With the proliferation and development of information and communication technologies (ICT), schools are encouraged from a variety of perspectives to incorporate digital devices in the classroom. On the socio-economic level, ICT has made profound changes such as the elimination of manufacturing jobs and a vast introduction of digitized positions (Frezzo, 2017). Consequently, it is argued, that a new set of skills is required for the workforce to meet the fast-changing social and economic conditions. These skills (such as collaboration, digital literacy, self-learning, problem solving, etc.) which are labeled as 21st century skills (Binkley M. et al., 2012) require certain digital competences that are not attainable with a basic user knowledge of devices. Rather, they imply an active engagement of digital devices in the educational institutions for acquiring the needed competences (Van Laar et al., 2017; Siddiq et al., 2017; Riis, 2015).

On the school policy level, policy makers not only encourage the integration of digital technologies by means of proposed innovative teaching and learning strategies (e.g. gamification, flipped classroom, blended and mobile learning), but also place strong expectations on schools to stimulate digital skills and competences in students (WEF, 2016; OECD, 2016). In this respect, digital technologies are perceived to improve learning outcomes by creating a more interactive, personalized and entertaining environment (UNESCO, 2017; Lonka et al., 2015; Johnson et al. 2014). 

Taking up these pressing forces that opt for integrating school with digital devices we aim to develop an understanding of how school practices are relationally composed at such digital schools. This aim is informed by the sociomaterial framework of Actor-Network-Theory (ANT; Decuypere & Simons, 2016; Fenwick & Edwards, 2010; Sorensen, 2009; Latour, 2005) and directed at studying school practices with a focus on digital devices. Thus, in this study, we closely scrutinize how school practices are constituted around and on the digital device.

School practices are perceived as assemblages of different interrelated actors (human and nonhuman) that are always in the making, rather than practices that are ‘being made already’ by recent moves and evolutions that are mostly discussed in current educational discourses (e.g. individualization, gamification, learnification etc.). 

From this starting point, an empirical study is required to scrutinize the actors, their relations, and how specific practices come into being. The sociomaterial approaches observe and describe the relational compositions of the setting under investigation. The descriptions are a crucial part of the research, which allow the reader to be able to trace the relations. In this respect, “to describe practices is to describe the making of the assemblage” (Watson and Huntington 2008, p. 263). In order to scrutinize and describe these practices actors should be followed closely, which emphasizes on the importance of seemingly mundane day-to-day activities (Latour, 2005). Instead of attending to abstract categories, sociomaterial approaches stress on daily happenings and micro-dynamics of school (Adams & Thompson, 2016). By observing the day-to-day classroom practices around and on digital devices we will be able to identify the characterizing practices that constitute typical practices for digital schooling. As such, this paper illustrates the coming into being of these routine and typical practices.  

As such the research question of this study entails: What are the typical school practices assembled around and on digital devices and which actors are central components of these practices? Answering these questions will help us understand what digital schooling is about in the contemporary time.

In order to pursue the research questions of this study this paper follows a sociomaterial ethnographic approach (Fenwick 2011) that partakes at a Belgian school where BYOD technology model is implemented in all different grades. The ethnographic observation was a systematic and regular recording of ‘what is going on’(Sorensen, 2013) during the lessons of Literature (10 and 11th grade), Geography (10th and 11th grade) and Mathematics (11th and 10th grade). The sociomaterial ethnographic study is carried out during two periods in two different school years (2017-2018), for the sum of five months. The digital devices form distinct practices and appears in different modes in each lesson. The means for gathering data were field notes, pictures and collaborative activities with students to register what was taking place on their screen during a lesson. Special attention is paid to how the repetition of certain activities which creates specific routines, that constitute the major part of the lesson. Data collection consists of rigid fieldnotes, sound recordings, and photographs and were analysed through coding and composing thick descriptions (Latour, 2005). The data analysis demonstrates concretely what sorts of relations emerge on a day-to-day basis, which are necessary to assemble the routine practices, and its constitutive elements.

Scrutinizing the routine activities of the Belgian school unravels the typical school practices that are constituted within digital schooling. In this section, the formation of these practices and the vitality of different actors will be illustrated both textually and visually. For instance, the practice of presentation giving is a typical practice of the teacher that is constituted of online shared resources and in the format of Powerpoint slides. This practice entails various interacting actors and is heavily decentralized from the teacher as the speaker, to different Youtube videos, and other shared material. This practice shifts the work of teacher from lecturing, to searching, selecting, and modifying resources to which the lecturing can be delegated. Moreover, the traditional practice of note-taking as inscribing what appears on the blackboard, the teacher’s lecture, is transformed through constant online searching, resource scanning, and copy pasting which necessitates a different mode of dealing with teacher’s presentation. Finally, these typical practices convey that data resources are the central component of classroom practices. Moreover, media making both for the teacher and students has become the typical action carried out on a lesson. The mentioned practices are only two of the typical practices that are analyzed in length in the full paper. These findings reveal what data-fication of school practices means and in what ways data qualitatively play a central role in the formation of practices that are assembled around and on the screen.

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