Ekaterina Tour’s 2015 paper attempts to answer three questions regarding language teachers and education technology through the lens of Literacy Studies: How do they use digital technologies in their everyday lives and teaching? What shapes the way in which they use technologies? And what is the relationship between their personal and professional use of technologies? Tour, the author, is motivated by the gap between the idea of integrating new literacies approaches to language teaching and the real applications of digital technologies in language classrooms. In her introduction, she identifies several factors to explain how the real applications are limited, such as institutional barriers, tight budgets, standardized testing culture, insufficient teaching experience, and ineffective professional training. This study is framed in a way to explore teachers’ personal experiences with digital technologies to uncover a possible rationale for why technology integration in language classrooms is often stagnant.
An important term in this paper is Selwyn and Facer’s (2007) affordances, which “are users’ socially constructed understandings of the possibilities of digital technologies which prompt how they can be used and what they are allowed to do. An affordance is a combination of properties of digital technologies and users’ interpretations of these properties” (Tour, 2015, p.126). Another important term is mindset (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006), which they refer to as “a point of view, perspective, or frame of reference through which individuals or groups of people experience the world, interpret or make sense of what they encounter, and respond to what they experience” (p.31).
Qualitative Methods
This study is case study of three language and literacy teachers, all female ranging in age from 31 to 53 years, the youngest teaching Chinese to third and fourth graders. The two older participants taught English as an Additional Language (EAL), one in primary school and the other in high school. The data collected were participant-generated photography reflecting their technology use in their everyday lives and teaching and interviews using the photographs. Thematic data analysis was implemented with cross-checked data sources and member checks. One theme was targeted for this paper: “the participants’ assumptions about affordances of digital technologies” or “their digital mindsets that shaped their practices across different contexts” (Tour, 2015, p. 129).
Results & Discussion
The paper illustrates each participant’s relationship with digital technologies in their personal lives and in the classroom, including comparisons between the participants. The author showed how they ranged from traditional digital literacy practices (consumers of digital media) to new digital literacy practices (consumers and producers of digital media practices.
The most important contribution to the literature is the seven interrelated affordance of digital technologies that the study identified through the participants’ perceptions and usage:
- Support and improvement – “technology is viewed as making things better, more efficient and interesting”
- Connectedness – “associated with the opportunities for being always connected to activities, networks, and resources”
- Experimentation – “related to independent exploration and creative play with what is possible in digital spaces”
- Sharing – “refers to the distribution of the ideas and different digital commodities through a range of social channels”
- Collective intelligence – “assumes joint or collaborative activities, decision making, generation, collection, and use of resources”
- Empowerment – “related to the opportunities for voicing concerns, expressing opinions, taking, or leading actions to address certain issues”
- Multimodality – “involves possibilities for interaction and representation in different modes” (Tour, 2015, p. 135)
Only one of the participants in this study recognized all these affordances. The others recognized four and five of the seven. In terms of language teaching, this study’s focus on digital mindsets helped to broaden the scope of understanding of digital technology use in addition to psychological attributes and demographic characteristics, variables that have been studied more often.
Practical Implications
My interpretation of the discussion is that teacher educators and supervisors should consider teachers’ assumptions and beliefs about these affordances of technologies as they may shed light on the usage or resistance to adopting technology in the classroom. Additionally, it may help teacher educators and supervisors to understand their teachers’ personal digital technology practices as an influence on digital technology integration in the classroom. Therefore, knowledge of technology integration alone will not transform practices. Beliefs and personal practices may be more influential.
References
Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2006). New literacies: Everyday practices and classroom learning (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Open University Press.
Selwyn, N., & Facer, K. (2007). Beyond the digital divide: rethinking digital inclusion for the 21st century. Retrieved from http://archive.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/opening_education/Digital_Divide.pdf
Tour, E. (2015). Digital mindsets: Teachers’ technology use in personal life and teaching. Language Learning & Technology, 19(3), 124–139. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/october2015/tour.pdf
