Redefining school literacy: Internet use in upper secondary school, where students have their own laptops

Author(s):

Marte Blikstad-Balas(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

16. ICT in Education and Training

Format:

Paper

Session Information

16 SES 02 B, Digital Literacy and Learning Styles

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-02

15:15-16:45

Room:

B008 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Colin Harrison

Contribution

Norway is an interesting case when it comes to access to both computers and Internet in a school setting, because we have the highest number of Internet access both at home and at school among the OECD-countries. Digital skills are also incorporated systematically in our national curriculum. The extensive access of computers and Internet implies students have access to more information than what is physically located in the classroom, as they can access all kinds of digital texts, including texts that do not have a clear educational purpose, such as blogs, games and social media.

This paper about school literacy in a technology-rich environment focuses on how students employ different texts within classroom contexts. Based on a methodological, analytical, and theoretical foundation in New Literacy Studies (NLS)*, the paper explores how different texts are integrated into a variety of literacy practices across various subjects. The overarching aim of the paper is to explore prominent literacy practices within a school context, among students in their final year of upper secondary school in Norway.

The units of analysis in this work are recurring literacy events in a school context. Literacy events and practices always revolve around a wide variety of texts; thus, the research design of this study is developed to investigate texts in use. Small head-mounted video cameras were utilized to identify the most prominent literacy events among a sample of students in upper secondary school. To obtain a deeper understanding of students’ literacy practices, extracted still pictures of these re-occurring literacy events were then used in contextualized interviews with the students, in addition to textual artifacts utilized in the same literacy events. Additionally, a secondary data corpus (a quantitative survey) was used to explore whether central tendencies in the primary data corpus were relevant in other schools as well.

Two contexts, which in many ways capture the essence of school, were chosen as particularly important to the search for prominent literacy practices: plenary teacher instruction and student work with tasks.

Method

Small head-mounted video cameras were utilized to identify the most prominent literacy events among a sample of four students in upper secondary school. The video footage (a total of 64 hours of recording) allows comparing what one student was doing to what other students in the sample were doing, at the exact same time. All the video data was coded using a digital coding software (Videograph). To obtain a deeper understanding of students’ literacy practices, extracted still pictures of the identified re-occurring literacy events were then used in contextualized interviews with the students, in addition to textual artifacts utilized in the same literacy events. This means that the students were included in an attempt to validating findings, as they could elaborate on documentet practices and provide valuable nuances to the video data. Additionally, a secondary data corpus (a quantitative survey) was used to explore whether central tendencies in the primary data corpus were relevant in other schools as well.

Expected Outcomes

The main overall finding presented in the paper is that the literacy practices that are an essential and integrated part of everyday life in upper secondary school for the students in the study share the following three features: (a) they are individual rather than institutionalized, (b) they are usually based on digital texts, and (c) they are implicit and often rendered invisible, rather than being an explicit part of the everyday discourse in the classroom. The empirical data suggests that students are often free to choose the textual basis of their literacy events and practices, which offers them the possibility of choosing vernacular literacies (Barton, 2007) over dominant literacies (op.cit) in certain contexts, such as during teacher instruction sessions. The search for alternative texts and literacies is facilitated by the constant possibility of using the Internet, which leads to a dramatic increase in the use of digital texts within the classroom. The implicit nature of the intended and actual practices addressed in this paper indicates that literacy is seldom commented on explicitly. While I argue that it is promising that school literacy is not as dominant as has been indicated by previous research (Barton, 2007; Jewitt, 2008; Street & Lefstein, 2007), I also argue that the main findings indicate a very serious educational challenge. If intended literacy practices remain invisible and individualized, and there are no visible consequences for not using them, schools do not integrate crucial dominant literacy practices into their overall experience. These dominant literacy practices could be beneficial to the majority of the students, also in academic discourses outside the classroom.

References

* Central theoretical references: Barton, D. (2007). Literacy: An introduction to the ecology of written language. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Barton, D., & Hamilton, M. (1998). Local literacies: Reading and writing in one community. London: Routledge. Barton, D., & Lee, C. (2013). Language online: Investigating digital texts and practices. London: Routledge. Gee, J.P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. London: Routledge. Jewitt, C. (2008). Multimodality and literacy in school classrooms. Review of research in education, 32(1), 241-267. Larson, J., and J. Marsh (2005). Making literacy real: theories and practices for learning and teaching: London, Sage, xiii, 190 s. p. Street, B.V., & Lefstein, A. (2007). Literacy: An advanced resource book. London: Routledge. Selected methodological references: Haw, K., & Hadfield, M. (2011). Video in social science research: Functions and forms.London: Routledge. Heath, C., J. Hindmarsh, and P. Luff, 2010, Video in qualitative research: analysing social interaction in everyday life: Los Angeles, Sage, vii, 173 s. p. Hiebert, J., & Stigler, J. W. (2000). A proposal for improving classroom teaching: Lessons from the TIMSS video study. The Elementary School Journal, 3-20. Jewitt, C. (2012). An Introduction to Using Video for Research. National Centre for Research Methods Working paper 03/12. Economical & Social Research Council. Klette, K.(2009). Challenges in Strategies for Complexity Reduction in Video Studies. Experiences from the PISA + Study: A Video Study of Teaching and Learning in Norway., In Tomas Janik & Tina Seidel (ed.), The Power of Video Studies in Investigating Teaching and Learning in the Classroom. Waxmann Verlag. (chapter 4)

Author Information

Marte Blikstad-Balas (presenting / submitting)

UiO

ILS

Oslo

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