Browsing by Author "Campbell, Eduard"

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    Digital Literacies for Pre-Service High School English Teachers
    (2015-06-01) Campbell, Eduard
    This series of lectures serves as a course component for the Senior Phase and FET English Method course at the University of Cape Town, which forms part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) professional teacher education qualification. It consists of 5 lectures presented at strategic times throughout the year. The purpose of the course is to provide pre-service English teachers with an opportunity to critically discuss the integration of Digital Literacies into the high school English curriculum. The course component has a dual teaching outcome: 1. Addressing the digital divide within the English Method classroom and providing an opportunity for the pre-service teachers to engage in Digital Literacies practices themselves; 2. Creating awareness of the digital divide within the high school classroom and discussing various methods that enable learners to engage in effective Digital Literacy practices. The course is built on discussions where the class could voice their varying perspectives, anxieties and experiences, especially after their teaching practicals. In this way, knowledge is built collaboratively. Although rudimentary theory is incorporated in the curriculum, the class focuses mostly on the practical aspects of Digital Literacies within the specific context of the high school English Classroom. Numerous methods for Digital Literacies integration, whether for the students’ own use or for their learners’, are scrutinized and critically evaluated.
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    Pre-service teachers' perceptions and practices: integrating digital literacy into English education
    (2016) Campbell, Eduard; Kapp, Rochelle
    Teachers are increasingly expected to use digital resources to facilitate learning. Recent research in Higher Education has indicated the existence of a digital divide among students. With the changing role of the English teacher as a facilitator of critical skills and the traditional centrality of literacy to the English classroom, digital literacy has an integral place in English teacher education, despite its absence from the current South African English curriculum. However, integrating digital literacy is challenging and often resisted by teachers. This qualitative case study provides a detailed description and analysis of how pre-service English teachers perceived their own, their learners' and other teachers' digital literacy practices, and how these perceptions relate to their own practices. The study is informed by post-structuralist theory, drawing on the New Literacy Studies (NLS), which views literacy as embedded in social practice, imbued with power and highly dependent on context. It is believed that gaining a deeper understanding of perceived and actual digital literacy practices within specific contexts could lead to an in-depth knowledge of how digital literacy may be integrated in teacher education. The case comprises four English Method students at a relatively elite South African university who were enrolled for the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) professional qualification. The participants viewed their own proficiency in digital literacy as limited. The data were gathered from four sources: the participants' detailed lesson plans where digital literacy has been integrated; their reflections upon these lesson plans; questionnaires providing background on their biographies and experiences with technology and a focused group interview. The study found that the participants associated some digital resources with their own and their learners' private lives and therefore did not recognize the value of these resources as educational tools. In addition, the participants experienced the internet as overwhelming and conflated digital literacy with 'Internet Literacy'. They did not find good examples of practice from other teachers at the schools where they undertook their teaching practicals. The way they perceived their learners' practices could have serious consequences for how they facilitate learning and negotiate power differentials in the classroom. Drawing on these findings, the thesis ends with a framework for the integration of digital literacy into teacher education. The framework draws on insights from Authentic Learning, New Literacy Studies and constructivist notions of learning to propose a carefully-scaffolded model which starts with students' own internet practices and provides models and authentic tasks in order to show them the affordances of digital literacy for promoting learning in the English classroom.