular themes from
Finland:
Growth as a person—The pupils will learn to function as members of a
group and community (p. 36), and;
Media skills and communication—The pupils will learn to:
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Express themselves in a versatile, responsible way, and to interpret
communication by others (p. 37)
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Develop their information management skills, and to compare, choose,
and utilize acquired information (p. 38)
Take a critical stance towards contents covered by the media, and to
ponder the relaxed values of ethics and aesthetics in communication
(p. 38)
Produce and transmit messages, and use the media appropriately
(p. 38)
Use media and communication tools in information acquisition and
transmission, and in various interactive situations (p. 38).
Additionally, the vignette matches with the Visual Arts core curriculum
(Grades 5–9) objective: “The pupils will get to know techniques of visual
communication and impact and learn to use key tools of visual communication to express one’s own thoughts in the media” (Finnish National Board of
Education, 2014, p. 237). The ideas developed by Jade in using this program
would likely be transferrable to other uses of technology and other software
applications that she will encounter in her future work and learning.
Gee and Hayes (2011) also identified the sense of audience and purpose
Jade demonstrated in her construction of the clothes she designed as part of
this after-school activity. Over time Jade became a better designer and eventually had hundreds of people around the world downloading her designs.
Jade went on to sell her designs in the virtual world, Second Life, before
beginning her own successful business. We could consider Jade’s designs
to be texts, since her designs “represent social meanings specific to societies and cultures and their associations” (Healy, 2008, p. 5). Jade’s work
with these texts also gives her ideas about the relative value interested buyers
placed on her designs. This work can be linked to the Year 10 standards in
the Australian Curriculum in English (Literacy, Creating Texts) that states,
“Use a range of software, including word processing programs, confidently,
flexibly and imaginatively to create, edit and publish texts, considering
the identified purpose and the characteristics of the user” (ACARA, 2014,
ACELY1776). Jade is developing a sense of what various users require and
matching her designs to suit these audience requirements, understandings
possibly transferrable to other contexts of text production.
Vignette 4: Collaborative Problem Solving in Game Playing
Our final vignette is taken from DeVane et al.’s (2010) work, which details
a collaborative, problem-solving gaming session between two 13-year-old
boys learning to play the computer game Civilization IV (Civ4). The article presents in-depth detail of this session, drawing from video recordings,
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researcher field notes, and game logs. The session is part of a four-year longitudinal study. Data provided in the article explains a problem confronting
a player and how he draws upon three strategies to solve the problem of
improving the “municipal health of their city” (p. 8), and explains how he
collaborates with the other player, and also an adult facilitator who is an
observer. While the article focuses on three trends in the problem-solving
process, it moves on to discuss how five aspects of “systems thinking” are
mediated through playing Civ4. Of particular interest to us is how this rich
data details three problem-solving processes to demonstrate the enactment
of curriculum outcomes. First,
the players’ solutions to problems confronting them in the game system
are assembled “on the spot” from their own past game play experiences
(in Civ 3), individual knowledge of history, and available social and material knowledge resources (a history book, in-game tools and a program
facilitator). (DeVane et al., 2010, p. 9)
This example appears to closely link with the literacy General Capability of the
Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2014) (i.e., “Comprehending texts through
listening, reading and viewing—integrate topic and textual knowledge and
developed strategies, including selecting, navigating, monitoring meaning and
crosschecking to read and view learning area texts,” Year 8). Additionally, two
achievement standards from the historical skills Year 8 strand of the Australian
Curriculum are clearly enacted: “Locate, compare, select and use information
from a range of sources as evidence” (ACARA, 2014, ACHHS153) and “Draw
conclusions about the usefulness of sources” (ACARA, 2014, ACHHS154).
Second, the “players exhibit a remarkable ability to leverage new information about both the importance of individual game elements and the
relationships between game elements to formulate new solutions” (DeVane
et al., 2010, p. 9). This statement demonstrates the performance of a number of critical and creative thinking capabilities, again, from the Australian
Curriculum, namely:
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Transferring knowledge into new contexts—construct systematic plans
to transfer ideas and trends between different scenarios (Year 10).
Generating innovative ideas and possibilities—imagining possibilities
and considering alternatives—draw parallels between known and new
scenarios, and use ideas, patterns and trends to consider new possibilities (Year 10).
Seeking and creating innovative pathways and solutions—predict
possibilities and envisage consequences when seeking new meanings
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(Year 10), and speculate on possible options and outcomes, and modify
responses to concrete and abstract ideas (Year 10).
Reflecting on procedures and products—evaluate the effectiveness of
possible solutions and implement improvement to achieve desired outcomes (Year 10).
Third, DeVane et al. (2010) claim that the problem solving evident
between the players is social and collaborative, which supports the personal
and social capability of developing strategies for working in diverse teams,
drawing on the skills and contribution of team members to complete complex tasks (ACARA, Year 10).
The richness of this problem-solving game links closely to many other
curriculum achievement standards, especially as playing Civ4 (and previous
iterations) enables players to “learn to think with, and within” (DeVane et al.,
2010, p. 5) the game itself. From the Australian Curriculum, player 1 and 2
can be seen to be “investigating how visual and multimodal texts allude to
or draw on other texts or images to enhance and layer meaning” (ACARA,
2014, ACELA1548, English, Language, Expressing and Developing Ideas).
The two players tested three different solutions in trying to solve the problems of resourcing their civilization. From the Finnish Curriculum, a
number of integrated or cross-curricular themes can be identified namely,
“Participatory citizenship and entrepreneurship”; “Responsibility for the
environment, well-being”; and “a sustainable future”; “Technology and the
individual”; and “Ethics” (pp. 38–39). Through navigating a complex system, the young men’s play of a serious game provides wide curriculum coverage and the performance of multiple, transferable skills.
Depending on the focus of activity within a game and what is emphasized, there is much potential to cover curriculum learning. The historical
context of a game or the particular content that needs to be learned might
closely be affiliated with content from particular learning areas, encountered in authentic ways.
Discussion
This small project proved to be a fascinating process whereby we not only
were able to draw on rich “secondary data” and learn from these vignettes,
but were also able to develop our own knowledge of various formal curricula through making connections between these and informal practices.
It would be interesting to observe and document how teachers’ work might
change if they were charged with making links to curriculum outcomes
in the out-of-school affinity groups that their students inhabit. Before we
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develop this idea we will touch on some limitations of the approach we have
taken in this chapter.
One limitation is that we were not insiders to the studies described here;
the raw data was not our own and therefore we did not know it extensively
or personally. There are likely other curriculum outcomes/statements/standards that might possibly have been identified or mapped onto this data if
we had access to the raw data. It would only take some more knowledge
of the data to be able to ascertain the achievement or enactment of these
statements.
Another limitation is that the complete and final version of the
Australian Curriculum is awaiting endorsement. When we began this
study (see Auld & Johnson, 2014), the curriculum included only materials
for English, mathematics, history, and science, from Foundation to Year
10. This is one reason why we mainly drew on the curriculum’s General
Capabilities, as these are deemed to be interdisciplinary and essential skills.
As more “learning areas” are developed we will be in a better position to
identify how the outside-of-school “work” of these young people maps
onto other curriculum objectives. One of the areas awaiting final endorsement is the area of Digital Technologies, which is part of the Technologies
Learning Area of the Australian Curriculum. While possibly very helpful
to an explicit and comprehensive future mapping process, this curriculum
area tends to be more about understanding hardware, software, networks,
and computational thinking. We have provided only a small amount of varied links, just to indicate and suggest the achievement of curriculum within
informal settings. Indeed, there were many more inclusions we could have
made from the General Capabilities, in particular the Personal and Social
Capability.
Admittedly, there is a tenuous link between informal contexts and learning. We are not implying causation between these informal environments
and learning. Some of the learning the students bring from school could
be applied in these contexts and indeed some of the events described might
not be possible without the learning at school. We are not romanticizing the
context of informal learning. There might be many events where learning is
not happening in the contexts described.
We offered these brief vignettes as indicators of what might be possible
to open up for future exploration. The vignettes draw on others’ chapters or
articles that describe the methodology and rationale that have already been
reported on in detail. We realize this is a shortcoming whereby we cannot
make comprehensive links between practices and curriculum because of the
lack of detail in these vignettes. However, it should be acknowledged that
it is not a purpose to fully explicate the enactment of curriculum outcomes.
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We only wish to provide scenarios to consider, which might open up future
research opportunities and enable additional exploration of what it means to
be achieving curriculum outcomes. These outcomes will be performed with
a variety of digital technologies using a diverse range of social practices in
spaces where young people prefer or choose to be.
In drawing attention to these out-of-school practices, we neither want to
standardize nor regulate informal practices, but we do wish to make curriculum links to the outside-of-schools work that students do. As we consider
the complexity of young people’s practices, we wish to point out that much
of the curriculum performance might be hidden and embedded in current
out-of-school, informal practices, so rather than buying into the standardization discourses, it seems useful to us to suggest we work within these
restraints and be ready to identify where the curriculum fits within current
practices. As standardized practices stop and start at the school, we think
that may in fact be a limitation to curriculum coverage (Doecke, Kostogriz,
& Illesca, 2010). In a crowded timetable, we consistently realize the need
for children to bring in their experiences and prior knowledge to shape current and future learning experiences. Understanding what students already
know and providing them with the opportunity to share that knowledge is
a part of good pedagogy, regardless of the limitations of the curriculum. By
providing students with the chance to “show off” their stuff that they do for
fun, to play, to communicate, and so on, teachers are able to better negotiate the curriculum with their students. Additionally, curriculum tends to
be focused on the functional aspects of information and communication
technologies, rather than the scope of possibilities provided by the ideas in
the chapters in this book.
While we do not want to create more work for teachers, teachers do know
the curriculum well, and recognition of what goes on outside of school with
the use of digital technologies may actually be an enabler for curriculum
coverage and achievement. If teachers can identify practices that match the
curriculum outside of school and have the evidence for it, then it seems
advantageous to us to document the learning that is happening, especially
if it is occurring in marginalized places or spaces (Boomer, 1992). However,
recognizing the practical considerations of the core business of teaching
means that we would do well to acknowledge curriculum achievement in a
crowded curriculum. What might appear hidden to teachers could be quite
logical and visible to the students who move between the informal learning
spaces outside of school and curriculum learning in the classroom. In an age
of increasing accountability, and limitations on creativity and flexibility, it
seems advantageous for teachers to look beyond the school boundaries to
what Pat Thomson (2002) identifies as students’ virtual schoolbags that are
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being built up with the increased take up of digital technologies as forms
of leisure.
Many good teachers already recognize the “expertise” that children and
young people have in their out-of-school lives. Schools are far more accommodating about learning, achievement, and difference where disadvantaged
and nontraditional students are embraced. However, calling for a formalized mapping of these outside-of-school practices may backfire. Students
may resent this impingement. Focusing on formalizing what students do
in their free time may limit their enthusiasm. Bringing in a “serious” game
into the classroom may mean that students no longer play the game because
school has muddied its pleasure. Finally, one might argue that the lives of
young people are already highly regulated and curricularized and we need
to be aware of the negative implications of moving curriculum learning into
informal spaces. We are aware that the curriculum is a value-laden document and the work we are proposing is highly contested with respect to
critical approaches toward technology and pedagogy. In an effort to show
how children and young people achieve curriculum outcomes beyond the
classroom, it would be a shame and an irony to reinforce the schooled or
regulated nature of children’s lives outside school! Additionally, it is evident
that curriculum outcomes are not able to fully capture the complexity of
young people’s lives. So how do we engage critically with this problematic
aspect of this proposed mapping process? We do not wish to suggest that
an overly managerial attempt to describe and categorize informal lives of
students according to curriculum outcomes is necessary, but what might be
beneficial from opening up the spaces and places where curriculum can be
achieved is the possibility that greater freedom and in-depth learning and
engagement might be made more possible with the integration of real life
into school settings. Bulfin and Koutsogiannis (2012) argue the relationship between home and school is undertheorized, as much of the research
constructs home and school as separate and distinct domains of practice.
One way of making connections between these two domains is to explore
the possibilities of curriculum learning in the out-of-school domain of the
young people’s lives.
It might be posited that we are buying into a “recognition position,”
that is, if schools, teachers, policymakers, and parents recognize the multiple, complex, rich, and interesting informal learning that goes on beyond
schools, schools will be more accommodating, and their views about learning, achievement, difference, and “otherness” will expand and become more
accepting and hospitable. This argument has been made in various contexts
over many years. While it is not a new argument, we consider that the use of
social media and the increasing up-take of digital technologies means that
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the informal practices are currently escalating and developing beyond what
we are currently aware. Therefore, being aware of “what is going on” and
enabling a forum and audience to display their endeavors may be an enabler.
Perhaps another way to look at this “old” argument is to consider the limitations of not drawing on the informal practices of children and young people.
School and curriculum are privileged, but how might we be better informed
about learning and the construction of knowledge in marginalized spaces
and places?
We also need to recognize the limitations of the curriculum. Young people’s practices might not necessarily match or fit curriculum. The complexity of what young people are doing cannot often or always be matched with
linear, developmental, descriptive curriculum. But what it might provide is
insight, awareness, excitement, interest, and independent learning, whereby
children and young people are able to articulate their understanding of curriculum and be empowered to identify how they are working within and
beyond the limitations of the curriculum (Honan, 2012).
We are also aware that we may be asked what value there is in doing
this mapping and for whom? Curriculum has limitations. Schools as institutions have limitations. Timetables, artificial divides of subjects, and learning
(dis)abilities have limitations. Asking children to bring in artifacts that they
have created in their own time with their own digital technology of choice
might enable children and young people to make more connections between
school and their real lives, and make more useful connections between the
use of digital technologies and their work inside schools. Teachers may be
more informed about the possibilities of student achievement. Teachers may
be freed up to focus on in-depth topics if they know that out-of-school practices will support and enhance what is being focused on within schools.
Given these limitations, there are some interesting opportunities for
teachers to explore the informal digital learning environments in partnership with their students. The vignettes presented in this chapter demonstrate how young people find meaning outside of the school context, often
negotiating new textual designs that could have rich opportunities for learning in a school context. Teachers may benefit just from seeing their students
apply their knowledge in different environments and teachers could identify
what new learning might be explored back in the classroom to have further
relevance in these informal environments. Teachers might also benefit from
seeing how young people are motivated to apply this learning in their outof-school lives.
We agree that, “educational practice is distinct from and different to
popular culture” (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006, p. 259). We are not suggesting teachers simply view popular culture practices of their students as part
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of their core business. Rather, if students have a better understanding about
the learning embedded in the curriculum, then they may be more empowered to demonstrate to teachers how this learning plays out in their everyday
practices outside of school. This may provide the opportunity for students
to demonstrate how they are negotiating the curriculum in their own practices outside of school if teachers can facilitate the abstraction of these ideas
back to the curriculum inside school. Such an approach could empower
students to understand the outcomes from the curriculum and then offer
fellow peers opportunities to share their interpretation of their learning from
an outside of school context. This is different to a teacher “standardizing” a
popular digital text inside the classroom where all students need to complete
the same set of practices even if they are not familiar with the “popular”
text chosen by the teacher. Another way might be to provide students with
deeper understanding of the abstract ideas in the curriculum so they have
more control to make these links between learning and their out-of-school
practices. In this way the teaching of abstract ideas of the curriculum is
modeled and delegated to the students. The role of the teacher is to manage
the diverse ways students are making these links to the curriculum.
Conclusion
This chapter has sought to theorize an approach to curriculum and open up
the possibilities of mapping the work students are completing in their informal spaces. We have sought to explore teachers’ work in terms of the “face
of the other.” Lévinas (1979) suggests we should be “welcome of the other,”
which involves simultaneously embracing activity and passivity. Obviously,
effective teachers who respect their students seek to understand others and
welcome into the classroom the diverse ways students learn. In relation to
the work of mediating the abstract ideas of the curriculum, there is another
way teachers could welcome the other as part of their professional work.
Teachers could seek out places and times where curriculum learning happens outside of school as a way of welcoming this other learning into the
classroom. To the best of our knowledge, this kind of work has rarely been
done. Yet it appears to be an important way to increase connections between
school or educational stakeholders and the informal learning not recognized
or valued or promoted that goes on outside of schools. A large-scale project
that details informal practices through observations and video recordings of
a number of young people, combined with a substantial mapping of multiple international curriculum, may enable teachers and stakeholders within
formalized institutions to not only value the informal practices, but recognize the learning that is occurring, and place more (needed) value on these
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everyday technological endeavors. We are excited that the work of teachers
could be informed to accommodate the informal learning mapped onto the
curriculum that has relevance to students outside of school. We are not suggesting teachers do this just to connect to the funds of knowledge that the
students bring to the classroom. We argue that the core work of teachers
could be extended into the community where the learning from the curriculum is mapped onto the informal practices the students are doing outside
the classroom.
If students were empowered to make links back to their informal learning
environments, teachers would be provided with multiple interpretations of
the same learning in the curriculum explored in multiple ways. There could
be an opportunity to open up the curriculum to the plurality of voices that
could be heard as the curriculum is negotiated in a number of spaces. This
“play of voices results in a multiplicity of performances” (Krasner, 2003,
p. 26) that consolidate the core work of teachers, while being inclusive of
diverse textual practices beyond the school gate.
References
Auld, G., & Johnson, N. F. (2014). Connecting literacy learning outside of school
to the Australian Curriculum in the middle years. Literacy Learning: The Middle
Years, 22(2), 22–27.
Auld, G., Snyder, I., & Henderson, M. (2012). Using mobile phones as a placed
resource for literacy learning in remote Indigenous communities. Language and
Education, 24(4), 279–296.
Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA]. (2014).
The Australian Curriculum. Retrieved May 5, 2014, from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/
Bearne, E., & Marsh, J. (2007). Uncomfortable spaces. In E. Bearne & J. Marsh
(Eds.), Literacy and social inclusion: Closing the gap (pp. 133–140). Stoke-on-Trent:
Trentham.
Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Boomer, G. (1992). Negotiating the curriculum. In G. Boomer, N. Lester,
C. Onore, & J. Cook (Eds.), Negotiating the curriculum: Educating for the 21st
century (pp. 4–14). London: Falmer Press.
Bulfin, S., & Koutsogiannis, D. (2012). New literacies as multiply placed practices:
Expanding perspectives on young people’s literacies across home and school.
Language and Education, 26(4), 331–346.
Buckingham, D., & Scanlon, M. (2003). Education, entertainment and learning in
the home. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Carrington, V. (2005). Txting: The end of civilization (again)? Cambridge Journal of
Education, 35(2), 161–175.
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Carrington, V. (2006). Rethinking middle years: Early adolescents, schooling and digital culture. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
Cawley, A., & Hynes, D. (2010). Evolving mobile communication practices of Irish
teenagers. Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives, 62(1), 29–45.
Davies, J., & Merchant, G. (2009). Web 2.0 for schools: Learning and social participation. New York: Peter Lang.
DeVane, B., Durga, S., & Squire, K. (2010). “Economists who think like ecologists”: Reframing systems thinking in games for learning. E–Learning and Digital
Media, 7(1), 3–20.
Doecke, B., Kostogriz, A., & Illesca, B. (2010). Seeing “things” differently:
Recognition, ethics, praxis. English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 9(2), 81–98.
Dowdall, C. (2009). Masters and critics: Children as producers of online digital
texts. In V. Carrington & M. Robinson (Eds.), Digital literacies: Social learning
and classroom practices (pp. 43–61). Los Angeles: Sage.
Feenberg, A. (2002). Transforming technology: A critical theory revisited (rev. ed.).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Finnish National Board of Education. (2012). National core curriculum for
basic education. Retrieved May 18, 2012, from http://www.oph.fi/english
/sources_of_information/core_curricula_and_qualification_requirements/basic
_education
Franklin, U. M. (1992). The real world of technology. Concord, OT: Anansi.
Gee, J. P. (2012). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (4th ed.).
London: Routledge.
Gee, J. P., & Hayes, E. (2010). Women and gaming: The Sims and 21st century learning. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gee, J. P., & Hayes, E. (2011). Language and learning in the digital age. New York:
Routledge.
Healy, A. (2008). Multiliteracies and diversity in education: New pedagogies for
expanding landscapes. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Honan, E. (2008). Barriers to teachers using digital texts in literacy classrooms.
Literacy, 42(1), 36–43. doi:10.1111/j.1467–9345.2008.00480.x
Honan, E. (2012). A whole new literacy: Teachers’ understanding of students’ digital learning at home. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 35(1), 82–98.
Johnson, N. F. (2009a). The Teenage Expertise Network: The online availability of
expertise. International Journal of Learning, 16(5), 211–220.
Johnson, N. F. (2009b). Teenage technological experts’ views of schooling. Australian
Educational Researcher, 36(1), 59–72.
Krasner, D. (2003). Dialogics and dialectics: Bakhtin, young Hegelians, and dramatic theory. In V. Z. Nollan (Ed.), Bakhtin: Ethics and mechanics (pp. 3–46).
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2006). New literacies: Everyday practices and classroom
learning (2nd ed.). New York: Open University Press.
Lévinas, E. (1979). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Marsh, J. (2005). Afterword. In J. Marsh (Ed.), Popular culture, new media and digital literacy in early childhood (pp. 28–50). New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
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Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for
teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory
into Practice, 31(2), 132.
Nixon, H., Aitkinson, S., & Beavis, C. (2006). New media pathways: Navigating
the links between home, school, and the workplace. In L. W. H. Tan &
R. Subramanyam (Eds.), Handbook of research on literacy in technology at the K-12
level (pp. 118–136). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Reference.
Prinsloo, M. (2005). The new literacies as placed resources. Perspectives in Education,
23(4), 87–98.
Southerton, D. (2013). Habits, routines and temporalities of consumption: From
individual behaviours to the reproduction of everyday practices. Time & Society,
22(3), 335–355.
Street, B. V. (1993). Cross-cultural perspectives on literacy. In J. Maybin (Ed.),
Language and literacy in social practice (pp. 139–150). Philadelphia, PA: Multilingual Matters.
Thomson, P. (2002). Schooling the rustbelt kids: Making the difference in changing
times. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin.
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CHAPTER 11
Translocalization in Digital
Writing, Orders of Literacy,
and Schooled Literacy
Dimitrios Koutsogiannis
Introduction
In recent decades, digital media have been the focal point of discussions
concerning literacy education. These discussions could be captured, as I
have suggested elsewhere, in a metaphor of three interconnected and concentric circles (Koutsogiannis, 2011a). In the first (innermost) circle lies the
tradition that regards information and communication technology (ICT)
as a means of significant pedagogical potential; early explorations into the
use of word processing for teaching writing are indicative of this tradition
(Hawisher, LeBlanc, Moran, & Selfe, 1996). In the middle circle lies the more
recent scientific tradition that approaches digital media as literacy practice
environments, in search of whatever new emerges in communication and,
consequently, in the content and context of literacy teaching and education
during recent decades (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008). Finally,
in the third, outermost circle lie the scientific explorations that approach
digital media and digital communication as organic elements of a complex
economic, social, and cultural reality, strongly connected to the current historical juncture. I have called this circle “missing” (Koutsogiannis, 2011a),
because it has attracted limited interest from researchers1; the aim of this
paper is to contribute toward consciously discussing and expanding the content of this third or missing circle.
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The content of the second circle draws, inter alia, from the rich research
exploring children’s digital literacy practices. One of the main arguments
of this research is that there is a mismatch between the children’s creative
out-of-school use of digital media and the dreary literacy reality of school;
the suggestion is that school experiences should be enriched through using
digital media in a manner comparable to children’s out-of-school realities (Bulfin & Koutsogiannis, 2012). In the following section I will discuss the basic principles of this research tradition, which I have called
eco-social discourse in other publications (Bulfin & Koutsogiannis, 2012;
Koutsogiannis, 1997, 1999), emphasizing its shortcomings. To this end, I
will use data from current research concerning children’s everyday digital
literacy practices.
It is apparent from the data presented in this chapter that most of the
vernacular digital writing by children in the Greek language predominantly
involves the use of the Latin alphabet, well-known as Greeklish (Greek +
English), which raises intense social reactions and discussions in Greek society (Koutsogiannis & Mitsikopoulou, 2003). Particular emphasis will be
placed on this text so as to highlight—as a basis for such data—aspects
that are underdiscussed in relevant literature, in an attempt to contribute
by filling the gaps in the third, outermost circle and providing a more critical perspective on the issue. My main argument is that in a world where
local and global phenomena in communication are interconnected, discussions concerning translocal (Blommaert, 2010) or glocal (Koutsogiannis &
Mitsikopoulou, 2004) children’s literacy practices from an educational perspective are truly limited.2
New Literacies Studies and the Present Study
Literacy studies and, particularly, New Literacy Studies (NLS) are theoretically based on what is called the “ideological model of literacy” (Street,
1984), which has shifted research focus onto children’s literacies as an inextricable part of their everyday practices. The main argument of this research
could be encapsulated in what Luke (2004) has called the “home-school
mismatch hypothesis,” meaning that there is a mismatch between the often
monotonous and boring school literacy practices and the more creative practices children participate in outside school.
This emphasis on the strong interconnection between literacy and children’s everyday cultural realities has continued in research into what Gee
(2010) has called New Literacies Studies (NLsS). The plural in “literacies”
does not indicate only the fact that literacies are multiple—an idea developed
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in research such as Heath’s (1983) since the early 1980s—but also serves to
highlight the central role digital media play in communication and, consequently, in children’s everyday practices.
Much of this research (Carrington & Robinson, 2009; Davidson, 2009;
Sefton-Green, 2004; Tripp & Herr-Stephenson, 2009; Williams, 2009) can
be located within an eco-social discourse, because it is based on the assumption that digital media are part of a “new media ecology” (Sefton-Green,
2004), which children live and participate in. From this perspective, it
is, therefore, obvious that every (new) digital environment that provides
opportunities for semiotic activity is of potential research interest, since it
is an important element of this new ecology of literacy. In this context, this
research tradition focuses on the many varieties of digital media as environments for literacy practice and participation (e.g., fan fiction, Internet chat,
games, sms, and social networking).
This eco-social discourse can be grouped into two categories (Bulfin &
Koutsogiannis, 2012; Koutsogiannis, 2007; Koutsogiannis, 2011b). The
first argues that current literacy is not something stable but rather dynamic,
as part of a fluid cultural and technological reality in which literacies keep
changing, providing many new opportunities for communication, entertainment, learning, and generally, for activating hybrid global-oriented identities. The second category, a natural consequence of the first, underlines the
fact that this dynamic digital literacy reality is largely ignored by schools,
which tend to insist on the traditional literacy of printed texts, underestimating the new reality experienced by children. The following quote clearly
reflects the main argument of this point of view:
[A]n increasing number of the children and young people walking through
the school gates each morning are required to leave behind an entire suite
of competencies, practices and knowledge about digital technologies and
digital text. Students are required to shift from a world replete with multimodal text, remixing and mashing, and fluid novice-expert relations,
to a relatively unidimensional formalized context centered upon only one
form of static text and structured by particular adult-child authority and
knowledge hierarchies. (Carrington & Robinson, 2009, p. 2)
It is not difficult to recognize a new version of the “home-school mismatch
hypothesis” here and the “reasonable” recommendation for schools to adapt
to the new digital reality.
Although in recent years effort has been made to look beyond this
home-school binary (Bulfin & Koutsogiannis, 2012; Lenters & McTavish,
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2013; Alvermann et al., 2012), this as well as other dichotomies3 remain
powerful (Burnett, 2013; Burnett & Merchant, 2014; Leander, Phillips
& Headrick Taylor, 2010). Thus, the need for a more critical and careful
reading of the relationship between in and out-of-school children’s digital
literacy practices is still urgent, as is the emergence of aspects that highlight the multidimensionality of the issue.
The present chapter focuses on three such issues, the addressing of which
is key to the ability of future research to develop more critical perspectives
on digital literacies. The first one has to do with a clear trend for overgeneralization: a large part of the research and debate in this field does not often
adequately account for the concrete realities of situated contexts, particularly
outside English-speaking countries. This can result in some overgeneralization in the relevant literature.
The second issue has to do with the fact that relevant research focuses
mainly on particular types of literacies, often vernacular ones, without
attempting to capture the whole spectrum of literacy repertoires or what I
call orders of literacy children participate in. However, such orders of literacy
are the milieu within which deeper social disparities can be found, which, of
course, have always been a significant part of children’s reality.
Finally, the third issue to be discussed is related to the limited historical
reflection observed in the major part of relevant literature. The “here and
now” and technocentric focus of research leaves little room for discussing
developments in communications and literacy education from a more critical historical perspective.
Methodological Framework and Greeklish
To discuss the issues presented above, I use data from my research—conducted in 2006 and in 2011–2012—mainly focusing on the digital literacy
practices of Greek adolescents. In this chapter the focus is on the Latin writing system children use when communicating in Greek. Below I provide
some basic information on Greeklish and the methodological framework for
this research.
It is well known that the initial capabilities of computers for writing served
primarily writing systems based on the Latin alphabet, due to restrictions in
the ASCII code. Therefore, for technical reasons, the Latin alphabet was
adopted for communicating online in languages that normally use non-Latin
scripts. Although this technical restriction has (to a great extent) been resolved
with the adoption of Unicode, the use of the Latin script online has not been
abandoned by users of languages that use a non-Latin script. Thus, in several
cases4 a kind of digraphia (Androutsopoulos, 2009) has emerged, with the
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Latin script being primarily used in certain literacy practices associated with
specific digital writing environments (forums, IRC, Facebook, etc.).
One example comes from a child’s Facebook posting of a Youtube
video that presents the footballer Ronaldo crying and the child writing in
Greeklish: “auto gia osous 8avmazoun ton Cristiano Ronaldo xaxaxaxaxaxa” (This is for those who admire Cristiano Ronaldo hahahahaha).
Very interesting research has been conducted into the use of Greeklish,
mainly from a sociolinguistic perspective (Androutsopoulos, 2009; Spilioti,
2009; Tseliga, 2007), but not from an educational perspective, which is the
main focus of this chapter.
To explore the aforementioned issues concerning the shortcomings of the
eco-social discourse, I use data from two research studies, a quantitative and
a qualitative study. The quantitative data originates from a survey conducted
in 2006 among pupils (stratified sample of 4174 pupils: 2118 girls, 2056
boys) aged 14–16 years (see Koutsogiannis, 2009, 2011b; Koutsogiannis
& Adampa, 2012). This age group, born between 1990 and 1992, is the
first generation that was socialized in a period when the technical restriction of writing Greek had been resolved. It was crucial for the sample to
include pupils attending private schools in the two biggest Greek cities,
namely Athens and Thessaloniki. Therefore, 759 pupils (381 girls, 378 boys)
attended well-known private schools charging high tuition fees. Many parents belonging to middle and upper social classes send their children to such
schools. The questionnaire included 59 questions related to a wide range of
topics concerning new technology use. One question focused on the writing
system used when “chatting” on the Internet.
The second research study5 was conducted during 2011–2012 and
involved case studies of 16 students, aged 13–15, focusing on their in and,
mainly, out-of-school (digital) literacy practices following ethnographic and
qualitative techniques. Data was collected through school and home visits,
children’s diaries, interviews, and a three-month social media investigation
(mainly Facebook profiles and posts).
Children’s Literacy Practices and Greeklish
Familiarity with Digital Literacy Practices and Greeklish
As I have already noted, although the two studies focused on what I call in
the next section orders of children’s literacy, in the present chapter I mainly
focus on the use of Greeklish. The quantitative study clearly shows that the
Latin alphabet is used much more widely in chat rooms as compared to the
Greek alphabet, and this is independent of the type of school the children
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Table 11.1
Koutsogiannis
Writing in chat rooms
If you visit chat rooms you use (%)
State schools
Private schools
Total
Greek letters
Latin letters
Both, it depends
Total
31.5
12.1
27.9
38.6
63.9
43.3
29.9
23.9
28.8
100
100
100
attend, and, therefore, the social group to which they belong. Table 11.1
below shows that the largest percentage employs Greeklish (43.3 percent),
versus 27.9 percent who use the Greek alphabet and 28.8 percent who use
both, depending on the context. This finding is of particular interest if we
take into consideration the fact that these children became familiar with
ICTs after 2000, when the problems with the Greek script should reasonably have been overcome due to Unicode’s support of the Greek writing
system.
Based on this data, it could be said that the following dynamics were
observed in the 2006 study: given the value-laden graphemic system of a
global language such as English, as young people become more familiar
with the use of digital media and the widespread use of English on the
Internet, it becomes more than obvious that Greeklish would be widely used
in modern communication environments (Koutsogiannis, 2012). The fact
that children who attend private schools, and who tend to represent a particular social group, use the Latin script to a greater extent is related to the
fact that they encounter both of these conditions (ICTs and the extended
use of English) much earlier and to a much greater extent than other children. Our data shows that private school students are much more likely to
have more than one computer at home (62.8 percent) as compared to public
school students (23.8 percent).
My recent research confirms the tensions in the 2006 research. From
the recent study it is clear that digital media are omnipresent in many
pupils’ everyday lives. In this context, Greeklish has become the dominant
script children use when they start to participate in, mainly, chat rooms or
Facebook and, to a lesser extent, when texting on mobile phones. In this
recent sample, all children use the Latin script when they begin chatting
or in Facebook postings, except for two children who were not allowed by
their parents to use chat rooms and social media. It seems that Greeklish
has become an essential semiotic resource for young children realizing their
youth identities in digital environments.
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This is evident from their answers to a question about why they used the
Latin script online. Many answers rely on the fact that this is the norm, as
we can read from two indicative quotes:
410.6 I do not know, but since I can see all of them [his friends] writing
in Greeklish, why should I be different? (Case 12)
572. O.K., with friends, whether you like it or not, you’ll use Greeklish
(Case 16)
Interestingly, though, some pupils refer to two more reasons for using
Greeklish, namely, that they are able to type faster (cases 4, 12) and that
they avoid the problems of Greek spelling rules (cases 4, 12, 15). It should
be noted that using the Greek alphabet requires many spelling rules, since
Greek orthography is historical. I quote below two illustrative examples:
(Case 4).
127. Q: How come you chose it? [Greeklish]
128. A: It’s more convenient. I need no spelling. I type faster.
(Case 15)
425. Q: What about Facebook? You said you log in?
426. A: Yes.
...
430. A: I’ll chat with a friend.
431. Q: Using Greeklish, too?
432. A: Yes. This is what we mostly use. It’s easier—no spelling and such.
It follows, from the above, that the use of the Latin alphabet is the dominant
choice in children’s vernacular digital writing. From the data it is apparent that this choice results from, among others,7 the fact that children type
faster and avoid the difficulties of Greek historical orthography.
The Greeklish “War”
Data so far indicates that Greek children use Greeklish extensively, especially
when chatting and on Facebook. Following the prevailing argument of ecosocial discourse means that such children’s practices are of potential interest
for the school. Yet, things are not so simple. The “Greeklish problem” arouses
heated debates in Greek society and The Academy of Athens8 has intervened
twice with official announcements in order to stop “the impious and foolish
attempt to replace Greek writing in its cradle.”9 In these discussions the fact
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Koutsogiannis
that the Greek alphabet has been continuously used since the eighth century
BC, and has now started being replaced, albeit partially, by the Latin, is overemphasized (Koutsogiannis & Mitsikopoulou, 2003).
This negative attitude is also reflected among the majority of pupils’ parents. Thus, from informal discussions and interviews, it becomes clear that
most parents are opposed to the use of Greeklish in their children’s online
writing, although they do not always actively intervene to prevent their children from writing in Greeklish. Most of the arguments employed against
it have a pedagogic basis; they argue that the use of the Latin script creates
problems in pupils’ spelling, that children risk forgetting their own language, and that this practice would cause difficulties in writing, in general.
I quote below two illustrative examples:
294. No, no it is not acceptable, this is unacceptable; it [Greeklish] is
not a language. No, no, this is not a language; one should speak either
English or Greek. Greeklish is for illiterate people. (Parent 8)
223. I believe it distorts the way children should express themselves . . . Spelling is a major problem, anyway. If we use this style of writing, we’ll forget even the things we know. (Parent 10)
Pupils’ parents, however, express a general and wider-held view, as it has
already been noted. It is indicative that, in 2011, Radio Arvila, a satirical
television show—very popular among young people—started a campaign
against the use of the Latin script when typing Greek. The first three lines
of their television spot10 reflect the general tone and argument: “One of the
few things left in this country one can be proud of is our language. Right
now a whole generation types incessantly in Greeklish, a whole generation
has almost forgotten how to use the Greek script.”
This discourse against Greeklish seems to have started influencing the script
choice of some children, as made apparent in the second study. Namely, four
out of the sixteen children from our sample have shifted from the Latin to the
Greek alphabet: two of them said that they were influenced by the campaign
of Radio Arvila (cases 1 and 13), while the other two (cases 7 and 5) express the
well-known arguments from the dominant discourse against Greeklish. Below
is an indicative excerpt from a conversation with one of these children:
(Case 7)
866. Q: How come you’ve changed?
867. A: I read something on the Internet; it talked about Greeklish and
said that we are Greek yet write in English and support the English and
things like that and I didn’t like it and that’s when I changed.
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From data analysis, two trends are evident in relation to the use of the
Greek script when writing in vernacular digital literacy practices (Barton,
2010; Davies, 2012). One is centrifugal, with children as the main agents
using the Latin script, and the other centripetal. The latter is primarily
derived from adults, but it seems to have started having an influence on
children. Having the Greek reality in digital communication as a starting
point, in the next section I discuss the three shortcomings of most current
literature noted above.
Developing Critical Perspectives
From Overgeneralization to Multidimensionality
Given the fact that Greeklish is widely used in digital communication, it is
reasonable that it has a functional role in the context of the local economy
of communication. The next example is indicative of how Greeklish has
become very well incorporated in pupils’ everyday literacy practices.
The example comes from a case study student’s Facebook page. The student posted a photo of herself with her cousin. Seeing this photograph, their
uncle commented: “I love you, anipsakia mou!!!!” (I love you, my little niece
and nephew). It is interesting to focus on the choices their uncle made in this
message: he chose a combination of semiotic resources to demonstrate his
love and closeness to his nephews. Specifically, he uses:
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English language—I love you
Greeklish (anipsakia mou)—my niece and nephew
The diminutive suffix -akia (anips-akia) + the possessive pronoun mou
(my), as an expression of endearment.
English and Greeklish function here emblematically (Blommaert, 2010),
since, as choices, they are closer to the children’s semiotic world. The adolescents’ answers (“so do we, dear uncle” “as said, we do too, uncle dear,” “και
εμείς θειούλη,” “όπως το είπε και εμείς θειούλη”) show a high degree
of awareness about the functional use of the two scripts. So, they switched
to the Greek script, knowing that they weren’t writing to a peer, although
they maintained their warmth toward their uncle, using the diminutive
“θειούλη” (verbatim: little uncle, as a term of endearment).
This example makes it clear that Greeklish has become another available semiotic resource—mainly for young people—used when designing
their communication (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012; Kress, 2010). Many children know very well when to use or avoid Greeklish and they do so with
high sociolinguistic or critical digital literacy (Dowdall, 2009) awareness.
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Following one of the main arguments of the eco-social discourse, it could
be said that schools struggle to cultivate a similar high sociolinguistic awareness, despite numerous teaching hours being spent on similar topics. It could
also be said that schools have to bridge this gap between creative children’s
out-of-school literacy practices and monotonous school reality.
However, although these specific literacy practices could be very well
comprehended in the new global context of communication and thoroughly studied through a contemporary sociolinguistic lens, it is difficult
to handle the issue from a purely local educational perspective. We have
seen from the data that the dominant discourse circulating both officially
and unofficially runs firmly against the use of Greeklish and other similar literacy practices in Greek schools. It is no coincidence that very few
would conceive, at this moment in time, of supporting the basic argument
of the dominant eco-social discourse—that out-of-school literacy practices
involving Greeklish are creative and that its use should be seriously considered by school stakeholders. It is indicative that the Greek school curricula
for compulsory education in 2011 includes nothing on this issue, while
dealing extensively with the use of digital media.
This indicates that one of the main arguments of the eco-social discourse
about bridging the mismatch between in and out-of-school literacy practices
should be carefully reviewed, taking into account data from non-English
speaking societies, in an attempt to highlight that this is a complex and
multidimensional matter.
Vernacular Literacies and Orders of Literacy
As I have already noted, most literature in the New Literacies Studies tradition pays extra attention to underlining the importance of the everyday and
the vernacular when researching literacies. This literature has contributed
significantly to the restoration of the prestige of the informal, the daily, the
unofficial literacy, and the enormous opportunities for informal learning
provided by digital environments (Barton, 2007; Barton & Papen, 2010).
All these are, of course, very useful, but little attention has been paid to
connecting this reality to what might be called the literacy market, to paraphrase Bourdieu (1992). Although there are no superior or inferior literacies,
not all literacies are treated as of equal value by institutions (e.g., schools,
universities, the media), by parents or, even, by children, as we have already
seen. Thus, the range or the repertoire of children’s literacy practices and,
mainly, children’s capacity for what Blommaert (2010) calls rescaling (moving from the vernacular to more highly valued literacies) is of particular
interest for research, because these differences can often be perceived in the
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nexus of social structures and inequalities. I call this wide range of literacies
children participate in and can “dance” to as orders of literacy, expanding the
Foucauldian notion of “the order of discourse” (Foucault, 1981), as used by
critical discourse analysis11 (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough,
2003). By orders of literacy I understand the network of literacy practices (in
official, unofficial, vernacular, digital, or oral settings) a child participates in
and the ways of activating, to paraphrase Heath (1983), these literacies.
From this perspective, literacy practices are strongly interconnected
with students’ literate identities; students’ identities are not just “dynamic,”
“hybrid,” or “agentive” only due to the use of digital media, but they are
activated through the wide spectrum of resources they use (genres, discourses, and semiotic material, in general) and their ways with technology
(digital or printed), to paraphrase Heath again. This means that literacies
are perceived not as open resources that anybody can equally draw on, but
as resources strongly related with issues of cultural difference, social stratification, parents’ and children’s agency, and, consequentially, with power,
access, and strategies (Koutsogiannis, 2011b; Lillis, 2013). This point shifts
the interest from an exclusive focus on digital media, from an overemphasis
on situatedness and agency in local contexts to a more holistic and critical
perspective. In other words, and following the terminology of James Gee,
orders of literacy are the other side of the spectrum of literate “Discourses”
to which a child can “dance” (Gee, 2011).
From my own research I have found that there is a common literacy
zone, within which the practices of most children converge (Koutsogiannis,
2011b). This is primarily related to vernacular literacies, where Greeklish
is also widely used, as made apparent in the examples presented above.
However, if the scientifically thinkable (Bernstein, 1996) is expanded to
include the whole range of literacies children are involved in, it becomes
obvious that the orders of literacy in which every child engages differs. What
is interesting to underline here is that such differences are strongly connected to children’s life trajectories, that is, to their structural, economic,
social, or cultural realities, and of course, to their personality and agency.
This point can be highlighted by presenting an example. It is known
that word processing software programs are some of the most frequently
used environments at school and that extensive research has been undertaken in the past for their effective utilization in the teaching of writing
(e.g., Hawisher et al., 1996). Data presented in table 11.2 is from my 2006
research study and records the extent to which word processors are used by
children at home for school assignments. It is apparent from the data that
privileged children attending private schools use such environments at home
to prepare school assignments more frequently when compared to pupils
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Table 11.2
Using word processing for educational purposes
Public schools (%)
Never
Rarely
Often
Total
Private schools (%)
9.9
34.8
55.3
100
2.6
21.0
76.3
100.0
attending state schools. It is becomes clear that children from privileged
social groups have greater opportunities for rescaling, for shifting from
vernacular digital literacy practices to school-oriented literacy practices in
their “leisure” time because of different literacy practices at home and in
schools.
In other words, research into children’s out-of-school digital literacy
practices is rather superficial if it does not include the orders of literacy the
children move on or activate, and if it does not relate these orders to their
primary socialization environments, their parents’ strategies, and the children’s agency. The range of the children’s literacy “dances” indicates the
extent and degree to which each child is capable of realizing various types of
rescaling (Blommaert, 2010), that is, being in a position to move comfortably from vernacular literacies to socially rewarded literacies.
From Translocal to Historical Perspectives
Research that takes up eco-social discourses has generally placed clear
emphasis on historical context, since the focus of this research is strongly
related to broader changes observed in technology and communications
over time and in recent decades. Such emphasis is necessary but not sufficient, because it runs the risk of studying historical phenomena using a local
or a superficial global approach.
The issue of the wide use of the Latin script by children writing in digital
environments, as well as the intense contrasts that emerge was discussed
above. When exploring the research literature, it is easy to see that this is not
only a Greek phenomenon. Comparable phenomena have been observed in
other languages and countries (see endnote 12). It seems, at first glance, that
the problem relates, above all, to languages that do not use the Latin alphabet. But if we look at it in a somewhat broader perspective, we will find that
similar discussions are also being conducted regarding English, and they
are as heated as those in the Greek context. A large part of the press and the
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media generally express intense concern that written English is changing,
and there is no dearth of publications suggesting that computer mediated
communication signals the slow death of the English language12 (Snyder,
2008; Thurlow, 2006).
It could thus be said that such changes are not only related to some languages or to specific writing systems, but are rather broader changes supported by or acquiring a specific content with the widespread use of new
media; yet, they are not simply due to such new environments. Recent
research indicates that this instability in spelling is a global rather than
merely a local phenomenon (Sebba, 2007, 2009) and that these changes
are the outcome of yet broader changes (economic, social, cultural) and not
exclusively related to the new media (Baron, 2008; Crystal, 2008; Kress
2010).
In this context the case study of children’s tendency to use the Latin
script for writing Greek—because they “need no spelling” and they “type
faster” can be better comprehended. These global trends toward changes
in written communication have their local versions, and new technologies
certainly play some role in the type and extent of such changes without,
however, being exclusively responsible. Kress’ research is relevant here, since
it focuses attention on changes in the representation of meaning. He underlines that changes in communication are not simply related to the particularities of new communication media, but closely associated with the sort
of subjectivity reinforced by modern society, a “subjectivity preferred by the
market,” “a subjectivity with deeply different social, conceptual and ethical considerations and requirements to those of ‘worker’ or ‘citizen’” (Kress,
2010, p. 20).
This final point shifts the discussion in another direction, one that deals
with literacy in its wider historical context. In this case, the question is not
only whether there is imbalance between the children’s in-school and outof-school digital literacy practices, but with the actual characteristics of the
global “cultural context”—as Halliday (2007) would have it—of which literacies are a constitutional part. In this case, the discussion takes a much
clearer critical and political character (Gee, 2011), since it can directly focus
on the kind of society within which children are socializing and, therefore,
the type of school and pedagogy (Leander, 2009) that could respond to such
a society.
Conclusions
The aim of this chapter has been to discuss schooled literacy in the light
of changes observed in new technologies and communications in recent
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decades from a critical perspective. Such changes are so significant and so
strongly intertwined with children’s daily lives that most relevant literature proposes that dreary school literacy practices should be reviewed and
changed, taking into consideration productive out-of-school children’s digital literacy practices. For the purpose of presenting this argument, I used
data from two studies conducted in 2006 and in 2011–2012, concerning the
use of Greeklish by Greek adolescents.
Based on this data, I focused on three issues that are underdiscussed
in relevant literature. The first one relates to the fact that, although the
discourse suggests global changes in communication, research data comes
mainly from English-speaking societies, painting a partial picture of what
is really happening in children’s digital practices worldwide and of how easy
it is to connect these with school reality. Data analysis has demonstrated
that undertaking research in different cultural and linguistic contexts may
be productive in the direction of rethinking the dominant argument on the
“home-school mismatch hypothesis” and of contributing to a more critical
understanding of what I have called “the third circle” (see introduction).
The second issue has to do with the narrow focus of most related studies
that concentrate on some, mainly digital, literacies, while avoiding the full
range of children’s literacy practices, on what I have called orders of literacy.
This research orientation makes it difficult to incorporate critical parameters
concerning the structuration of new forms of inequality. The consequence
of this is that critical social and cultural factors, strongly related to literacies
and social inequalities, are unexplored or underdiscussed.
Finally, the third issue is related to the notion of context (Reder &
Davila, 2005), which is examined at a purely local level without any attempt
to read the new literacy reality at a macro-historical level. The reasonable
consequence of this is that discussions on school literacy are made under the
pressure of the ephemeral and the technologically new, without taking into
account political or historical parameters. The following quote from Kress
(2010) perfectly encapsulates the deeper argument about this issue:
Clearly, the agency of learners now has to be taken seriously and placed
at the centre of pedagogic attention. Equally, clearly, the insights, understandings, values, knowledges which are the result of centuries and millennia of social and cultural work, cannot and should not suddenly be
ditched. (p. 145)
In general, my argument is that the study of children’s digital literacy practices is of high priority for current research. This research, however, needs
to be significantly enriched using a number of additional avenues, namely,
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the relationship between the local and the global, the importance of the historical dimension of the phenomena being studied while avoiding dominant
dichotomies between inside and outside school or old and new, online and
offline, digital and print. Placing emphasis on understanding literacy practices at a higher level of abstraction—orders of literacy—has the potential to
significantly contribute to linking literacies with personal and social experiences and overcoming the aforementioned binary distinctions. Finally, such
a level of abstraction is useful for understanding dynamic approaches proposed in the literature, for example, the significance of the “transcontextual”
(Brandt & Clinton, 2002, p. 343), and of “how activities in different spaces
inflect each other” (Burnett & Merchant, 2014, p. 45) and the specification
of the content of what Leander (2009) has called “parallel pedagogy.”
Notes
1. For interesting contributions in this direction, see Lillis (2013), Zhaoa and van
Leeuwen (2014), and Eisenlauer (2013).
2. For exception see, for example, Black (2006), Lam (2009), and Leppänen et al.,
(2009).
3. Binary distinctions such as old/new, online/offline, digital/print “recur and
proliferate in the literature” and define how literacies are understood (Burnett
& Merchant, 2014: 37).
4. For indicative examples, see Danet and Herring (2007), Palfreyman and Al
Khalil (2003), and Spassov (2012).
5. The data presented in this paper was collected as part of a larger project entitled “Formulation of innovative methodology for educational scenaria based
on ICT and formulation of educational scenaria for Greek language teaching lessons at Primary and Secondary Education,” which is included in the
Operational Programme “Education and Lifelong Learning,” cofinanced by
the European Commission with funds from the National Strategic Reference
Framework (NSRF) (2007–2013), and developed by the Centre for the Greek
Language, Thessaloniki, Greece. The author would like to thank the schools,
the teachers, the parents, and the students who participated in the research.
6. All the questions and answers of the interviews have been numbered. The numbers used in our analysis correspond to particular fragments of the interviews.
7. For an extensive discussion, see Koutsogiannis (2012).
8. The Academy of Athens is a prestigious national institution analogous to the
French Academy of Sciences. Their official web page states that the main purpose of the Academy of Athens “is the cultivation and advancement of the
Sciences, Humanities and Fine Arts, the conduct of scientific research and
study, and the offer of learned advices to the state in these areas.” (http://www
.academyofathens.gr/ecHome.asp?lang=2)
9. http://xenesglosses.eu/2013/09/greeklish-4/ [Accessed on February 13, 2014]
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10. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CW35IF9AQs
11. See also the notion of “orders of indexicality” used by Blommaert (2010) and
“the order of books” used by Chartier (1994) (from Barton & Papen, 2010).
12. See also the heated debates around spelling reform in Germany in 1990s
(Johnson, 2005).
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schooling. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 8(3), 36–54. Retrieved from
http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/files/etpc/files/2009v8n3art3.pdf
Davies, J. (2012). Facework on Facebook as a new literacy practice. Computers &
Composition, 59, 19–29. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.11.007
Dowdall, C. (2009). Masters and critics: Children as producers of online digital
texts. In V. Carrington & M. Robinson (Eds.), Digital literacies (pp. 43–61).
London: Sage.
Eisenlauer, V. (2013). A critical hypertext analysis of social media. London:
Bloomsbury.
Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London:
Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1981). The order of discourse. In R. Young (Ed.), Untying the text: A
post-structuralist reader (pp. 48–78). Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Gee, J. (2010). New digital media and learning as an emerging area and “worked
examples” as one way forward. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Gee, J. (2011). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method (3rd ed.).
Halliday, M. A. K. (2007). The notion of “context” in language education. In
J. Webster (Ed.), Language and education: v. 9 (Collected works of M. A. K.
Halliday) (pp. 269–290). New York: Continuum.
Hawisher, G., LeBlanc, P., Moran, C., & Selfe, C. (1996). Computers and the teaching of writing in American higher education, 1979–1994: A History. Norwood,
New Jersey: Ablex.
Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, S. (2005). Spelling trouble? Language, ideology and the reform of German
orthography. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2012). Literacies. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Koutsogiannis, D. (2007). A political multi-layered approach to researching
children’s digital literacy practices. Language and Education, 21(3), 216–231. doi:
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Koutsogiannis, D. (2009). Discourses in researching children’s digital literacy practices: Reviewing the “home/school mismatch hypothesis.” In D. Koutsogiannis
& M. Arapopoulou (Eds.), Literacy, new technologies and education: Aspects of the
local and global (pp. 207–230). Thessaloniki, Greece: Zitis.
Koutsogiannis, D. (2011a). ICTs and language teaching: The missing third circle. In G. Stickel & T. Váradi (Eds.), Language, languages and new technologies
(pp. 43–59). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Koutsogiannis, D. (2011b). Adolescents’ digital literacy practices and identities.
Thessaloniki: Centre for the Greek Language. [In Greek].
Koutsogiannis, D. (2012). Greeklish and globalness. In Z. Gavriilidou,
A. Efthymiou, E. Thomadaki & P. Kambakis-Vougiouklis, (Eds.), Selected papers
on the 10th International Conference of Greek Linguistics. Komotini: Democritus
University of Thrace. [In Greek].
Koutsogiannis, D., & Adampa, V. (2012). Girls, identities and agency in adolescents’
digital literacy practices, Journal of Writing Research, 3(3), 217–247. http://www
.jowr.org/articles/vol3_3/JoWR_2012_vol3_nr3_Koutsogiannis_and_Adampa
.pdf
Koutsogiannis, D., & Mitsikopoulou, B. (2003). Greeklish and Greekness: Trends
and discourses of “glocalness.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication,
9(1). doi: 10.1111/j.1083–6101.2003.tb00358.x
Koutsogiannis, D., & Mitsikopoulou, B. (2004). The internet as a glocal discourse
environment. Language Learning & Technology, 8(3), 83–89. Retrieved from
http://llt.msu.edu/vol8num3/koutsogiannis/default.html
Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. New York: Routledge.
Lam, W. S. E. (2009). Multiliteracies on instant messaging in negotiating local,
translocal, and transnational affiliations: A case of an adolescent immigrant.
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Leander, K. (2009). Composing with old and new media: Towards a parallel pedagogy. In V. Carrington, & M. Robinson (Eds.), Digital literacies (pp.147–163).
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school: Who is managing whom? Literacy, 47(2), 79–87. doi: 10.1111/j.
1741–4369.2012.00679.x
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(2009). Young people’s translocal new media uses: A multiperspective analysis of
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lectures. Classroom Discourse, 5(1), 71–90. doi:10.1080/19463014.2013.859848
CHAPTER 12
The Lake Highlands One-to-One
Laptop Initiative: NCLB, Drill and
Practice and the Formation of
a Relational Network
David Shutkin
Introduction
In the fall of 2008, the Lake Highlands School District unveiled its Laptop
and Learning Initiative in a rollout event at Jefferson Middle School.
Creating a 1:1 ratio of MacBook computers for middle school teachers and
students, the Lake Highlands initiative is an expression of the district’s commitment to “the future.” In their own words, this future requires the preparation of students to participate as well-educated citizens in an increasingly
interdependent and technologically advanced global society.
A few months earlier, during the spring semester, a team of administrators from the district, led by Greg Loyda, director of Educational Services
and coordinator of the MacBook initiative, approached the chairperson of
the Department of Education at my university to discuss the laptop initiative. As a participant in these meetings and an educational technologist, I
was invited to design and teach a course to help them integrate the laptop
initiative across the middle school curriculum.
The Lake Highlands is an economically and racially diverse inner-ring
suburban school district located in a metropolitan area in the Midwest
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region of the United States. Seventy percent of the students in the district
are African American; more than 50 percent qualify for federally funded
free or reduced breakfast and/or lunch. During the 2008–2009 school year,
less than 45 percent of the households of students in the district had access
to the Internet. And during this same school year, the average level of proficiency in grades 6–8 across the district’s three middle schools was 56.4 percent in mathematics and 63.5 percent in reading.1
For about a year, I worked with teachers, students, administrators, and
technical support personnel in the district.2 Through narrative inquiry, I
consider their lived experiences and involvement in the Lake Highlands
Laptop Technology and Learning Initiative. Narrative inquiry is a naturalistic and self-reflective research methodology that emphasizes lived experience
and local context (Conle, 2000; Clandinin & Huber, 2002). My primary
strategy was to learn their stories and perspectives through observation and
participation, to form their stories and perspectives into a meaningful narrative, and to “restory” them by identifying and analyzing emergent themes
informed by actor-network theory (Creswell, 2008; Ellis, 2004).
For this chapter, my research questions and participant mode of inquiry
have led me closer to actor-network theory and its material semiotics (Latour,
1991, 1993, 2002; Law, 2002, 2008, 2009). Informed by actor-network
theory, I describe how drill and practice, as an antiquated form of educational technology, persists as part of a relational network of technological
innovation, behavioral psychology, federal legislation, corporate interests,
and managerial techniques, and thus continues to inform contemporary
school reform initiatives. In this way, I develop how the attributes of certain
technologies, emphasizing drill and practice courseware, laptop computers
and Web 2.0 applications, in conjunction with the requirements of federal
policies, such as the No Child Left Behind Legislation (NCLB), the myriad
actions of teachers, students, and school administrators, and other aspects of
the network, constrain and condition the laptop initiative.
NCLB, as an instance of audit culture, can be characterized by accountability schemes, the logics of management, and a focus on efficiency. This
emerges through a local narrative I develop based on the course I taught.
Challenging the district’s emphasis on the integration of Web 2.0 applications to teach twenty-first-century skills, the teachers and principals in the
course expressed their concern about learning to use drill and practice technology to better prepare their students for the high-stakes achievement tests
associated with NCLB.
I then develop a narrative about the Children’s Internet Protection Act
(CIPA), the district’s Internet filter, and Keith Broadnax, the director of
information technology for the district. Directly contradicting the goals of
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the laptop initiative, his interpretation of the CIPA leads to the use of the
district’s Internet filter to block access to all Web 2.0 applications within
the district. While the teachers and principals in my course were primarily interested in learning more about the efficient use of drill and practice,
they were still incensed by the technical means through which the district
blocked their access to Web 2.0 applications.
In the following section, I develop a narrative based on my observations
of students’ use of drill and practice courseware and a subsequent conversation I shared with four eighth grade girls from the district about their experiences using drill and practice courseware to prepare for the language arts
sections of the achievement test. From here I develop a more theoretical discussion about the attributes of drill and practice courseware and essentialist
perspectives about technology. To overcome this technological essentialism,
I consider how the meanings and functions of a given technology cannot be
reduced to an extension of human capacity.
Reflecting on the first year of the Lake Highlands Laptop and Learning
Initiative, in the concluding section, I consider why it was less than successful in using technology to teach students critical thinking and knowledge skills. Obviously, any interest the teachers or students had in learning
experiences featuring twenty-first-century skills and Web 2.0 applications
were eclipsed by pressures associated with NCLB and the district’s use of
the Internet filter. However, I assert that the very design of the laptop initiative, tacitly based on misguided assumptions associated with the diffusion of innovations theory, fails to account for the mutual conditioning of
the heterogeneous network of elements assembled in relation to NCLB.
Rollout Night
With the course scheduled for the spring semester, that fall I was invited to
attend the rollout event when every middle school student was to receive
a MacBook. It was a cool evening in October. After dinner I rode the bus
several miles to Jefferson Middle School. Once inside the school, I followed
a series of signs along a narrow corridor leading to the main office where I
signed in and received a nametag to stick on my jacket.
Moments later, I entered the auditorium where the evening’s events were
scheduled to begin. Hundreds of middle school students were present with
their parents. Until the lights were dimmed, there was a constant buzz; I
could feel the students’ excitement. To the cheers, smiles, and rousing
enthusiasm of everyone in attendance, from the students, their parents, and
from the many invited guests, Dr. Virginia Neal, the district superintendent, rose from her chair and walked to the podium. She welcomed everyone
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to the evening’s event and in a brief speech, offered her vision of the Lake
Highlands Laptop Initiative:
The 21st century is emerging as a century of global trade, where more
children speak English in China than in The United States. It is emerging as a digital century and our children must be prepared with the skills
to compete . . . To safeguard the future for our nation, our children need
to apply their new technical skills to develop the critical thinking and
problem solving skills to compete in the global market place . . . In this
era, to educate our children, we cannot use yesterday’s teaching methods to teach tomorrow’s knowledge workers the skills to safeguard our
nation’s future; boredom in school must give way to engagement and to
this end we need the Lake Highlands Laptop Initiative.
As she stepped away from the podium, the auditorium filled with applause.
Students and their parents filed out of the auditorium and dispersed to three
separate rooms for the next event listed on the program. I followed a family walking ahead of me to the gymnasium. Once there, our attention was
directed to the back of the room where several large carts were stacked with
boxes upon boxes of Apple MacBooks. Parents were instructed to read and
sign the district’s acceptable use form and the students were instructed to
bring the signed forms up to the carts when their names were called. A
simple exchange and a check mark by the student’s name would ensure that
everything was done according to plan.
Relational Thinking and Material Semiotics
in the Lake Highlands
To discuss the formation of an actor network or assemblage that includes the
Lake Highlands Laptop Initiative, my analysis draws on material semiotics
(Latour, 1991, 2002; Law, 2002, 2009) as I describe how elements such
as educational policies, information technologies, and school personnel are
enrolled in the network. The concept of the network or assemblage used in
actor-network theory is genealogical (Foucault, 1988) not linear; it evolves
as a heterogeneous ensemble of mutually conditioning and interconnected
elements whose interaction effects are difficult to predict (Latour, 2002).
Of central importance, each element derives its meaning relationally
through associations forged with other elements enrolled in the assemblage
(Law, 2002, 2009; Rose, 2007). The meaning of drill and practice courseware, as the central element of this chapter, is forged through the system
of relations formed with other elements enrolled in the assemblage. In the
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case of the laptop initiative, the significance of drill and practice emerges in
relation to basic skills, lower-level thinking, NCLB, high-stakes testing, and
associated managerial and accountability schemes. At the same time, drill
and practice derives meaning in relation to differences between it and Web
2.0 applications. Thinking generally about material semiotics and relational
thinking, Law (2002) writes, “the significance of [any element] is arbitrary
though highly determined by the network or relations of difference. It is
indeed a relational effect” (p. 91). Drawing from Foucault (1980), I describe
the mutual conditioning or interaction effects of elements to express this
relational aspect. For this study, in the field of educational technology an
assemblage of elements is formed linking the educational experiences of
middle school students and the practices of teachers and school administrators with federal policies, management information systems, drill and practice courseware, and the tacit proliferation of behavioral psychology.
Actor-network theory also refuses to distinguish the macro from the
micro and instead explores how networks extend rhizomatically from the
very local to the global, and frequently in the same instance (Brown &
Capdivila, 1999). In this case, NCLB might be federal policy but its significance is realized from Washington DC to Midwestern classrooms, as the
assemblage is forged with middle school students and includes ceremonial
speeches given by President George Bush. Importantly, Law (2002) points
out that
ANT [actor-network theory] treats technology as a network, and this is
an analysis that can be applied to different levels of scale. For instance,
a vessel can be imagined as a network: hull, spars, sails, ropes, guns,
food stores, sleeping quarters and crew . . . And on a larger scale, the
Portuguese imperial system as a whole, with its ports, vessels, military
dispositions, markets, and merchants can also be thought of in the same
terms. (p. 93)
From a relational perspective, the inclusion of drill and practice courseware
in the NCLB network establishes conditions in the present that make possible a unique emphasis on the courseware to prepare students for highstakes achievement tests. This emphasis means that there is no essence to
drill and practice courseware transcending these present relations. However,
there were comparable emphases on drill and practice in other times, in relation to other networks. For instance, during the postwar era, from the mid1950s through the early 1970s, during the heyday of behavioral psychology,
drill and practice, often referred to as programmed instruction, was associated with the work of B. F. Skinner. Yet the development of programmed
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instruction at that time, whether analogue or computer-assisted, involved
much more than the will and genius of a single, though capable behavioral
psychologist. Nor can it be reduced to a dog and pony show resulting in the
alluring embrace of drill and practice courseware across the field of education. Instead, the proliferation of computer-assisted programmed instruction
in the mid-1950s leveraged millions of dollars in federally funded research
projects combining the efforts of the military, universities, and private corporations. It also involved contributions from public schools, the establishment of a dedicated journal, the publication of books and research articles,
the proliferation of professional organizations, and the development of programming techniques (Reiser, 1987). Together, these established a viable
drill and practice actor network. Noble (1991) underscores the extensive role
of the military in the on-going research and development of drill and practice during this period:3
The history of teaching machines and programmed instruction, the
development of which was originally almost exclusively a military
endeavor . . . In fact, the Army, Navy, and Air Force were first to express
interest . . . and sponsored and developed them before they were eventually introduced into the public schools. Only later did corporate excursions in the early 1960s flood the “education market” with commercial
ventures in the technology. (p. 23)
The historically specific conditions that made an emphasis on drill and
practice possible in the postwar era differ considerable from the conditions
of the historical present. This is not to essentialize or reify drill and practice courseware by tracing it back through time to some perceived origin.
About this, Latour (2002) is quite clear as he writes, “if we are not careful,
we would reduce technologies to the role of instruments that merely give a
more durable shape to schemes, forms, and relations that are already present
in another form and in other materials” (p. 250).
When Latour (1991) asserts that technology is “society made durable,” he
is not referring to some technological essence that subsumes the attributes
of society through time but rather to the capacity of the assemblage, comprised of a multiplicity of elements including technologies, to sustain itself
at a particular time. This is echoed by Law (2009) who affirms, “in the end
it is the configuration of the web that produces durability. Stability does
not inhere in materials themselves” (p. 148). Significantly, in my discussion
of the NCLB network there was no mention of Web 2.0 or twenty-firstcentury skills even as these ideas occupied the imagination and efforts of the
architects of the laptop initiative.
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Twenty-First-Century Skills and Web 2.0 in
the Lake Highlands
In the summer prior to the laptop roll out, I met regularly with Greg Loyda,
the coordinator of the Lake Highlands Laptop Initiative. During those
meetings, he emphasized the district’s interests in combining the integration
of the MacBooks with pedagogic strategies for integrating Web 2.0 applications to teach twenty-first-century skills. He firmly believed that real and
lasting change was possible if the initiative would be combined with effective leadership and professional development.
Loyda spoke with knowledge and enthusiasm about the Partnership for
21st Century Skills, a consortium of influential corporations and other
organizations advocating for change in education. Among the changes they
recommend is a focus on teaching students what they refer to as twentyfirst-century skills organized around the following general themes: creativity and innovation; critical thinking and problem solving; communication
and collaboration; information, media, and technology; and life and career
(Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009). Loyda also referred to Tony
Wagner’s (2008) book, The Global Achievement Gap, that places a similar
emphasis on preparing students with critical thinking or higher order reasoning skills and competencies. Building on the superintendent’s speech
from the rollout night, he asserted that knowledge of and the wherewithal
to use twenty-first-century skills is essential to the success of the district’s
laptop initiative and to the future of the Lake Highlands middle school
students.
Loyda also referred to recent white papers and popular articles describing the potential of Web 2.0 applications to transform education in a manner consistent with the focus of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.
According to these sources, across the county and around the world teachers
were learning to design educationally meaningful and pedagogically significant strategies for integrating Web 2.0 applications into classroom practice
(Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel, Clinton, & Robinson, 2009; Prensky, 2008).
Web 2.0 applications, including tools for blogging, networking, and information organization such as Webspiration, Blogger, WikiSpaces, and Prezi,
are web-based design, publishing, and collaboration applications that can
be used from any computer with access to the Internet. The user, whether a
student or a teacher, need only browse the online site and log in to his or her
account where menu-driven and user-friendly design and publication tools
are made available. Loyda encouraged me to place emphasis on the course
on the design of technologically enhanced learning environments, featuring
Web 2.0 applications and twenty-first-century skills.
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In a review of Wagner’s (2008) book, Toch (2011) urges that the curricular emphasis of K-12 education must shift to emphasize these twentyfirst-century skills and competencies. Both Wagner and Toch are critical
of the US Federal Government’s focus on high-stakes testing, which relies
on short answer assessments to measure student proficiency in basic skills
and lower-level thinking needed only to recall factual information. Such an
emphasis, Toch (2011) concludes, encourages many teachers to make test
preparation and learning such skills and factual information the focus of
classroom instruction. Flowers (2009) concedes, in a similar review, that
these multiple choice achievement tests are more cost effective to produce,
administer, and assess, and, he concludes, the results are more useful for
politicians. Indeed, at the federal and state levels, the form, content, and
results of these high-stakes achievement tests had become the center piece
of NCLB’s accountability scheme, conforming, as they do, to the neoliberal
practices of an audit culture.
No Child Left Behind as Audit Culture
With the advent in 2002 of the federal reauthorization of the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act, commonly known as No Child Left Behind
(NCLB), accountability schemes and managerial practices are transferred
more directly from governmental and business sectors through on-site training and professional development opportunities to establish an emergent
audit culture in K-12 education (Apple, 2007; Taubman, 2009). The centerpiece of this audit culture in the field of education is, of course, the state
administered achievement tests. According to NCLB, all students are to be
proficient in math and reading by 2014. Schools and their teachers are to be
held accountable for the level of proficiency earned by their students on state
achievement tests. Defined by NCLB, Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is the
metric devised by the US Department of Education to measure the academic
performance on standardized tests of public schools and school districts. In
a speech made just prior to leaving office in January 2009, President Bush,
advancing his version of the language of accountability, measurement, and
testing, outlines the basic tenets of NCLB:4
The philosophy behind the law is pretty straightforward: local schools
remain under local control. In exchange for federal dollars, however, we
expect results. We’re spending money on schools, and shouldn’t we determine whether or not the money we’re spending is yielding the results
society expects? So states set standards . . . And we hold schools accountable for meeting the standards. There—we set an historic goal, and that
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is to—every child should learn to read and do math at grade level by
2014. The key to measuring is to test . . . How can you possibly determine
whether a child can read at grade level if you don’t test? And for those who
claim we’re teaching the test, uh-uh. We’re teaching a child to read so he
or she can pass the test . . . Measurement is essential to success . . . It’s—to
me, measurement is the gateway to true reform. (President Bush, January
8, 2009)
NCLB conforms generally to the neoliberal practices of an audit culture
marked by the emergence of an accountability scheme that subordinates
“questions of quality to the logics of management” (Taubman, 2009, p. 109).
It is assumed that if the accountability scheme is properly designed and efficiently managed, quality will be manifest. Audit culture is based on the
premise that governing officials can govern from a distance, needing only to
evaluate the evidence once produced and submitted (Strathern, 2005). Once
the criteria for evidence are made evident to individuals at the local level,
they are held accountable. Government can then focus on evaluating the
evidence obtained as indicators of AYP. The state need not rely on practices
of coercion to gain assent, as individual teachers and school principals conform (readily for most though reluctantly for many) to the expectations of
these emergent accountability schemes, of standards-based education, and
high-stakes achievement tests. Taubman (2009) explains that through low
status, increased workload, fear of job security, and so on:
[I]ndividual teachers come to apply to themselves [techniques] of self-regulation that render them retroactively dysfunctional— before I used rubrics
or specific standards or student evaluations or needs assessments or group
work or Ramp Up to Literacy or performance outcomes, I must not have
been doing my job—and liable to a precarious future—if test scores don’t
rise, if the evaluations are bad, if I don’t follow the script, I am sunk—in
which they can be cast again and again as dysfunctional. (p. 107)
Through these governmental techniques of the self (Rose, 1999; Shutkin,
2005), the federal government defers to the states; the states defer to the districts; the districts defer to the schools; and the schools defer to the teachers
to teach, to measure, and to be accountable.
Molly and Audit Culture in the Lake Highlands
Perhaps unknown to Greg Loyda, this audit culture appears to inform the
conduct and sensibilities of teachers and principals in the Lake Highlands.
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In one instance during the technology integration course I was teaching for
the district, when we were discussing the integration of twenty-first-century
skills, a language arts teacher in the class, Molly Reynolds, declared with
evident trepidation that she had never learned critical thinking skills and
wasn’t certain how to teach them to her students. In class the following
week, Mary Collins, the principal at Ripley Middle School, in support of
what Molly had said the previous week, indicated that the achievement tests
emphasize the recall of discrete factual knowledge, not twenty-first-century
skills. Test preparation was the main emphasis of instruction in the Lake
Highlands and so emphasis on learning, drilling, practicing, and retaining
factual knowledge would remain the emphasis of classroom instruction at
her school. This was immediately echoed by John Smallins, the principal at
Jefferson Middle School, who was also taking the course.
Indeed, with one tentative yet persuasive comment, Molly Reynolds
interrupted district efforts to focus my class on twenty-first-century skills
and Web 2.0 applications. It became evident to me that Molly and her fellow
educators had been made subject to a central notion of audit culture, the displacement of trust established between two people. In this case, it was a trust
between district level administration and school-based teachers and principals (Strathern, 2005). This trust was displaced by an accountability scheme
deployed by the district in response to NCLB. In so doing, Molly abruptly
reminded everyone, myself included, that the laptop initiative, including my
technology integration course, had better prepare her and her students to
meet the benchmark goals for AYP.
In public school districts across the United States, including in the Lake
Highlands, the present focus on the development of basic skills in math and
reading informs the experience of being in school as teachers and students
are pressed into a steady regimen of test preparation: worksheets, digital
drills, practice tests (Apple, 2007; Taubman, 2009; Warschauer, 2011). The
emphasis is on student mastery of basic skills and their memorization of
discrete facts, the type of information that is most commonly encountered
on the tests. Once thought to be an indicator of the effectiveness of the
schools, as teachers are pressured to teach to the tests, the tests have become
the main focus.
The Internet Filter Blocks Web 2.0 Applications
At just about the same time that Molly and Mary made plain their need
for our class to focus our explorations of technology integration on pedagogic techniques for learning factual knowledge and basic skills, the use
of district servers to access Web 2.0 applications was undermined. In the
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course I designed as a complement to the district’s laptop initiative, Web
2.0 applications were to be a pedagogical feature and a central part of the
curriculum. At the time, Web 2.0 was relatively new and exciting for me,
for Greg Loyda, and for the teachers and principals enrolled in the course.
Across the country and around the world teachers were learning to design
educationally meaningful and pedagogically significant strategies for integrating Webspiration, PBWorks, Prezi, and so many other Web 2.0 applications into classroom practice (Jenkins et al., 2009; Prensky, 2008). Yet
many other educators emphasized the risks that the Internet, including
social media and Web 2.0 applications, presents to the integrity and security of school networks, to the realization of educational goals conventionally conceived and to the safety of students (Millea, Galatis, & McAllister,
2009; Wolinsky, 2008).
Years before, politicians at the federal level recognized a need for legislation to protect children attending schools, and in the year 2000 the US
Congress passed the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). As Federal
Law, CIPA imposes regulations on any school that receives funding for
Internet access through the Federal E-rate Program. To be in compliance
with CIPA, schools established Internet safety policies to include “technology
protection measures” to block or filter access by minors to content deemed
harmful to them. According to the law, the determination of what material
is harmful is to be made locally by whatever authority in a school district
is responsible for making the required determination (U.S. Government
Printing Office, 2000).
The technology protection measures used in the Lake Highlands takes
the form of an Internet filter developed by S62 Protective Services, Inc.5 The
use of the S62 Internet Filter is in accordance with CIPA as well as the district’s acceptable use policy. Under the auspices of the Lake Highlands Board
of Education, the director of information technology, Dr. Keith Broadnax,
manages and coordinates the integration and use of the S62 Internet Filter.
An attorney as well, Dr. Broadnax is also responsible for interpreting the
CIPA, including the integration of the S62 Internet Filter into the district’s
network.
During our conversations in the summer before the roll out, Broadnax
was emphatic about issues of risk management and the avoidance of any legal
action in relation to the slightest probability that any child might stumble
upon a website with inappropriate materials. Reaching beyond CIPA, the
S62 harbored the potential for a broader range of “protective measures” and
so, Dr. Broadnax configured the S62 to block all Web 2.0 applications,
including those sites with demonstrated pedagogical potential and relevance
such as Google Docs, Tumblr, and PollEveryWhere (Millea et al., 2009).
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As I was learning about this, the technology integration course that I
had designed for the district was well underway. In an email to the educators enrolled in the course, Dr. Broadnax explained that the risks to the
school district were too great to use these types of web publishing tools. His
email further undermined the will and determination of the educators in
my course who had worked for many long hours to develop both the technical skill and understanding to use numerous Web 2.0 applications and
the pedagogic ability to create technically enhanced learning environments
with Web 2.0 applications. Of course, it was gracious of Dr. Broadnax to
offer to publish their work to district servers. However, with his emphasis on
mitigating risk, what he could not understand about Web 2.0 was the ubiquitous, interactive, and engaging potential that was lost to these educators
and to the middle school students in the Lake Highlands.
Integrating Drill and Practice in the Lake Highlands
It wasn’t long after Dr. Broadnax’s email that I was invited by Jeff Marcus,
the principal of Henry Clay Middle School, to tour his building. He wanted
to show me how the MacBooks were being integrated throughout the
school. Just after the bell rang, we left his office to begin our tour. One
of the first rooms we visited was Linda Trentadue’s eighth grade language
arts class. When we entered her classroom, she was at her desk reading as
the students quietly worked with their new MacBooks. In all, there were
24 students seated three to a table in a square around the room. With their
backs to the interior, each student was working independently. I could easily see every student’s screen as I walked around the room. It was evident
that they were working on similar, if not the same, program. The room
was very quiet as every student was wearing ear buds. For the students, it
seemed that our presence barely registered and seeing that I was with the
principal, this seemed somewhat peculiar to me. I followed Mr. Marcus to
Linda’s desk. He introduced me as “the professor of educational computing
from John Carroll.” Ms. Trentadue explained that the students were practicing reading or writing skills with an online test preparation program called
Study Island. For the next 40 minutes or so we continued our tour around
the building. Just before the bell rang, marking the end of the period, we
walked past Linda Trentadue’s classroom again and I stopped at the open
door to look in. It was somewhat disquieting to notice that her students were
still quietly seated at their tables, wearing their ear buds, and engaged with
Study Island.
Mr. Marcus and I returned to his office where he explained that the
district contracted with Study Island, an online drill and practice system
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designed to prepare students for the annual state achievement tests in mathematics and language arts. At home, in school, or at the library, students
were encouraged to access Study Island from where ever they had access
to the Internet. As an integrated learning and management system, Study
Island guides students through drills based on state standards, provides
immediate feedback to the students, rewards them with brief video games,
and reports individual student and classroom data to teachers and administrators for their consideration.
A few weeks later, I discussed the laptop initiative with four students from
Henry Clay Middle School. They were four girls—middle class, thoughtful,
and engaging. They enjoyed video chatting, iTunes, Facebook, and texting,
very normal stuff. In this first year of the laptop initiative, they described the
integration of the MacBooks as inconsistent. Except for an emphasis on drill
and practice for test preparation, teachers seemed to integrate the laptops
in idiosyncratic ways. A math teacher used the graphing calculator application bundled with the MacBooks. One girl commented that this helped her
visualize the math they were learning. The graphs, she indicated, were also
quicker and more accurate than anything she could create by hand. Another
girl described how her social studies teacher implemented a digital storytelling travelogue project. All the girls agreed that using the MacBooks for
taking notes in class was excellent: fast, efficient, and paperless. However,
everyone said they hated Study Island.
As an alternative to Study Island, a language arts teacher, one student
recounted, had his students use the drill and practice website FreeRice.com
every day, every period for five consecutive weeks until he went on leave
after breaking his leg. For five weeks, they were instructed to use their laptops everyday to go online to FreeRice.com and to use the site to drill and
practice vocabulary words, over and over, to prepare for the state achievement test. From their website, I learned that FreeRice.com manages online
drill and practice programs in math, language arts, the sciences, geography,
and several languages and there are nearly one million people from all over
the world using it. The teacher explained, as the girl recalled further, that by
using FreeRice.com, she was simultaneously preparing for the achievement
test and helping to stop world hunger. The other girls rolled their eyes as she
reminded them that for each answer she got right, FreeRice.com donated
ten grains of rice to help end world hunger.
Drill and Practice and the Question of Essentialism
As it turns out, just trying to define drill and practice courseware is fraught
with all sorts of conceptual and theoretical problems, not the least of which
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is the question of essentialism. An essentialist perspective about technology
assumes that there can be an objective understanding of technical capacity
and that this capacity is inherent in the technology and causes effects. Such
a perspective is evident in Streibel’s (1991) now classic critique of drill and
practice where he explains that drill and practice courseware is determined
by an algorithm to engage students in instructional experiences designed to
reinforce the learning of basic skills or information. In fairness to his critique,
Streibel (1991) intentionally brackets questions of essentialism and the social
context of technology integration when he writes, “The analysis will not
however, deal with the social, political, or economic dimensions of education even though such dimensions are ultimately involved” (pp. 283–284).
Even as the result emerges as an essentialist treatment, Streibel’s (1991)
discussion presents a fine description of drill and practice courseware.
Paraphrasing Streibel, whenever drill and practice is implemented into
a learning environment, the educational experiences of the student are to
respond to a technical input/output model of educational performance. This
input/output model of educational performance, he continues, is determined
by the drill and practice algorithm, which also reduces learning to a linear
step-by-step process emphasizing rote memorization of discrete information
and/or patterned skill building.
Evident in Streibel’s discussion, Grint and Woolgar (1997) explain that an
essentialist perspective about technology assumes that “technical attributes
derive from the internal characteristics of the technology” (p. 97). More
about drill and practice, Streibel (1991) tells that the instructional experience is reduced to question-answer branches with immediate feedback and
that content is fixed in place by a right/wrong answer dichotomy. Further,
the meanings and goals of the educational experience are reduced by the
algorithm to the quantity of correct answers. Importantly, with drill and
practice courseware, educational goals are determined prior to any involvement with students and every student can be expected to learn the same
factual information. Such prespecified goals express quality in behavioral
terms; it is the performance of a certain number of correct answers (Streibel,
1991).
While no one will argue about the technical presence and significance of
the drill and practice algorithm, an antiessentialist perspective would assume
that the function of a given technology, associated with its formal qualities and capacities, derives from antecedent conditions or events that can
be political, ideological, cultural or economic and also relate to the design
and production of the technology (Grint & Woolgar, 1997). However, as
Grint and Woolgar (1997) effectively demonstrate, antiessentialist perspectives themselves are commonly susceptible to problems that counter their
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challenge to essentialism. A first problem concerns the relationship between
antecedent conditions and the technology itself of the kind suggested by
Streibel (1991): are these conditions somehow built into the technology and
if so does this assume that there is some essential “it,” such as an algorithm,
that the conditions are built into?
A second antiessentialist problem identified by Grint and Woolgar (1997)
concerns the antecedent conditions as if these could be reified as specific discursive values or politics and arranged in some kind of essential hierarchy
that, again, can be distinguished from, yet conditions and is constitutive of,
the function of the technology. To demonstrate an instance of this antiessentialist problem, consider a function of drill and practice to teach discrete
factual knowledge as described by B. F. Skinner (1968):
In using the device, the student refers to a numbered item in a multiplechoice test. He [sic] presses the button corresponding to his first choice of
answer. If he is right, the device moves on to the next item; if he is wrong,
the error is tallied, and he must continue to make choices. (p. 30)
Clearly, it is essentialist to determine the learning experience of students by
isolating the functions of the drill and practice courseware from the teacher,
the school district, and other related elements. In this instance, a function
presents as a nonrelational property of the technology.
In attempting to overcome this type of essentialism, Feenberg (2000)
offers a glimpse into the second antiessentialist problem identified by Grint
and Woolgar (1997). In this instance, Feenberg (2000) counters that function is just as relational or social as any other attribute because it always
already serves a function within a social context. Conceptualized in this
way, drill and practice, in the form of programmed instruction, would serve
a specific function in the context of the clinical trials performed by Skinner
and his colleagues to apply behavioral psychology and operant conditioning
to advance learning outcomes in the 1960s. By distinguishing context from
technology and asserting that there are technological effects is the second
issue described by Grint and Woolgar (1997).
Closely related to this second problem, a third antiessentialist problem relates to the effects of the technology and is associated with efforts
to avert the problem of technological determinism. In this case, the technology has effects but these are determined by the antecedent conditions.
Following Grint and Woolgar (1997), this strategy results in a form of social
determinism.
Latour (2002) uses an alternative strategy to overcome this menacing
technological determinism when he emphasizes that essentialism pertains
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less to specific and descriptive attributes of a thing and more to its function
and how or whether the thing can be reduced to an extension of a human
capability. He instructs that it is not even possible to proceed as if a tool or
a technology “fulfills a function” or serves merely as an extension of human
capacity. About function, he writes, “those who believe that tools are simple
utensils have never held a hammer in their hand, have never allowed themselves to recognize the flux of possibilities that they are suddenly able to
envisage” (p. 250). Certainly, drill and practice technology is not a simple
utensil in the hands of a teacher, a school administrator, or a psychologist!
Study Island or any drill and practice technology surely has its concomitant
array of pedagogic possibilities. At the same time, there are always unforeseen curricular and pedagogic concerns and implications, including what
students are suddenly able to envisage doing with the technology as well
as how difficult it is for teachers or administrators to constrain the uses of
drill and practice by students to its prescribed goals. Even though research
informs that learning gains with drill and practice are limited (Warschauer,
2011), when the decision is made by a school district to implement Study
Island, it is done because it is believed to serve the specific function of preparing students for high-stakes achievement tests. Edmentum promotional
materials describe Study Island in terms of its function as:
An instructional and diagnostic tool that helps students . . . prepare for
standardized tests . . . All that is needed is an internet connection. It can
be used in a classroom or a computer lab or at home . . . It is available
24 hours a day and seven days a week . . . Students go through lessons and
test sessions which [sic] correspond specifically to state standards . . . Study
Island gives students immediate feedback on their progress . . . Teachers
and administrators are able to drill down to see the strengths and weaknesses of a class as well as an individual student. (Edmentum, 2014)
It is essentialist for educators to proceed as if Study Island fulfills such a
function. As I suggested above, the middle school students I spoke with
in the Lake Highlands were unanimous in describing their experience of
using drill and practice technology for test prep as tedious and boring.6
And research concludes that drill and practice technology fails to fulfill its
function! Still, in a national study it was found that 69 percent of teachers
surveyed indicated that their students sometimes or often use drill and practice technology to practice basic skills and to prepare for achievement tests
(Warschauer, 2011).
Returning to Latour’s (2002) example of the hammer, imagine the project of driving a nail into a piece of wood without the use of a hammer. Now
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imagine teaching without drill and practice. These are hardly equivalent.
On the one hand, I would search out a rock or a dense piece of wood. But
in the classroom sans drill and practice, a teacher quickly realizes that such
a translation adds or subtracts from elements germane to the lesson. In fact,
everything seems changed; students would be instructed to take out their
ear buds, to turn their chairs toward the center of the classroom, and to
engage in a group discussion, or to ask questions about assigned material, or
perhaps to play some sort of review game, and so forth. Even if the students
were instructed to engage in some sort of isolated individual review activity,
such as a series of worksheets, the pedagogic experience of drill and practice
could hardly be described as a functional extension of this activity.
Study Island is not merely a technological substitution nor can it be
reduced to some intermediary fulfilling a function. As Latour (2002) writes,
“what they exactly do, what they suggest, no one knows, and that is why
their introduction . . . initiated for the sake of function, always ends up inaugurating a complicated history, overflowing with disputes” (p. 250). While
Edmentum’s promotional materials assert that Study Island “is engaging and
very easy to use,” one need only search on Google: “I Hate Study Island,” to
get a sense of the plethora of visceral responses by students and teachers who
believe Study Island to be a loathsome integrated learning and management
system. Study Island (of FreeRice.com) is hardly an instrumental or functional alternative to realizing an educational end. Instead, as it is enrolled
locally into the NCLB network, it transforms the experiences of teaching
and learning, but in ways that are less than predictable!
Conclusions not Diffusions
According to one meta-study, the results of one-to-one computing initiatives in the United States, such as the Lake Highlands laptop initiative, have
been mixed (Goodwin, 2011). The emphasis of most studies included in
the report has been on academic achievement in mathematics and reading,
those subjects associated with NCLB including high-stakes testing, accountability, and achievement. To date, the largest one-to-one laptop initiative in
the United States has been the Maine Statewide Middle School One-to-One
Laptop Initiative. Based on analyses of high-stakes test scores the evaluation
of the initiative identified minimal effect on student learning. According
to Goodwin (2011), the evaluators reason that the Maine Initiative demonstrates a dearth of academic improvement because the assessment tests
are not designed to measure the twenty-first-century skills encouraged by
one-to-one laptop initiatives. Instead, of course, the achievement tests focus
on discrete content knowledge favored by NCLB and Race to the Top. From
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this, it’s possible to conclude that the laptop initiatives have not failed but
rather that the measures used to determine their effectiveness are invalid.
In the instance of the Lake Highlands laptop initiative, both might be
true. Recalling from the rollout event, Dr. Neal, the district superintendent,
asserted in a speech that was well received by teachers, students, and their
parents that the laptop initiative was needed to teach the students of the Lake
Highlands the skills they will need for the future. In conclusion, I have to
take pause to wonder why, in its very first year, the Lake Highlands Laptop
and Learning Initiative was less than successful in realizing this goal? If it
was assumed by Greg Loyda and Dr. Neal that the laptop initiative would
facilitate the integration of twenty-first-century skills and Web 2.0 applications into the curriculum and better prepare their middle school students for
the future, then why did the teachers and principals in my course question
the strategy? And why then was the district’s Internet filter calibrated to
block access to Web 2.0 applications on district servers?
In place of twenty-first-century skills and Web 2.0 applications, what
future are the Lake Highlands middle school students being prepared for
as they are readily made subject to NCLB and a steady regimen of tests
and digital drill and practice? Following Latour (1987), I want to assert
that the MacBook initiative has yet to realize its potential, in part, because
of a common assumption about the diffusion of innovation that informs
the initiative. In lieu of an understanding of the complexity of sociotechnical change informed by actor-network theory, the diffusion of innovations
theory conceptualizes technology as an entity distinguished from a reified
society. Reduced to a thing, society is somehow separated from other things
but susceptible to being “penetrated” by ideas, products, concepts, technologies, and so forth.
The diffusion of innovations theory is widely assumed to account for
how, why, and at what pace new things “diffuse through society.” Since
the theory was first published in the early 1960s by Everett Rogers, it has
achieved a common sense status across the field of educational technology.
The diffusion of innovations theory is rarely questioned however; it is common to find it referenced along with other theories, such as the Technology
Acceptance Model (TAM), that attempt to account for the same phenomena
(Hazen, et al., 2011; Melville & Ramirez, 2008). Following Latour (1987),
this does suggest that the diffusion of innovations theory has not achieved
a “black box” status.
Peeking inside the box, diffusion of innovation theory assumes a technological determinism that would invite us to believe that the MacBooks, in
alliance with their Web 2.0 applications, will mostly of their own volition,
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transform the field of education from one dominated by the atomized facts of
NCLB to the higher-order knowledge and thinking of twenty-first-century
skills. This technological determinism is at odds with actor-network theory
as Latour (1987) writes, “it then seems that the behavior of people is caused
by the diffusion of facts and machines. It is forgotten that the obedient
behavior of people is what turns the claims into facts and machines” (p. 133).
While the Partnership for 21st Century Skills is a consortium of influential
corporations and organizations, they have yet to assemble a durable network
(that would include Web 2.0 applications and their advocates) capable of
translating the very idea of twenty-first-century skills into an unquestionable pedagogic system to guide teaching and learning experiences.
What would it take to really get the word out about the pedagogic potential involved with twenty-first-century skills and Web 2.0 applications? The
diffusion of innovation theory would suggest inventing a hero or a champion, a Mark Zuckerberg of Web 2.0 applications and twenty-first-century
skills (Latour, 1987). If you’ve seen the film, The Social Network, it does
suggest such a role for Zuckerberg. However, implicit in the film are the
legions of end users (you and me and all of our friends) inviting and explaining to everyone we know the merits of Facebook and encouraging everyone
to use it. Further, Facebook has never been a fixed entity, a finished product.
Instead, the application involves the ongoing efforts of hundreds of engineers, regularly tweaking and improving the technology.
Additionally, some really amazing pedagogic strategies have been developed for integrating Facebook into classroom practice and I have included
these in my courses since I first began teaching about Web 2.0 for the Lake
Highlands. But in most instances, Facebook, like other Web 2.0 applications,
is regularly blocked from use by school districts. (Millea et al., 2009) The diffusion model would refer to me as an “early adopter” and about those from
my narrative who question Web 2.0 applications and twenty-first-century
skills, like Keith Broadnax, Mary Collins, or Molly Reynolds, they would be
referred to as “laggards” (Melville & Ramirez, 2008).
Conversely, given the tremendous pressure experienced by Mary Collins
and Molly Reynolds to realize AYP, the metric used to measure academic
performance on standardized tests, I can readily understand their challenges
to Web 2.0 and twenty-first-century skills. Furthermore, Dr. Broadnax’s
actions as well cannot be dismissed as a form of resistance to inevitable technological and pedagogic change. Instead, his actions are networked with
the CIPA and the E-Rate funds only available to school districts that are
in compliance. These connections can only suggest the complexity of an
NCLB actor network.
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Compare the fledgling consortium supporting twenty-first-century skills
and Web 2.0 applications to the intricate assemblage of elements that relates
drill and practice courseware to laws and money, research, politics, and testing practices of an NCLB actor network. In this context, as I discussed,
the meaning and significance of drill and practice courseware, as a form of
educational technology, is derived in relation to NCLB as also to how it is
distinguished from Web 2.0. Indeed, in the United States, NCLB is the law
of the land and as such it has the faith and financial support of the federal
government. Networked to the law is an economy of testing paid for by
state grants but administered by private corporations such as the College
Board and ACT, Inc. The administration of the tests is supported by consulting firms that provide professional development for teachers in matters
of assessment and accountability. Then there are the textbook companies,
such as Pearson, that produce textbooks aligned with NCLB, but call them
curricula and sell them to school districts in almost every state. The theories
of mathematics and literacy that inform the scope and sequence of these
textbooks are diligently researched by academics seeking tenure at research
universities all over the country. This research, in turn, is published in journals disseminated throughout the field of education but also read by legions
of law clerks and lobbyists contending for the attention of politicians on
Capitol hill!
Notes
This chapter is drawn from a larger study. With my narrative approach to inquiry,
parts of this chapter resemble parts of a chapter recently published by Palgrave
Macmillan. However, please know that each chapter develops a very different analysis
of the broader narrative about the one-to-one laptop initiative in the Lake Highlands.
I encourage readers to explore these versions
David Shutkin, Becoming the Future: The Lake Highlands Middle School Laptop
and Learning Initiative. In N. Selwyn and K. Facer (eds.), The Politics of Education and
Technology: Conflicts, Controversies, and Connections, 2013, Palgrave Macmillan.
Reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. In the United States, the full
published version of this publication is available at http://us.macmillan.com/Book.
aspx?isbn=9781137031976 and/or http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder
/10.1057/9781137031983
1. Please note that names of all people and locations (and technologies where indicated) are pseudonyms. The three middle schools in the district are Jefferson,
Ripley, and Henry Clay.
2. This chapter is part of a larger project based on narrative data collected as
a participant observer in the Lake Highlands School District. A companion
essay has been published by Palgrave Macmillan. Some material appears in
3.
4.
5.
6.
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both essays with permission. Shutkin, D. (2013). Becoming the future: The
Lake Highlands middle school laptop and learning initiative.
I want to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting that I read Noble’s history of the involvement of the military in the field of educational technology.
It is increasingly evident that both Republican and Democratic members
of Congress aspire to realize the full potential of NCLB. Indeed, President
Obama, with his Race to the Top Legislation, has reauthorized NCLB, leaving
it mostly intact and retaining much of its neoliberal agenda (Apple, 2011).
The S62 is a pseudonym.
Mora (2011) defines boredom as an emotional experience of anxiety related to
the perceived insignificance of an activity. And for students, Mora (2011) concludes that boredom is associated with educational experiences that are repetitive and routinized and lacking in autonomy and adequate stimulation.
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/p21-stateimp_curriculuminstruction.pdf.
President Bush discusses No Child Left Behind. January 8, 2009. Accessed January
15, 2012 from http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2009
/01/20090108-2.html.
Prensky, M. (2008). Turning on the lights. Educational Leadership, 65(6) 40–45.
Reiser, R. (1987). Instructional technology: A history. In R. Gagne (Ed.), Instructional
technology: Foundations (pp. 11–48). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Rose, G. (2007). Visual methodologies: An introduction to the interpretation of visual
materials. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Shutkin, D. (2005). Neoliberalism, the technological sublime, and techniques of the
self. Educational Technology, 45(2). 39–48.
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Skinner, B. (1968). The technology of teaching. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Strathern, M. (2005). Audit cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics,
and the academy. New York: Routledge.
Streibel, M. (1991). A critical analysis of the use of computers in education. In
D. Hylinka & J. Belland (Eds.), Paradigms regained: The uses of illuminative,
semiotic and post-modern criticism as modes of inquiry in educational technology
(pp. 283–334). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.
Taubman, P. (2009). Teaching by numbers: Deconstructing the discourse of standards
and accountability in education. New York: Routledge.
Toch, T. (2011). Beyond basic skills. Phi Delta Kappan, 92(6), 72–73.
U.S. Government Printing Office. “PUBLIC LAW 106–554—DEC. 21, 2000.”
Accessed December 4, 2011 from http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW106publ554/pdf/PLAW-106publ554.pdf.
Wagner, T. (2008). The global achievement gap. New York: Basic Books.
Warschauer, M. (2011). Learning in the cloud: How (and why) to transform schools
with digital media. New York: Teachers College Press.
Wolinsky, A. (2008). We can get there from here: Realizing educational technology’s potential in the face of internet safety issues. MultiMedia & Internet @
Schools, 15(4), 26–30.
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CHAPTER 13
The Global and the Local: Taking
Account of Context in the Push for
Technologization of Education
Rachel Buchanan, Kathryn Holmes,
Gregory Preston, and Kylie Shaw
Introduction
Education in Australia, it could be argued, has undergone a “digital turn”
(Buchanan, 2011). That is to say, digital technologies are no longer simply
something that students learn “about,” but are now something that they
increasingly learn “with.” It is a common expectation that digital competencies are embedded in all areas of teaching across all years of education. The
push for the increased use of technology in education can be understood as a
product of the globalization of education, evident not only in the Australian
education system, but in education systems worldwide. Within this global
context, the nature of research into educational technology is also undergoing
a shift and an expansion in focus. Selwyn highlights the need for researchers
in this area to be “looking beyond learning” (2010, p. 65). He calls for a critical research approach, one that incorporates a richer account of the contexts
in which educational technologies are employed; one that examines wider
political, social, and cultural contexts of the use of digital technologies, and
one that queries the implications for social justice and democracy.
In this chapter we provide a rich contextual analysis of a major
Australian government initiative, the Digital Education Revolution (DER),
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Buchanan, Holmes, Preston, and Shaw
supplementing this account with reference to other smaller, but significant
initiatives, namely the Innovative Teaching Learning (ITL) project and
the Teaching Teachers for the Future (TTF) project. Our analysis aims to
illustrate both the international nature of the use of educational technology
and the scope of the impact that this is having on the Australian education
system—affecting not only the school sector but the higher education sector
as well. Using the DER as a case study we highlight the way in which the complexities inherent in the sociopolitical context belie the common sense belief
in application of education technologies alone as a simple means of ensuring
educational improvement. Our aim is not to provide a definitive account, but
rather to supply a preliminary sketch that illustrates the necessity of taking
context into account when considering the technologization of education.
This perspective builds on previous research that demonstrates that provision
of digital technology does not ensure better educational outcomes (Bingimlas,
2009; Cuban, 2001). That this assumption strongly underpins educational
policy in Australia reiterates why critical research in this area is so necessary.
While digital technologies are playing an increasingly important role in
education globally, in order to understand the implications of its continued
uneven deployment in Australia, an understanding of policy is required.
The claim that technology will improve and revolutionize education is not
new; current policy represents the culmination of three decades of pushing
to place more digital technologies in schools (Buchanan, 2011). Utilizing
Taylor, Rizvi, Lingard, & Henry’s (1997) useful approach to analyzing
education policy, we examine the context, texts, and consequences of the
DER in order to provide a clearer account of the politics around the policy
(Lingard & Ozga, 2007). Furthermore, we wish to underscore the social justice and equity implications of a policy that has the putative aim of achieving equal access to technological resources in Australian schools. In order to
achieve this we juxtapose our account of the DER with the ITL and TTF
projects, highlighting the as yet unrealized goal of improved educational
outcomes in Australia. What follows proceeds in three moves: an analysis of
the DER that examines the contexts, texts, and consequences of this policy;
an examination of further research that builds a picture of how educational
change is achieved, and consideration of the implications of our analysis for
researchers and equity practitioners.
The Global Context of the Digital Education Revolution:
Globalization and the Knowledge Economy
Globalization has become a topic of increasing importance in education.
Indeed, Apple (2010) asserts that it is crucial to consider globalization
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in education as most policies and educational practices are underpinned
by the increasing influence of an integrated global economy. For Apple,
although the processes of globalization are enacted differently across
diverse settings, locations, and educational systems, convergences and
homogenization are evident and can be discerned; particularly in policies
that “privilege choice, competition, performance and individual responsibility” (p. 2). Within the Australian context, the educational policies of
consecutive governments since the mid-1990s reflect a global emphasis on
choice, competition, and performance. These concerns are plainly evident
in both the recent progressive (2007–2013) and conservative governments’
education reform agendas, which include, amongst many other similar
standardization and accountability moves—the nationalization of the K-12
curriculum, the ascendancy of high-stakes national testing (NAPLAN),
and the accountability and transparency promised by government websites
like My School (see http://www.myschool.edu.au/), which aim to provide
parents and the community with transparent information to enable school
choice. It can be argued that, likewise, the DER is a manifestation of process of globalization.
Collin and Apple (2010) argue that the “official” narrative of globalization portrays it as the inevitable and irreversible process of corporateled reorganization not only of world economies but also world cultures
and political systems. Schools, they maintain, feature prominently in this
story, as globalization, so the rhetoric goes, will lead to the development
of a technological “informational” knowledge economy. Within this scenario schools serve not only as sites where the future workforce for future
economies is be prepared, educated, and trained, but also increasingly
this technologically mediated education of the future workforce will steer
the unfolding process. Although the global information economy is portrayed as being disruptive of traditional social and cultural practices, the
work engendered by the future knowledge economy is envisioned as being
more remunerative and intellectually engaging than previous economic
regimes.1 Apple (2010) makes clear that such an account is ahistorical and
hegemonic, and that the dominant understanding of globalization fails
to make clear the asymmetric power relations underpinning it and the
fact that the benefits (profits) of the neoliberal globalization agenda are
spread unevenly across the globe and are dependent on the labor of those
who are unable, or less able, to access and benefit from the information
economy.
The dominant belief in globalization as the path to the knowledge
economy has resulted in developed nations seeing technology-dependent
education as the means to “outsmart” others in the race for scientific
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knowledge and technological innovation. This utopic vision has led to the
“common-sense” view that national prosperity, justice, and social cohesion “rest on the creation of a high skilled workforce, with the knowledge,
enterprise, and insights required to attract the global supply of highlyskilled, high-waged employed” (Lauder, Brown, Dillabough, & Halsey,
2006, p. 3). So ingrained is this narrative that the necessity of information technology in education is regarded as political orthodoxy (Selwyn,
Gorard, & Williams, 2001), proclaimed not only as the driver of economic
growth and efficiency, but touted as the cure for social exclusion (Selwyn
et al, 2001) and the key to national development and prosperity (Boas,
Dunning, & Bussell, 2005). Selwyn (2007) describes the public, private,
and political interests that are invested in education in which adding digital technology to the classroom represents a “highly symbolic” gesture that
demonstrates the strong economic imperative to increase the nation’s competitiveness. This notion is reiterated by Baskin and Williams (2006) who
note that, “like Western governments worldwide, in Australia computing
technologies are considered a motherhood solution to the needs of a highly
skilled and technologically capable workforce” (p. 455).
Sahlberg (2004, 2010) argues that the belief that one of the contemporary purposes of education is the preparation of workers for the global
knowledge economy has led many nations to reconfigure their education
systems in two discernible ways. Sahlberg characterizes the first of these
responses as a shift in focus toward “basic knowledge and skills in some
core subjects, common standards for teaching and learning, measurable
knowledge and stronger school and teacher accountability for results”
(2010, p. 47). The second response is the push to reform the ways in which
schools teach and to teach the skills required for the knowledge or creative
economy. These skills are those of creativity, collaboration, and analysis,
believed to be valuable in the global knowledge economy (Dede, 2010).
The push for basic skills and knowledge has led to homogenization of
educational systems and in, what Sahlberg describes as the “test-based
accountability nations,” teaching to the test has become the most common pedagogy (Sahlberg, 2010). This is in tension with the expectation
that schools will foster creativity and collaboration, the skills required for
life after school. National education policy in Australia reflects these two
tensions—the simultaneous desire for basic literacy (and “good” results
in standardized tests) as well as new literacies (and skilled use of digital
technologies) (Buchanan, Holmes, Preston, & Shaw, 2012). The emphasis
on basic literacy is seen in the accountability of schools for their national
standardized testing results that are publically displayed on the My School
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website, whereas the emphasis on new literacies is evident in the DER and
to some extent in moves toward a national curriculum. Lingard (2010)
characterizes this dual focus in Australia’s educational agenda as not just
one of “borrowed” policy but a hybrid of neoliberal and social justice
ideologies.
The Local Context: The New Federalism
Unsurprisingly, particular political circumstances have shaped the direction of education policy in Australia, and the way in which educational
technologies have been incorporated into education policy. Although the
factors identified by Sahlberg (2010) are evident, the Australian push for
the increased use of digital technologies in education is a local permutation
of the global movement with uniquely Australian features.
There have long been calls to increase the use of technology in education
to improve the Australian system (Baskin & Williams, 2006). Technology
has long been used as one of several touch points by federal governments to
take further control of education from the states under the guise of bringing
cohesion to Australia’s compartmentalized system. Tracing the elevation of
ICT in Australian schools within education policy over the last 20 years,
Baskin and Williams document the increased “digital rhetoric” from the
Australian Electoral Commission documents in 1989, which contain discussion on the need to teach computer skills, to the Ministerial Council for
Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) documents from 2005 where the goal is a “leading edge education and training
system” so as to drive the “development of an innovative society” (2005,
np). Thus, within the Australian context, schools must no longer simply
teach computer skills. Rather digital technology must be embedded in the
process of education, such that education itself is technologically mediated across the curriculum, and as a matter of urgency. On the one hand,
ideological differences between Australia’s dominant political parties have
at times stalled progress toward a more thorough integration of digital technologies within the education system. On the other hand, the renewal of
the process of federalism (that is the attempts by the federal government to
shift the direction of education policy—traditionally and constitutionally a
state-based responsibility—to federal control through a national approach)
by a recent Labor government over the six years from 2007, has meant that
recent education policy has been more uniform across Australia. The introduction of the DER in 2008 aimed to address the uneven deployment of
digital technologies in Australia’s school systems.
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The Text: What is the Digital Education Revolution?
We need to set for ourselves a new national vision for Australia to become
the most educated country, the most skilled economy and the best trained
workforce in the world.
(Rudd & Smith, 2007, p. 5)
The DER is a 2.1 billion dollar government initiative, where 1.9 billion dollars have been pledged to the National Secondary School Computer Fund
with the aim of bringing the ratio of computers to students in years 9–12
to 1:1 by the end of 2011 (DEEWR, 2009a). One hundred million dollars
was committed to the development of fiber-optic connections to Australian
schools and for the Professional Development for Teachers program to train
teachers to deliver educational outcomes technologically, both through
the explicit teaching of ICT and the embedding of technological practices
within current pedagogy, and to provide them with access to online curriculum materials (DEEWR, 2009a, 2009b). The federal government “Strategic
Plan to guide the implementation of the Digital Education Revolution” and
related initiatives (DEEWR, 2008) were based on the premise that ICT
technologies can “improve educational opportunities, boost outcomes and
energize the learning experience” (p. 3) by primarily addressing the computer-to-student ratio. The DER is a commitment that aimed to enable all
schools to better access the benefits of technology for their students.
Various government educational policy initiatives such as the “Australian
Blueprint for Career Development” (MCEETYA, 2008a) and the “Melbourne
Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians” (MCEETYA,
2008b) are underpinned by the unquestioned assumption that a technologically mediated education will generate the creation of a workforce ready to
participate in the global knowledge economy. The Melbourne Declaration,
for example, makes explicit the connection between globalization, economic
competitiveness in a global economy, and the role of the Australian education system to produce future workers.
Schools play a vital role in promoting the intellectual, physical, social,
emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of
young Australians, and in ensuring the nation’s ongoing economic prosperity and social cohesion . . . Globalization and technological change are
placing greater demands on education and skill development in Australia
and the nature of jobs available to young Australians is changing faster
than ever. Skilled jobs now dominate jobs growth and people with
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university or vocational education and training qualifications fare much
better in the employment market than early school leavers. To maximize their opportunities for healthy, productive and rewarding futures,
Australia’s young people must be encouraged not only to complete secondary education, but also to proceed into further training or education.
(MCEETYA, 2008b, p. 4)
With the assumption that technological skills are essential for economic
participation, digital technologies are now advanced as “a core policy
requirement” in the provision of schooling in Australia (Moyle, 2008,
p. 1). This is not only changing schools, universities, teaching and learning, infrastructure, policy, and administration (Moyle, 2005/2006), the
introduction of the DER is “reauthoring” the relationship between the
Australian federal and state governments and further opening up public school education to corporate forces (Moyle, 2008). As Moyle notes,
“the provision of an IT infrastructure requires public schooling to be
dependent, in unprecedented ways, upon the private sector and on the
efficiency of the telecommunications and other commodity markets”
(2008, p. 15). The DER policy not only reflects the influence of globalization—in that the policy itself is based around preparing students for the
envisioned global knowledge economy—but the implementation of the
policy requires the involvement of various corporations for the provision of
the necessary facilities, which now includes access to telecommunications,
electricity, computers and local and wide area networks (Moyle, 2008).
Selwyn (2013) documents the vested interest in classroom digital technology of global companies such as Apple and Microsoft; the presence of
such corporations are changing the nature of what constitutes a free public
school education (Moyle, 2008).
Clearly the major policy development in Australia in relation to educational ICT to take place in Australia in the last 20 years has been the DER
initiative. The federal government established a national partnership agreement with the state and territory governments and the major private educational providers nationally to allow development of initiatives in three broad
areas of education between the federal and state governments. The first area
was the development of access to technology, specifically for students in the
years 9–12 range (the last four years of Australian schooling). The second
targeted area was the development of capacity to utilize online technology
and nationally accessible curriculum-based “learning objects.” The third
area of ambition was pedagogical change in relation to infrastructure, leadership, teacher capability, and learning resources.
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The Consequences: Has DER Improved
Educational Outcomes?
The DER was justified on the basis that it would improve educational outcomes and boost students’ learning. Here we examine evaluation done on
the impact of the DER in order to investigate some of the consequences of
the policy. Interestingly, the executive summary of the DER review document, produced by the government, retrospectively highlights three key
dimensions of the Australian developments:
The DER was designed to generate the broadest possible impact, and the
scale of investment was intended to rapidly level the playing field in effective integration of information and communication technologies (ICT)
into teaching and learning. The breadth and quantum of investment
under the DER is unique, and reflect the Australian Government’s ambition to spark a genuine revolution in the education space. (DEEWR,
2013, p. 4)
The notion of the breadth of the impact is stressed, in contrast to the “depth”
of that impact. While perhaps a tacit acknowledgment that the speed of the
development was likely to lead to a superficial approach to digital learning,
it was clearly intended that this would be ameliorated through the spending quantum. Also the notion of the use of ICT as a “leveler” in terms of
learning opportunity is perpetuated, with issues concerning the relationships of power, pedagogy, and technology remaining largely unaddressed
(see Bromley & Apple, 1998 for an example of this dimension). Finally,
there is an overt acknowledgment of the importance of the political within
the process, with even the executive summary espousing the “ambition” of
the federal government. Also of interest in relation to the DER was the
finalization of the program, and specifically the built-in “milestones” that
could be assessed in the three areas identified. The trigger for the end of the
DER national partnership agreement was not the achievement of specific
educational goals based on the four dimensions of change or the improvement of the online capacity of schools. It was simply the achievement of the
1:1 computer-to-student ratio target identified as “the major component of
the DER” (DEEWR, 2013, p. 4, emphasis in original). The DER therefore
represents an approach to embedding educational technology in classrooms
that was justified on the basis of teaching and learning yet was primarily
focused on the provision of technology in the senior years of high school.
Specific evaluation of local DER programs was often left to the states.
Typical of these is the review of the New South Wales DER objectives, which
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highlighted educational impacts of the DER project (Howard, Thurtell, &
Gigliotti, 2012). The report showed that there were both generic effects, such
as implications based around “novelty,” and more individualized results,
such as the impact of leadership. Similarly the transition of the funding
arrangements for the future of educational technology has been negotiated
on a much more individual basis. This is both in terms of the structural
agreements between the state and federal governments, as well as in terms
of the planned relationships between the students and schools in terms of
“bring your own device” (BYOD) initiatives. Thus the cessation of funding has led to a shift in some schools from one-to-one laptop programs to
cheaper BYOD programs. This raises questions for equity and social justice.
If the DER was meant to act as a leveler ensuring that all schools have the
benefit of digital technology and senior students have laptops, any leveling
(theoretically) achieved would not be sustained once the funding ceases and
schools negotiate differing arrangements.
The goal of boosting learning outcomes through the generation of
pedagogical change engendered by access to technology is not reflected
in the evaluation of the DER (Howard & Gigliotti, 2013). Findings from
research conducted in 2012 suggest that although students have their own
laptops, their home computer use has not changed significantly, neither has
their level of confidence with ICT (Howard & Gigliotti, 2013). Overall
the research into the impact of the DER did not find that a pedagogical
shift had occurred. “Teachers were engaging in change centered around the
types of resources they used in teaching, but this did not seem to affect how
they conceived of teaching” (Howard & Gigliotti, 2013, p. 88). Research
into educational change indicates that change is not likely to become visible
before 3–5 years after the implementation of an initiative (Fullan, 2007).
The limited duration of DER funding (2008–2012) suggests that the pedagogical shift that it aimed to usher in is unlikely. Thus, while teachers were
more comfortable using technology, this did not translate into better learning outcomes for students.
Teaching Teachers for the Future
The increasing emphasis on digital technologies in education has impacted
upon teaching practice at all levels of education, including higher education.
Both the DER with its the achievement of (near) universal laptops for students in year nine and above, and the implementation of the national curriculum with the use of ICT embedded across all curriculum areas put pressure
not only on teachers in schools to make more use of digital technologies,
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but upon the higher education system to produce graduates that are suitably
prepared to teach with ICT. To this end, federal government funding has
also recently been available for initiatives focused on digital technologies
and preservice teacher education.
In 2011, all teacher education institutions in Australia were participants
in the TTF project. The TTF project was an ambitious attempt to systematically build the ICT capacity of teacher education students across the entire
country (Finger, Jamieson-Proctor, & Grimbeek, 2013). The project was
funded by the federal government’s ICT Innovation Fund and focused on
developing the ICT competency of current preservice teachers through the
Technological, Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework of
Mishra and Koehler (2006). The project was evaluated quantitatively and
qualitatively, with results at the national level indicating that over the course
of a semester, preservice teachers reported measurable growth in their confidence to use ICT and in their confidence that they could facilitate student
use of ICT in the classroom (Romeo, Lloyd, & Downes, 2012). The qualitative data collected, which consisted of 41 “stories” of significant change in
each institution, illustrated a four-phase process for technology integration.
First, the Investigation phase, where preservice teachers developed an interest
in ICT, second, the Application phase, where some use of ICT occurs, thirdly,
the Integration phase where ICT is used regularly, and finally, the Extension
and Leadership phase, where ICT is seen as critical and where teachers develop
the capacity to lead others in this area (Romeo et al., 2012).
Despite the short-lived nature of the funding for the TTF project, evaluation evidence points to short-term change within teacher education institutions in all states of Australia. However, concerns have been raised in
relation to the sustainability of any change (Romeo et al., 2012) and also
in relation to the TPACK framework (Parr, Bellis, & Bulfin, 2013). In the
final report for the project, recommendations were made for teacher education institutions to consider as a means of capitalizing on the progress made
during the project (ACDE, 2012). Specifically, the report recommended
that universities should develop and maintain an accessible repository of
ICT resources for staff and students to access; develop a leadership team
to help staff use the resources; redesign some units as exemplary models
of ICT integration; develop institutional processes for ensuring sustainability of improvement to curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment in relation to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (see www.aitsl.
edu.au). Interestingly, the report acknowledged that universities operate in a
wider political context, and therefore the report made a recommendation to
the Australian Government Department for Education, Employment, and
Workplace Relations (DEEWR), that future policies for the development of
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ICT capabilities for teachers should emulate the collaborative nature of the
successful TTF project (ACDE, 2012).
The TTF project required close cooperation between all institutions
across the country, echoing the findings of the global ITL project, where
increased teacher collaboration and the existence of shared goals or vision
was associated with the development and implementation of innovative
teaching practices. Change on a national scale, delivered through cooperation between natural competitors, demonstrates the possibility for change
on a large scale, although the sustainability of this is yet to be demonstrated
beyond the 15-month funding period. It should be remembered, however,
that teacher education takes place within the larger higher education sector
and that there is ample evidence that this sector is undergoing significant
change as a result of new technology (Proulx, 2013).
What Other Factors Need to be Considered for
Educational Improvement?
Across Australia and a range of global educational settings there is the growing call for the development of twenty-first-century skills for all students to
better prepare them for work in the knowledge economy. While there are
multiple frameworks to describe these skills and the means by which they
might be realized, Dede (2009) argues that there is an underlying agreement
within the frameworks about the type of skills that will be needed in the
future. Students will need to learn to think critically and to be proficient
problem solvers, to be collaborative, innovative, and creative with effective
communication skills (Center for 21st Century Skills, 2012; McWilliam &
Haukka, 2008; Partnership for 21st Century Skills). A key driver of these
calls for change is the increased availability of connected technologies both
outside of and within schools with exponential growth in the uptake of various technologies in schools (OECD, 2006).
However, aging teacher workforces are not necessarily equipped or willing to contemplate the pedagogical shift that new technologies may require
(McKenzie, Kos, Walker, Hong, & Owen, 2008). The ITL 2 research project
sought to understand the tensions between the idea of delivering a twentyfirst-century skills agenda within schools and the reality of implementation
of such an agenda at a teacher, school, and system level in various countries
across the globe. Although technology use was examined in the ITL study,
the focus was on teacher practice rather than the use of specific technologies
or digital applications.
The ITL project was conducted in seven countries: Australia, England,
Finland, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Senegal. The multicountry design
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of the project provided a unique snapshot of teaching practices in diverse
settings. The project looked for evidence of innovative teaching; here
“innovative” teaching was defined as teaching practices that were student
centered, used ICT for learning, and extended learning beyond the classroom. Such practices were found in every participating country; however,
they were certainly not the norm. Generally, greater variation in teaching practice was found within schools than was evident between schools,
indicating that innovative teaching and learning with ICT is yet to emerge
in a systemic way within school systems. The research found that certain
conditions were closely related to innovative teaching within schools.
These included the degree to which teachers collaborated to share teaching
practices and provide peer support; professional development that actively
involves teachers as researchers; and a school culture based on a common
vision where innovative practice is encouraged (Holmes et al., 2013; Shaw
et al., 2013). The ITL research suggests that the “boosting” of the learning
experience owes much more to teacher practice than it does to the provision
of digital devices.
Ostensibly, an economic entity, the OECD is increasingly informing
education policy across the globe, particularly through its administration of international comparative testing (Selwyn, 2013). The OECD has
identified the increasing prevalence of ICT as an important part of the
lives of students and in their future lives beyond the classroom. For the
first time in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
2009, participating countries were offered the option of undertaking a
digital reading literacy test designed to test the ability of 15-year-olds to
read, understand, and apply digital texts (Thomson & De Bortoli, 2012).
The test enabled the assessment of higher order skills such the ability to
critically evaluate multiple web-based sources and to navigate between
sources autonomously. Interestingly, student computer use in the home
was strongly related to improved digital literacy scores, whereas student
computer use at school was not associated with higher digital literacy
scores (OECD, 2011). It could be that student self-regulation, as described
in the ITL study, may be a crucial component necessary for the development of digital skills, and that the development of this type of “digital independence” best occurs in the unstructured home environment.
Perhaps schools, as they currently operate, are not the ideal context for the
development of these digital skills. While ITL findings and the PISA data
indicate the importance of home computer use, the DER laptop scheme
did not improve this factor (Howard & Gigliotti, 2013). This suggests that
the provision of laptops is not the educational leveler envisioned by the
creators of the DER policy.
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Global to the Local: (Re)Considering the
Technologization of Education in Australia
Consideration of the DER, TTF, and ITL projects reveals several things.
While Australia is a participant in the global trend of increased technologization of education, the trajectory here reveals the local permutations of
these trends—the political machinations that have brought about the DER
highlight the idiosyncrasies of the Australian education system. National
policy is used to steer education, which remains a state-based responsibility. Now that the DER funding cycle has finished, it remains to be seen
whether schools across the various states retain the one-to-one laptop ratio
for students in the last four years of high school. Will the cessation of federal
funds mean a reemergence of the uneven use of digital technologies that
prompted the DER policy in the first place? The emergence of BYOD initiatives warrants further research, especially in regards to equity, as BYOD
policies would be impacted by what devices individual students and their
families can afford.
Further research needs to be done to determine the long-term impacts
and implications of the DER; however, a body of research suggests that
further technologization of education was on its own, not going to lead to
educational improvement (Bingimlas, 2009; Cuban, 2001; Higgins, Xiao,
& Katsipataki, 2012). This is a point worth expounding, given the assumption underpinning the DER was that increasing students’ access to technology would lead to better educational outcomes. In their investigation into
the impact of digital technology on learning, Higgins et al. (2012) report
that technology alone does not make a difference to learning. Their research
reiterates that learning is improved through pedagogy and the alignment
of the use of technology with clear learning objectives. For them, the successful use of technology is context-specific. This too, is argued by Selwyn
(2013)—the local context is the key to the effective implementation of
educational technology—large-scale policy initiatives exacerbate inequities
where governments do not involve themselves “on the ground.”
When considering the impact of the DER in light of the OECD and ITL
findings that computer use in the home, rather than in school, has a bigger impact on students’ digital literacy, the Australian federal government’s
approach of technology provision would be more effective where teachers
are able to provide activities that extend learning beyond the classroom. It
could be that schools, as they currently operate, are not ideal for the development of digital independence and digital literacy skills. Current operation
of schools in Australia is influenced by pressure to perform in both domestic and international standardized tests, and by factors such as increased
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parental choice and more onerous accountability requirements, which tend
to negate the development of the creative and collaborative skills digital
technologies are supposed to foster.
The results of the PISA, ITL, and TTF research indicate that it is not the
technologies per se that effect change, rather it is the collaboration, creativity, and shared vision of educators. The learning tasks themselves require
thoughtful design to elicit the skills required to develop generic capabilities
and to provide an equal opportunity for all students to engage in learning.
Considering these research projects together, with results drawn from schools
worldwide and universities in Australia, a picture emerges, which suggests
that provision of digital technologies is merely the first step in generating
sustainable change; a finding that holds in both the school and higher education sectors. This suggests that where change is required, investment is
necessary both in the digital infrastructure needed to ensure access to ICT
and in the human factors, such as a shared vision, to ensure the innovative
use of such technologies.
Another implication of this is that providing equitable access to digital
technology within education is much more complex than just the provision
of such technology. Infrastructure needs to be provided not only in schools,
but also beyond, if we are to be truly equitable in allowing all students access
to learning beyond the classroom. In addition, given the importance of pedagogy, rather than technology, in terms of students’ educational outcomes,
perhaps governmental investment would be better spent on teacher professional development. If the key to the successful use of technology is localcontext specific and requires the shared vision of educators, this suggests
that investment of time and money is required in schools to supplement
the investment in technology. Time is needed for staff to develop collaborative relationships and to develop school plans and meaningful school vision
statements. These factors indicate that educational improvement takes time,
and providing educational equity with regards to technology is a complex
task; a task that starts (rather than finishes) with the provision of appropriate
technology. Given that equitable and improved educational outcomes are
complex, time consuming, and require local and specific solutions, perhaps
we do not yet have an adequate model for the development of system-wide
equitable outcomes using educational technology; more theoretical and
empirical research is needed to develop such a model.
In this chapter, we have provided a starting point for considering some
of the wider political and contextual factors around the use of ICT in the
Australian education system. While professional development for teachers
and education of preservice teachers is also being shaped and changed by the
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expectations that teachers will be proficient in the use of ICT, more investigation is needed to examine the impact of the factors and expectations
that mitigate against the use of such technologies, or indeed whether such
use is always appropriate. Our analysis demonstrates that while Australia is
being influenced by competing expectations around the purposes of education and the provision of digital technologies, the uptake and use of ICT is
dependent upon not only political processes and policies that drive schools’
provision of such technologies, but also upon the expertise and vision of
the educators in those schools, as well as the availability these technologies
outside of school. However, these conclusions are merely preliminary and
further research needs to be done to fill in the contours of the picture that is
emerging of the use of educational technologies in Australia against a backdrop of immense global change.
Notes
1. This narrative is not new; see, for example, Neill’s 1995 critique.
2. Microsoft was a sponsor of the ITL project, although the corporation played no
role in the project other than the provision of financial resources.
References
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Apple, M. (2010). Global crises, social justice and education. New York: Routledge.
Baskin, C., & Williams, M. (2006). ICT integration in schools: Where are we
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Bromley, H., & Apple M. (1998). Education/technology/power: Educational computing as a social practice. Ithaca: State University of New York Press.
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Buchanan, R., Holmes, K., Preston, G., & Shaw, K. (2012). Basic literacy or
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Collin, R., & Apple, M. (2010). New literacies and new rebellions in the global age.
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Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Harvard:
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Dede, C. (2010). Comparing Frameworks for 21st Century skills. In J. Bellanca &
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(2009a). National Secondary School Computer Fund Overview. Canberra:
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(2013). DER Mid-Program Review: Assessing Progress of the DER and Potential
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Fullan, M. (2007). The new meaning of educational change (4th ed.). New York:
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Higgins, S., Xiao, Z. M., & Katsipataki, M. (2012). The impact of digital technology
on learning: Full report. Durham: Durham University. Retrieved from http://edu
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Holmes, K., Bourke, S., Preston, G., Shaw, K., & Smith, M. (2013). Supporting
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Howard, S., & Gigliotti, A. (2013). DER-NSW evaluation: Report on the implications of the 2012 data collection. Sydney: NSW Department of Education and
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Howard, S., Thurtell, E., & Gigliotti, A., (2012). DER-NSW evaluation: Report
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schools, 2007. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research.
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McWilliam, E., & Haukka, S. (2008). Educating the creative workforce: New
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_Australians.pdf
Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A
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Moyle, K. (2005/2006). Transforming learning/transforming schools: Do models of deployment of digital technologies support transformative teaching and
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century? Retrieved from http://www.aare.edu.au/08pap/moy08646.pdf.
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politics of information (pp. 181–194). San Francisco: City Lights.
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students ready for a technology-rich world? Paris: OECD.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2011). PISA
2009 results: Students on line: Digital technologies and performance (Volume VI).
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Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2013). Partnership for 21st century skills.
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Parr, G., Bellis, N., & Bulfin, S. (2013). Teaching English teachers for the future:
Speaking back to TPACK. English in Australia, 48(1), 9–22.
Proulx, C. (2013). 5 ways technology will impact higher ed in 2013. Retrieved from
http://www.forbes.com/
Romeo, G., Lloyd, M., & Downes, T. (2012). Teaching teachers for the future
(TTF): Building the ICT in education capacity of the next generation of teachers
in Australia. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 28(6), 949–964.
Rudd, K., & Smith, S. (2007). The Australian economy needs an education revolution.
Barton, ACT: Australian Labor Party.
Sahlberg, P. (2004). Teaching and globalization. International Research Journal of
Managing Global Transitions, 2(1), 5–31.
Sahlberg, P. (2010). Rethinking accountability for a knowledge society. Journal of
Educational Change, 11(1), 45–61.
Selwyn, N. (2007). Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose: Considering the probable futures of education technology. In D. W. Kritt & L. T. Winegar (Eds.),
Education and technology: Critical perspectives, possible futures (pp. 31–46). New
York: Lexington Books.
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Selwyn, N. (2013). Education in a digital world: Global perspectives on technology and
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Selwyn, N., Gorard, S., & Williams, S. (2001). Digital divide or digital opportunity? The role of technology in overcoming social exclusion in US education.
Educational Policy, 15(2), 258–277.
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Innovative Teaching and Learning 2013. Retrieved from http://www.newcastle
.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/46387/ITL-Research-Australia-Book
-WebReady.pdf
Taylor, S., Rizvi, F., Lingard, B., & Henry, M. (1997). Educational policy and the
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Thomson, S., & De Bortoli, L. (2012). Preparing Australian students for the digital
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ACER.
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CHAPTER 14
Technology and Education—
Why It’s Crucial to be Critical
Neil Selwyn
Introduction
Critical analyses of technology and education appear to be enjoying a modest renaissance of late. A few conferences in this area have recently chosen
“A Critical Perspective” (or similar sentiment) as their stated theme. It also
seems that more articles, books, blogs, and tweets are being written by academics looking to take a critical stance on the topic. I would stop short
of concluding, however, that we are in the midst of some sort of “critical
turn” that might atone for previous decades of technological “boosterism,”
hyperbole, and outright evangelism. Instead, I suspect that it is simply easier
in this age of online retrieval to root out critical work if one is that way
inclined. It is likely that I am now coming across more critical work in this
field primarily because I am looking for it and/or it is being pushed algorithmically toward me. It is highly probable that any real increase in the
critical literature is being mirrored by an even greater expansion of (over)
positive commentary. Collections of writing such as Critical Perspectives on
Technology and Education are to be welcomed, but they should not be taken
as proof that such views are now in the ascendant.
This was certainly the conclusion I drew having presented an early version of this chapter as a keynote to a fairly prominent “learning technology”
conference. As the conference theme was set broadly along the lines of “being
critical,” I had expected this to be a fairly uncontentious presentation. The
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audience reaction, however, proved a little more fractious. Even my most
supportive colleagues noted that I had quickly managed to “split the room.”
This was confirmed in the social media chatter accompanying the conference proceedings. Here some attendees were taking offence at my suggestion that academic work on learning technology could be more critically
minded and politically focused in the work it seeks to do. Others felt that I
was picking on them personally, and had set out to make them “feel bad.”
A few declared indignantly that learning technology was a perfectly critical
field and they had long engaged in important political work. A couple of
commentators even dismissed the talk as being harmfully retrograde and
antitechnology. All in all, what I had intended to pitch as a light-hearted
provocation had attracted a surprising degree of hostility and denial. To
quote one social media contributor, I was “putting a depressing pall onto
the beginning of the conference.” As another “below the line” comment
concluded:
did anyone feel like “well why the hell am I here then?” I hope it wasn’t
that depressing . . . man it was like woa! we all tech wannabes should pack
our bags and go feed cattles.
In hindsight, such reactions were probably not that surprising. Eighteen
months before, I had been invited to address another “Ed-Tech” conference
on a similar vaguely critical theme (this time, in essence, that we should not
assume the future to be any less problematic than the present). Again, what I
had intended as a fairly uncontentious set of observations had also prompted
a noticeable level of back-channel furor. Take, for instance, the following
series of rapidly tweeted retorts:
November 25, 18:05 p.m.
Really not impressed with much of @neil_selwyn’s keynote opener
#CONF—How can a message tellin boundary pushers to stop be gud?
November 25 18:11 p.m.
this is not only dangerous angle—undermine those flaming the revolution but IMO a horrible mood to set for #CONF
IMO if those at ground level didnt push for change then we wud be even
further behind where we are #CONF
Iv put immense effort into boundary pushing and hav impactd locally,
national and internation. I will cont #CONF
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Of course, everyone is entitled to their (crudely expressed) views. Yet such
knee-jerk reactions suggest that the academic study of technology and education has clearly not progressed that far from its boosterist past. This is
an area that still appears to be attracting those who fancy themselves as
“boundary pushers,” responsible for “flaming the revolution,” and making
an “impact.” Crucially, these are people who do not appear wholly confortable when encountering criticism of their boundary pushing and innovation.
If these commentators are to be taken at face value, then opposing voices can
be discounted simply for not being in tune with the educational technology
project—as “undermining,” “horrible,” and simply not “gud.”
I am not expecting this particular chapter to provoke quite as much hostility. Most readers who have made it to the end of a book titled Critical
Perspectives on Technology and Education are going to be a like-minded
bunch. In fact, I am assuming that many readers will find little in this chapter that they will feel is remotely novel, controversial, or upsetting. So why
is any of this worth writing/reading for yet another time? The pragmatic
answer to this is that I was asked by the book editors to write this chapter.
Yet more substantially, I do feel that these are arguments that bear repeating
as often as possible to everyone engaging in the academic study of technology and education. So if you feel that the rest of this chapter is old hat, selfevident and/or teaching-your-grandmother-to-suck-eggs then at least take it
as an invitation to get out and spread these ideas yourself. I genuinely hope
that you have more luck than me in “stating the obvious.” If, on the other
hand, your immediate reaction is to take to Twitter in disgust then perhaps
it might be more productive to resist the urge for a moment. Instead, take
this as a challenge to talk through some alternate ways of approaching our
field and our work . . . these are discussions that certainly need to “cont.”
The Need to be Critical about Technology and Education
The lack of a sustained critical perspective throughout the academic study
of technology and education will be self-evident to anyone with even a passing interest in the literature. This belies the fact that there is clearly much
to be critical about. For instance, technology and education remains an area
of academic study, policy making, commercial activity, and popular debate
where promises of what might/could/should happen far outstrip the realities
of what actually happens. As the editor of a leading educational technology journal bemoaned recently, “the revolution is always about to happen”
(Latchem, 2014, p. 5). Indeed, the forever-delayed technological transformation of education has been a leitmotif of the past hundred years (Cuban,
1986; Watters, 2015, forthcoming). In one sense, there is an obvious need
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to critique the vast amounts of resourcing, funding, and human effort that
this “no show” continues to divert. Yet academic criticism is also necessitated by the ways in which digital technologies are now entwined deeply
with the politics of contemporary education—not least ongoing neoliberal
and corporate reforms of educational provision and practice. The political
economy of the multibillion dollar ed-tech sector is as complex as it is fast
changing. All told, digital technology is hardly the benign, neutral presence
in education that we are often assured it to be. As such, this is a cornerstone
of the politics and ethics of contemporary education that demands the closest scrutiny of which the academic community is capable.
Of course, most academics whose work touches upon technology and
education are fully aware of these issues. As is often the case with academics, most educational technology specialists are publically concerned, open
minded, politically aware (if not politically active), and likely to be ideologically left-of-center. In pointing out that this field needs to be more critical,
the suggestion is not being made that a majority of people working in it are
happy-go-lucky, unthinking dupes. What is being suggested, however, is
that many people appear content to turn their critical faculties down considerably when engaging in their professional work.
The fact that academic research and writing often fails to address adequately the social, political, economic, and cultural complexities of technology and education should be seen as a genuine shortcoming. Instead,
the academic study of technology and education most often finds itself
consigned to the status of a “service subject” that produces neat and tidy
“applied” academic evaluations concerned with developing more efficient
ways of “doing technology.” This is not work that speaks routinely to the
complexity of social contexts and interconnectedness of social phenomena.
As such, this is certainly not usually taken by people outside the field to be
the stuff of serious intellectual work. This marginal standing is reflected
in the tendency for educational technology academics to be located often
within “support” units and divisions, such as cross-faculty Teaching &
Learning Divisions or departmental E-Learning Units. Physically as well as
intellectually, then, the field of technology and education is often found to
be operating on the peripheries of academe.
Rather than accepting this lowly status with a resigned shrug, it is time
for a more forceful response. In short, we need to accept that academic work
in the area of technology and education is currently falling short of what
should now be a significant and substantial area of contemporary educational scholarship. Thus it is clearly time for interested academics to strive
toward a more prominent role in engaging with the “bigger picture/s” of
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technology and education. The academic study of technology and education
should not simply be working in the “service” of the practical application of
technology for teaching and learning. Instead, the academic study of technology and education should be developing as much along the lines of critical social science as it does in the guise of a cognitive learning science. This
needs to be the site of work that better addresses the political, economic,
social, cultural, and historical “messiness” of technology and education. The
point that I am trying to make here is straightforward enough. Given the
time, effort, resources, and brainpower that are being dedicated to the academic study of technology and education, surely it is worth trying to up our
game and establishing this as a site of substantial and authoritative scholarly
work? There are many things required for this to happen—one of which is
developing a critical “bite” that to date has been evident only sporadically in
mainstream scholarship in this area.
Ways to be Critical of Technology and Education
So how might this be achieved? As the breadth of chapters in this book
demonstrate, there are certainly a number of ways in which academic work
can take “critical” stances toward technology and education. On one hand
is writing and research that develops a counterpoint to the orthodoxy that
the educational application of digital technology is an essentially “good
thing.” In this sense, taking a critical approach does not have to involve
a rigid, dogmatic adherence to a particular political viewpoint or specific
philosophical tradition. Indeed, there is undoubted value in simply pursuing what Popkewitz (1987) describes as “critical intellectual work,” that is,
attempting to move “outside the assumptions and practices of the existing
order and struggling to make categories, assumptions and practices of everyday life problematic” (p. 350).
This is perhaps best described as pursuing a “dictionary definition” of
critical scholarship—that is, being objective; producing detailed and contextually rich analyses; engaging in objective evaluation; and taking time
to investigate any situation in terms of its positives, negatives, and all areas
in between. This involves being inherently skeptical but never transcending into outright cynicism. This involves being prepared to ask dull but
difficult questions of how digital technologies find a place in educational
settings and educational contexts. As Sonia Livingstone (2012) puts it, this
problematizing of technology and education usually pursues three basic
lines of inquiry: What is really going on? How can this be explained? How
could things be otherwise? As these questions imply, a critical approach also
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involves speaking up for, and on behalf of, those voices usually marginalized in discussions of what technology and education “is” and “should be.”
As Michael Apple (2010) contends, the role of all academics working in the
area of education should be to act as “critical secretaries” of “the voices and
struggles of those who on a daily basis face the realities of life in societies so
deeply characterized by severe inequalities” (p. 97).
Many of the chapters included in this book could be said to be imbued
with this spirit of asking basic but challenging questions of technology and
education. Take, for instance, the following recurring concerns:
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What is actually new here?
What are the unintended consequences or second-order effects?
What are the potential gains? What are the potential losses?
What underlying values and agendas are implicit?
In whose interests is this working? Who benefits in what ways?
What are the social problems that digital technology is being presented
as a solution to? Why at this time?
How responsive to a “technical fix” are these problems likely to be?
As some of the contributions to this book demonstrate, questions such
as these can often make for writing and research that is more insightful and
involved than the “what works and why” approach that often results from
the “applied” study of technology and education.
Of course, academic work can be critical of technology and education
with a capital “C.” Here, then, there is also room for the application of
the concerns of Critical Theory. Stemming from the work of the Frankfurt
School—and particularly theorists such as Adorno, Habermas, Marcuse,
and Horkheimer—this approach fosters analyses of technology and education that are driven by broader critiques of capitalism and domination. Using
critical theory can lead the study of technology and education in a number
of important directions. Above all, critical theory encourages making sense
of technology and education as a set of profoundly political processes and
practices that are framed in terms of issues of power, control, conflict, and
resistance. This encourages a desire to foster and support issues of empowerment, equality, social justice, and participatory democracy.
While the concerns of critical theory are perhaps more prescriptive than
the broader dictionary definition mode of critique just outlined, there is
much that can be taken from this big C tradition. Above all, critical theory
supports academic inquiry that frames technology and education as a field
of political engagement, testing out dominant logics and assumptions, and
exploring the differences between potentiality and actuality. These values
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are summed up succinctly in Amin and Thrift’s (2005, p. 221) four-point
agenda for critical scholarship:
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First—a powerful sense of engagement with politics and the political;
Second—a consistent belief that there must be better ways of doing
things than are currently found in the world;
Third—a necessary orientation to a critique of power and exploitation
that both blight people’s current lives and stop better ways of doing
things from coming into existence;
Fourth—a constant and unremitting critical reflexivity toward our
own practices: no one is allowed to claim that they have the one and
only answer or the one and only privileged vantage point. Indeed, to
make such a claim is to become a part of the problem.
A number of academics have applied these concerns to matters of technology and education—notably North American scholars such as Douglas
Kellner and Andrew Feenberg. The past work of these authors demonstrated
ably how every instance of technology and education is entwined with issues
of domination, inequality, and exploitation. This work also fostered valuable suggestions about how alternate cooperative forms and participatory
arrangements of technology and education might advance social struggles
and the liberation from domination. While critical theory studies of technology and education thrived briefly during the 1990s, their popularity has
since subsided. Yet with these concerns currently reemerging in other areas
of digital media scholarship (see for example the work of Christian Fuchs
and David Berry), there is no reason why technology and education could
not be following suit.
Impediments against being Critical of
Of course, none of this is quite as easy as it sounds. Unlike many other
areas of the social sciences, it seems that approaching technology and education along critical lines is not a natural and/or advantageous position for
all academics to adopt. Thus regardless of the potential strengths of these
approaches, we need to duly note that it often might not pay to pursue critical studies of technology and education—whether for pragmatic or more
philosophical reasons.
In a pragmatic sense, for instance, there is perhaps little incentive for
academics working in the area of technology and education to “rock the
boat” or “bite the hand that feeds.” Notwithstanding the prevailing air of
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austerity that now looms over all sectors of higher education, these continue
to be relatively good times for academics specializing in technology-related
studies. “What to do about digital technology?” remains a high-profile issue
in the minds of vice chancellors, promotion panels, and research funders
alike. From a self-interested point of view, it makes sense for anyone associated with technology and education to perpetuate the idea that digital
technology does (or at least might) make a difference. These are the “realworld” agendas that give the academic study of technology and education its
currency and value—not least in terms of keeping researchers and lecturers
in employment when so many other areas of academia are facing outright
redundancy.
Of course, a self-interested positivity is certainly not confined to technology and education. It could be argued that the entire “industry” of
higher education has been forced to become less critical in order to retain
at least a modicum of relevance and esteem in contemporary society. As
Alison Hearn has argued, contemporary higher education is now predicated
around ambitions to produce human capital rather than critical thinkers;
to foster bland, managerially friendly versions of creativity, innovation, and
knowledge rather than critical thinking. In these ways, being seen to take
an avowedly critical stance toward one’s area of specialist knowledge is a
much more risky position than it would have been even ten years ago. Hearn
(2013) concludes:
These activities necessarily involve questioning ourselves, risking the stability of our own social worlds and personal relationships and, as a result,
always require courage. (p. 274)
This is not to suggest that academic researchers and writers steer clear of
the critical study of technology and education solely to ensure their professional survival. In the minds of many academics, the educational application of digital technology is an inherently forward-looking endeavor where
critical analyses of the present and/or past are simply not relevant. This
stems, at least in part, from the fundamental desire amongst most educational technologists to improve education through the implementation of
digital technology. For many academics, then, technology and education
is approached as an inherently “positive project.” Indeed, I suspect that
most people working in this area are driven to some degree by an underlying belief that digital technologies are capable of improving learning and/
or education in some way. Accordingly, the de facto role of any academic
involved in technology and education is presumed to be one of finding
ways to make these technology-based “enhancements” happen and—to
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invoke another phrase often used in the field—to “harness the power” of
technology.
Indeed, the academic study of technology and education has long been
infused with an air of this productive positivity. As Donald Ely (1999)
observed, throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, educational
technologists have often positioned themselves as “change agents” of some
sort who were dissatisfied with the status quo and whose work was therefore
driven primarily by improving systems and fixing problems. Of course, there
is nothing wrong per se with wanting to do good in the world and thereby
adopting a positive outlook on life. Yet this positivity becomes problematic
when it spills over into an excess of belief, hope, and speaking from the heart
rather than the head. Indeed, the academic study of technology and education continues to be blighted by a prevalence of what Duncan-Andrade
(2009) terms “hokey hope” (i.e., a naïve view that somehow things will get
better, despite the lack of evidence to warrant this view) accompanied by a
fair amount of “mythical hope” (i.e., a “profoundly ahistorical and depoliticized denial of suffering that is rooted in celebrating individual exceptions”
(p. 184). In this respect, the pursuit of more critical lines of inquiry tend to
get short shrift.
Conclusion
To reiterate a point made earlier, books such as this do not mark a resurgence
of critical perspectives into the mainstream academic study of technology
and education. For all the reasons just outlined, critical studies of technology and education may always be swimming against the tide of popular
opinion. Yet as this chapter has argued, sustained critique is required if technology and education is to become a genuinely significant area of academic
endeavor. One of the obvious strengths of the critical approach is the ability
to work with (and work around) the uncertain and often contradictory realities of technology and education. Yet this clearly remains an uncomfortable
position for some people to assume. As George Siemens (2013) observed
when justifying his decision to stop giving keynote presentations to educational technology conferences:
There has been growing creep of “rockstar-ism” in education where we
look for “the person” to give us “the solution” . . . I’ve answered many questions from audience members with “I don’t know” and “that depends.”
People seem to find this unsatisfying. We like our so-called rock stars in
the education and technology field. We like clear answers. And it’s not
healthy for us or for our field. (n.p)
254
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Selwyn
From here on in, then, academic research and writing would be well advised
to strive to infuse popular, professional, and political understandings of
technology and education with uncertainty, contradiction and critique.
Indeed, for academic studies of technology and education to assume a position of increased authority then this has to become an area of more dissensus
and disagreement. The study of technology and education should not be
an exercise in feeling smug that one is on the same page as everybody else.
Instead, more sustained and substantial efforts are needed to push the kinds
of studies featured in this book closer to the mainstream of technology and
education scholarship. As this book has demonstrated, there are plenty of
degrees of criticality—one is neither wholly “critical” or wholly “uncritical.”
Whether one is simply “thinking otherwise” or pursuing a slavish adherence
to the Frankfurt school, there is plenty of room for all of these positions
and stances. Now, as we enter the second half of the 2010s, I would argue
that any academic who is working in the area of technology and education
should feel obliged to be critical, or at least justify why they have chosen not
to be critical.
Of course, a critical approach does not make academic work inherently
superior to other less critical work. Moreover, critical studies will never be
the most self-affirming approach to take when it comes to researching and
writing about technology and education—especially when compared to the
breathless adoration of all things digital that media academics all too easily
slip into. As Geert Lovink (2011) acknowledges, any critical study of digital media is grueling, unglamorous, “boring,” and “unsexy” (p. 63). These
disincentives notwithstanding, there are clear benefits to be had from wellcrafted critical studies finding a more prominent place within the academic
study of technology and education. To conclude with a reputed statement
from the theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler, we should remember that “reality is defined by the questions we put to it.” Of course, it is
unlikely that our academic studies of technology and education will match
Wheeler’s pioneering work in the fields of quantum mechanics, general relativity, and nuclear fission. Nevertheless, if we are genuinely concerned with
improving the state of technology and education, then all academics would
be well advised to continue asking critical questions in order to achieve critical outcomes.
References
Amin, A., & Thrift, N. (2005). What’s left? Just the future. Antipode, 37(2),
220–238.
Apple, M. (2010). Len Barton, critical education and the problem of “decentred unities.” International Studies in Sociology of Education, 20(2), 93–107.
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Berry, D. (2014). Critical theory and the digital. London: Bloomsbury.
Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines. New York: Teachers College Press.
Duncan-Andrade, J. (2009). Note to educators: Hope required when growing roses
in concrete. Harvard Educational Review, 79(2), 181–194.
Ely, D. (1999). Perspectives on the implementation of educational technology innovations. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED427775. http://files.eric.
ed.gov/fulltext/ED427775.pdf
Hearn, A. (2013). Situation critical. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies,
10(2–3), 273–279.
Latchem, C. (2014). Opening up the educational technology research agenda.
British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(1), 3–11.
Livingstone, S. (2012). Critical reflections on the benefits of ICT in education.
Oxford Review of Education, 38(1), 9–24.
Lovink, G. (2011). Networks without a cause. Cambridge: Polity.
Popkewitz, T. (1987). Critical studies in teacher education. Brighton: Falmer Press.
Siemens, G. (2013). Done doing keynotes. September 8. www.elearnspace.org
/blog/2013/09/07/done-doing-keynotes/
Watters, A. (2015, forthcoming). Teaching machines: The drive to automate
education.
Contributors
Glenn Auld is a senior lecturer in the School of Education, Deakin
University, Melbourne, Australia, specializing in language and literacy. He
teaches and researches in the areas of new media, ethics, and Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Education. Glenn has recently explored the ethical
dilemmas of using social media in the classroom. He is interested in how
teachers bridge the standardized curriculum with the sociocultural interests
of the students.
Chris Bigum is a freelance academic and adjunct professor at the Griffith
Institute for Educational Research, Griffith University, Queensland,
Australia. He has researched and taught in the field of digital technologies
in education since the early 1970s. His current interests focus on the delegation of work to machines.
Rachel Buchanan is a lecturer in Education at the University of Newcastle,
New South Wales, Australia. Her research is located in the intersection of
educational philosophy and educational policy around the use of technology
and how this impacts upon the practice, education, and identities of teachers
and students.
Scott Bulfin is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash
University. His research examines critical approaches to literacy and digital
media, English curriculum, and professional identity and writing.
Susan Edwards is an associate professor and member of the Learning Sciences
Institute Australia, at the Australian Catholic University. Her research is
focussed on dimensions of early childhood curriculum, including digital
technologies, media, popular culture, consumption, and sustainability.
Sue Grieshaber is the chair professor and head of the department of Early
Childhood Education at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd).
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Contributors
Her research investigates the impact of policy change and teacher networks
on teacher practice.
Michael Henderson is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He researches and teaches in the
field of educational technology in schools and higher education. A particular interest of his is the way in which educators and their students learn to
adopt, adapt, and colonize technologies for educational and personal goals.
Kathryn Holmes is a senior lecturer in Education at the University of
Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. She researches in the area of educational technology, particularly with regard to teacher education and progressive approaches to pedagogy. She is also interested in equity issues that
impact on the educational trajectories of young people.
Glynda Hull is professor in the Department of Language and Literacy,
Society and Culture in the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley.
Her research interests include writing in and out of schools; multimedia
technology and new literacies; adult learning and work; and community,
school, and university collaborations.
Nicola F. Johnson is a senior lecturer in the School of Education and the
Higher Degrees by Research (HDR) director in the Faculty of Education
and Arts at Federation University Australia. Her research problematizes socalled Internet addiction and critically examines the social phenomena of
Internet usage and technological expertise.
Dimitrios Koutsogiannis is associate professor in the Department of
Linguistics at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and associate president
at the Center for the Greek Language. His main research interests focus
on language education, classroom discourse analysis, digital literacies, and
teacher education.
Julianne Lynch is senior lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Education at
Deakin University, Warrnambool, Australia. She lectures in curriculum
and pedagogy, technology education, and information and communication
technologies. Her research focuses on educational innovation and emergent
technological practices. She has a particular interest in the potentials that
practice-based theories offer for affirming marginalized teaching and learning practices.
Ana Mantilla is a research associate in the Learning Sciences Institute
Australia at the Australian Catholic University. She contributes to research
programs associated with young children’s learning and play, and teacher
professionalization.
Contributors
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259
Stacy Marple is a senior research associate at WestEd in San Francisco,
California, USA. She holds a PhD in Education from the University of
California, Berkeley, and her present work involves visual and narrative
approaches to qualitative research and the evaluation of school- and community-based literacy programs for youth.
Mark Evan Nelson is associate professor and director of Research in the
English Language Institute of Kanda University of International Studies,
Japan. His research is chiefly concerned with understanding the semiotic,
sociocultural, and pedagogical implications of multimodal communication,
particularly across geographic and cultural boundaries and via digital media
technologies.
Joce Nuttall is an associate professor and member of the Learning Sciences
Institute Australia at Australian Catholic University. She leads the Early
Childhood Futures research program in the institute and is interested in
teacher professionalization and labor processes.
Joanne Orlando is a senior lecturer in educational technology at the
University of Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Her research
focuses on the use of technology in learning, in particular how technology
sits alongside established practices for teaching and learning, and how technology contributes to that practice and vice versa. Her work examines this
focus comprehensively to include early childhood education, school, and
higher education.
Nicola Pallitt is a lecturer in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and
Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her
research interests involve understanding how people appropriate ICTs in
various contexts, from children playing games in after-school settings to
students using social media in higher education. She is also involved in curriculum innovation initiatives and works in assisting university staff with
integrating educational technologies in their curricula.
Gregory Preston is a lecturer in eLearning and ICT at the University of
Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. He has developed a strong reputation for quality practical research into the uses of online learning and the
Internet in educational settings. This research evaluates and assesses the outcomes of the use of ICT in specific learning environments, and evaluates the
effectiveness of specific instructional approaches to the use of ICT.
Leonie Rowan is an associate professor in the School of Education and
Professional Studies at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. Her
research interests relate to the broad fields of equity, justice, new technologies
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Contributors
and the social context of schooling. She is particularly interested in the relationship between gender and educational experiences and outcomes.
Neil Selwyn is a professor in the Faculty of Education, Monash University.
His research and teaching focuses on the place of digital media in everyday life, and the sociology of technology (non)use in educational settings.
His recent books include: Digital technology and the contemporary university:
Degrees of digitization (2014, Routledge), and Distrusting educational technology: Critical questions for changing times (2014, Routledge).
Kylie Shaw is a senior lecturer in Education at the University of Newcastle,
New South Wales, Australia. She lectures and researches in the areas of literacy, educational psychology and ICT, particularly with regard to innovative
approaches to teaching and learning. She is also interested in transformative
knowledge production within the professions.
David Shutkin is an associate professor of Education at John Carroll
University in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He teaches courses in educational
technology, curriculum theory and technology studies. His scholarship concerns curriculum theory, non-foundational ethics and the philosophy and
sociology of technology. At present, he is researching the phenomenology
of technology, the experience of being in school and the legacy of school
segregation in the United States.
Marion Walton is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Film and Media Studies
at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research and teaching
explores children’s and young people’s use of mobile and social media, interactivity and games. She also leads a youth development and prize-winning
World Design Capital 2014 project Creative Code where she introduces
young people to procedural thinking through game design and other visual
approaches to programming.
Elizabeth Wood is professor of Early Childhood Education at the University
of Sheffield, UK. Her research interests center on young children’s play and
the role of play in the policy and practice of early years education.
Index
access to technology, 53, 58, 204, 205,
213, 228, 235, 239–40
accountability, 45, 175, 207, 210–11,
222, 230
actor-network theory (ANT), 3, 204,
206–8, 220–2
affinity spaces, 170–1
affordances, 23, 25, 27, 41, 151, 155
agency, 143–5, 193–4, 196
algorithm/algorithmic, 26, 216–17
alignment between teaching and
technology, 19, 26, 39, 42, 58, 77,
120, 195, 230, 239, 240
anti-essentialist theory of technology,
216–17
Appadurai, Arjun, 91
Apple, 148, 206, 233
Apple, Michael, 8, 21, 228–9, 250
artefact/artifact, 10, 27, 74, 81, 94, 107,
116, 143, 144, 151, 155, 169
artificial intelligence (AI), 9
ASCII code, 186, 188
assessment, 219, 222
Atlas.ti (qualitative analysis software),
92
audit culture, 204
automation, 3, 18
Barad, Karen, 23
Bateson, Gregory, 7
Big data, 9, 45
Bigum, Chris, 18, 142, 159
binary thinking, 10, 106, 114, 116,
185, 197
blended learning, 43, 52
blind spots, 15–17
blogging, 28, 91, 209, 245
Blommaert, Jan, 192
Boomer, Garth, 168
boosterism, 46, 245
boundary/border work, 27, 47, 112–14,
117–19, 121–2
Bourdieu, Pierre, 46, 99, 192
Bromley, Hank, 21
Bulfin, Scott, 46–7, 176, 184, 185,
236
Bush, George Walker, 210
BYOD (bring your own device), 235,
239
Caillois, Roger, 105–7, 111, 114, 117,
121–2
change fatigue, 62
Children’s Internet Protection Act
(CIPA), 204–5, 213
China, 60
Civilization IV, 171, 173
close up research, 146, 158
cognitive/psychological theories, 5, 39,
43, 249
commercial/for profit, 78, 107, 109,
208, 247
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Index
community of practice, 10, 127–37
computer mediated communication,
7, 195
computer/video/digital games, 71,
106–11, 121–2, 170, 215
computers and efficiency, 3–4, 7, 230
computers and improving learning,
4–5, 7, 17–18, 43, 142–3, 252
constructivism, 39, 42, 60
creativity, 30, 78, 80, 91, 150–1, 175,
230, 252
Crichton, Michael, 6–7
critical discourse analysis, 193
critical theory, 2, 43, 46, 250–1
critical-historical perspective on
technology, 186
Cuban, Larry, 4, 8, 21
curriculum, 154, 164, 166, 168, 173–5,
176–9
areas, 165
Australian national, 165, 167, 170,
171, 172, 174
crowded, 175
documents, 151, 165–6
early childhood, 81
Finland/Finnish, 165, 167, 173
formal, 166, 168
frameworks, 151, 157
outcomes, 163, 164–6, 172, 173–6
de Certeau, Michel, 2, 106, 122,
142–7, 150, 152, 155, 157–9
Digital Education Revolution initiative
(DER), 232–5, 239
digital natives, 39
digital play, 69–81
digraphia, 186
discourse, 45, 154, 167, 193
eco-social, 184–5, 192, 194
gendered, 107
neoliberal, 44, 45, 79
domestication of technology, 18, 145,
158
Dowdall, Clare, 166
drill and practice software, 18, 203–8,
214–20, 222
early childhood education, 70–81
economic rationalism, 45
education policy, 228, 230–1
Edwards, Richard, 23
e-learning, 38, 59, 248
engagement, 58, 65, 79–80, 251
essentialism, 23, 205, 208, 215–18
ethnography, 28, 86, 88, 106, 187
Facebook, 87, 166, 187, 188, 189, 191,
221
Feenberg, Andrew, 164, 217
film, 17
first level effects, 7
Foucault, Michel, 111, 114, 121, 193,
206, 207
Franklin, Ursula, 4, 164
Friendster, 86
funds of knowledge, 165, 179
gameplay, 107–8
Gee, James Paul, 193
gender
boundaries, 115
dimorphism, 114, 116, 119, 121
performance, 111, 113, 115, 117
tactics, 110, 111
gendered
architectures, 116
artifact, 116
gaming, 110
identities, 121
play, 109
geography, 2–3
globalization, 227–9, 232–3
Google, 219
Greeklish, 184, 186–93, 196
Grint, Keith, 216–17
hardware, 3, 9, 25, 26, 61, 174
Heath, Shirley Brice, 185, 193
Index
heteronormativity, 115, 117, 122
heterotopia, 111, 114–15, 121–2
high-stakes testing, 207, 210, 219, 222,
229, 230, 238
home use of technology, 58, 108, 117,
119, 149–51, 169, 188, 193, 235,
238–9
home-school mismatch, 184, 185, 194,
196
hypermasculine, 112, 118, 119
hypothetico-deductive tradition, 143
iconicity, 85–6, 101
identity, 111, 122, 150, 158, 165, 166,
168
gendered, 105, 106, 121
inattentional blindness, 15
inequality, 196, 251
informal learning, 9, 135, 163–4,
166–8, 170, 175, 176, 192
innovation, 19, 25, 53, 88, 132, 135,
143, 145, 147, 150–1, 156–8, 204,
205, 220
Innovative Teaching Learning project
(ITL), 237–41
integrate technology. See technology
integration
interactive books, 153, 155
internet chat, 187
intertextuality, 70, 73
iPad, 7, 73, 74, 78–80, 147–57
Johnson, Nicola, F., 46
Joomla, 91
Jurassic Park [novel], 6
knowledge economy, 228–30, 232,
233, 237
knowledge production, 32, 155–6
Knowles, Beyoncé, 98
Koutsogiannis, Dimitrios, 6, 176
Kress, Gunther, 89, 91, 195, 196
Lanier, Jaron, 11
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263
laptop, 3, 108, 110, 203–23, 235, 238,
239
Latour, Bruno, 10, 22, 208, 217–21
Law, John, 16, 24, 30–2, 204, 207–8
learning sciences, 1, 5, 44, 249
learning styles, 40
learning technology, 36, 245–6
literacy. See also new literacies, new
media literacies
critical digital, 6, 166, 167, 191
digital, 167, 184–7, 191, 194–6, 238,
239
events, 92
gamified, 155
home-based, 153, 194
ideological model of, 184
inequality and, 193
orders of, 186, 192–4, 196–7
skills-based, 167
transliteracy, 156
vernacular, 193
literacy market, 192
local-global, 184
ludic gendering, 106–16, 121–2
machine learning, 9
maintenance of technology, 61–2
maps/mapping, 3–7
marginalised technology practices, 78,
142, 145–7, 157–8, 175
mash-ups, 72, 98, 99
material semiotics, 204, 206, 207
materiality, 28, 144
McDermott, Drew, 9
meaning making, 35, 85–6, 88, 94,
100
Melbourne Declaration, 232
methodological fascism, 46
Microsoft, 233, 241
mimicry, 105–7, 121
Minitel, 149–50
mobile
devices, 100, 155
learning, 52, 151, 163
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Index
mobile—Continued
phones, 42, 71, 166, 168–70, 188
youth media culture, 91
Monmonier Mark, 3, 5
Morozov, Evgeny, 11
multimodal
analysis, 86
artifacts, 98, 166, 173
theory, 42, 91, 169, 170
MySpace, 87, 166, 167–8
neoliberalism, 44–5, 79, 143, 210–11,
229, 231, 248
new media literacies, 100
new literacies, 156, 167, 184, 230–1
New Literacies Studies, 184–6, 192
New Literacy Studies, 184
No child left behind (NCLB), 203–5,
207–8, 210
Noble, Douglas, 17, 208
non-representational theories, 28, 146
ontological politics, ontics, 30
Organization of Economic
Cooperation and Development
(OECD), 238, 239
other/othering, 119, 163
parents, 148–9, 167, 176, 188, 190,
193, 194, 205–6, 229
parody, 97, 98, 99, 107, 114
pedagogical histories, 60
pedagogy. See also alignment between
teaching and technology
Peirce, Charles Sanders, 8, 85, 89–90
Peppa Pig, 74, 75
performativity, 23, 24
Photoshop, 170
PISA, 238, 240
play. See also digital play
cross-sex, 111
transgressive, 112
PlayStation, 108, 110
policy, 207, 213, 228, 230–4, 238, 239
popular culture, 70–3, 170, 177
practices, 24, 207, 210, 211, 222, 229,
232, 237–8, 249–51
pragmatic sociology, 52, 55
privacy, 87
production, 145, 155–6
professional learning models, 64
programmed instruction, 207, 208, 217
Radio Arvila [television program], 190
reappropriation, 95
recontextualization, 142–4, 147, 158
remix culture, 156
representation/representationalism, 3,
22–31, 86, 90, 110, 135, 146,
195
resistance, 58, 63
risk management, 213
Ronaldo, Cristiano, 187
Sahlberg, Pasi, 230
sandbox (games), 105
school reform and effectiveness
movement, 143, 154
schooling of technology, 145
scientific method, 44, 47
second level effects/second-order
effects, 7, 250
Second Life, 171
Selwyn, Neil, 1, 8, 9, 44, 69, 73, 128,
227, 230, 233, 238, 239
signifier, 44, 89, 111
situational knowledge, 100
Skinner, Burrhus Frederic, 207, 217
Skinner, Halcyon, 3
Skype, 61
social determinism, 217
social media, 5, 86–8, 101, 168, 176–7,
187, 188, 213, 246
social semiotic theory, 88, 89, 116
sociocultural theories of learning, 39,
163
sociocultural theories of technology,
141, 144
Index
socioeconomic status (SES), 55
sociolinguistics, 187
software, 3, 6, 9, 18, 25, 26, 53, 61, 74,
170, 171, 174
Space2Cre8, 86, 92, 95, 100
state of the actual, 69, 70, 73, 76, 81
story telling/storying practices, 142,
145–7, 157
Streibel, Michael, 216–17
structuration, 196
student-centered teaching, 60, 158
Study Island (test preparation
platform), 214–15, 218–19
Suppes, Patrick, 47
teacher critiques, 52, 54, 63–5
teacher intellectual capital, 54, 65
teacher knowledge, 54
teacher-centered approaches, 60
teachers, early childhood, 76–81
teaching machines, 3, 208
Teaching Teachers for the Future
project (TTF), 228, 236, 237,
239, 240
technofluency, 156
technological determinism, 217, 220,
221
technological indeterminacy, 141–5,
155, 157–8
technological pedagogical content
knowledge (TPCK/TPACK), 5,
19, 21, 31, 39, 236
technology integration, 20, 24–8, 30,
31, 212–14
technology-as-savior, 46
television, 17, 71, 74, 108, 190
textbook, 222
M
265
The Sims/The Sims 2, 109, 111, 112,
116–22, 166
The Social Network [film], 221
thintelligence, 6
Thomas the Tank Engine, 74, 75, 78
Thomson, Pat, 175
Thrift, Nigel, 146, 251
Tumblr, 213
Turkle, Sherry, 87
Turnbull, David, 4–5
tusk, 85, 89–90
twenty-first century skills, 53, 204,
205, 208, 209–10, 212, 219, 220,
221–2
Twitter, 87, 247
unicode, 186, 188
unintended/unanticipated effects of
technology, 7, 9, 18–19, 30, 148,
150
university, 15, 233
user generated content, 91, 145, 148,
154, 155, 156, 158
van Leeuwen, Theo, 88
virtual schoolbags, 175
Vygotsky, Lev, 39, 42
web 2.0, 209, 213–14, 220–2
Willis, Paul, 91
woohoo, 102
Woolgar, Steve, 216–17
word processing, 18, 171, 183, 193–4
writing, digital, 184, 186–7
youth media culture, 41, 91
Youtube, 97, 153, 156, 187
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