Digital literacy practices of three high school learners across home and school contexts: challenges and opportunities

Jenkin, Jessica

Digital literacy practices of three high school learners across home and school contexts: challenges and opportunities

Master Thesis

2021

Abstract

This study investigates the literacy practices of three high school learners both in and out of the classroom. The study focuses on the role digital devices play in their literacy practices at home and at their school in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. The study focuses on how different learners, their teachers, and the wider institution in which they are located ‘take hold' of contemporary literacy, how their practices are affected, challenged and influenced by their engagement with or orientation towards digital technology. The study uses a comparative case study method, informed by ethnographic research methods. As the research question itself is an exploration of changing cultural literacy practices it is ideally suited to ethnographic research as exploratory. The study follows a qualitative methodology and is centrally grounded in a socio-cultural perspective of literacy, based in the work of the New Literacy Studies. This approach to literacy situates literacy in social practice, as an organisation of human activities, valued and determined differently depending on the context. Over a few months, data collection involved following the three teenagers, from one school but different grades, through their classes and back to their homes, tracing their engagements with digital devices through observations and short discussions. It also drew on observations in the classrooms, interviews with their teachers and document analysis of the school's policy on digital technologies. It found that beliefs and perceptions about technology profoundly influence how that technology is implemented and taken hold of in educational institutions. There is considerable fear surrounding young people's engagement with digital technologies from both parents and teachers seriously limiting an educational approach to their integration. The study also found that home contexts are still profoundly influential in shaping children's approaches to literacy and that school contexts need to engage with the differing realities of learners to engage their literacy practices and help prepare them for a world that is saturated with digitally-mediated literacy practices. Further education in terms of engaging young people with their own digital literacy engagements is clearly needed. Discussing digital citizenship and life online, as part of a life reality to manage and negotiate is essential to developing the literacy of young people in their online engagement. This research is important in terms of broadening our understanding of the changing nature of literacy practices in South Africa where there is limited research. The normalisation of the integration of technological devices into the functioning of our everyday lives means that shifting literacy practices are often left unexamined but are highly variable and profoundly influential in developing ourselves and our literacy engagements. In South Africa, in particular, schools and learners differ enormously in characteristics on a local and provincial level with regard to language and socio-economic characteristics. Essential to any digital implementation programme is the consideration of the particularities of each school, their teachers, their learners, and the communities from which they operate – as these are not always the same – nor require the same interventions. Different studies on this topic are therefore essential to help represent a picture of more South African schooling experiences, South African high school learners, and their families. Understanding what educational institutions, teachers and high school learners are doing in and out of the classroom in their literacy practices can help to inform considerations for future curriculum and policy development, as well as implementation.

Keywords

Education

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