New literacies and Transformative Learning Environments

Institute of Educational Research, University of Oslo
113/05/13
New Literacies and
Transformative Learning Environments
Ola Erstad
Institute of Educational Research,
University of Oslo, Norway

213/05/13
Why literacy?
 It is the fundamental way of human knowledge
creation.
 It is an area where new cultural tools will have an
impact.

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 Kutiman
 http://thru-you.com/#/intro/
 Lasse Gjertsen:
 www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo

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New media – new affordances
 “My girls are academically weak because they both have
dyslexia and during the years in primary school they have
struggled all the time with not being able to prove
themselves in any subject oriented way. I think it was
incredibly positive for them to come here . . . to be able to
work on computers and film and edit and such things.
They have done a bit of that at home before, so they had
knowledge that the other students could get from them,
and through that they got a higher status in the group. So
for them it has been like . . . I don’t know . . . almost like a
new life. It is very important that they gain ownership of
their work. I think that is one of the keys to create
engagement. For adults it is like this, and I do not think
this is different for children.” (Mother of 13 year old girls)

Outline
1. Changing literacies
2. Media/digital literacy
3. The School and Transformative Learning Environments
4. Examples
5. Implications
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1. Changing literacies

Cultural-historic approches to literacy
 An expressive element throughout human history.
(Walter Ong; Orality-Literacy, Jerome Bruner; ‘the
externalization tenet’)
 Interrelationship between humans and mediational means.
Example maritime navigation instruments (Roger Säljö)
 Developments of materials for writing and reading
 New technologies – new affordances (information access,
communication, content creation, sharing)
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New Literacy Studies
• Classical studies
• Studying social practices (Brice Heath, Scribner & Cole,
Street)
• Local literacies (David Barton & Mary Hamilton, 1998)
• New London Group, ‘Multiliteracies’ (Cope & Kalantzis,
2000)
• New literacy studies (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear & Leu, 2010)
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Literacy as social praxis
”Socially recognized ways of generating,
communicating and negotiating meaningful
content through the medium of encoded texts
within contexts of participation in Discourses
(or, as members of Discourses).”
(Lankshear and Knobel, 2006)

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Barton & Hamilton (1998). Ecological
perspective on literacy
Six propositions that frame their concept of literacy as a social practice,
and their ethnographic study:
(a) Literacy is best understood as a set of social practices; these can be
inferred from events that are mediated by written texts;
(b) there are different literacies associated with different domains of life;
(c) literacy practices are patterned by social institutions and power
relationships, and some literacies become more dominant, visible, and
influential than others;
(d) literacy practices are purposeful and embedded in broader social goals
and cultural practices;
(e) literacy is historically situated; and
(f) literacy practices change, and new ones are frequently acquired
through processes of informal learning and sense making.

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NEW literacies?
 New social practices that emerge due to technological
developments. (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006)
 What it means to read and write? (Pahl & Rowsell, 2005)
 Access to and interpreting information
 Ways of expressing oneself through symbolic systems
 Challenges schooling and traditional conceptions of
knowledge production.

Digital Youth: US - Europe
 EU Kids Online
 60 % goes online every day (age 9-16)
 76 % are watching video clips
 62 % engage in instant messaging
 83 % are playing games
 59 % have a social networking profile
 PEW Internet and American Life Project (‘Super-users’)
 Cultural differences. Norway, less content creation than in
the US.
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ICT use at home ICT use at school
- A majority of the students have better
access to computers at home than at
school.
- Students use computers on more
advanced tasks at home than at school.
- Students use more time with the
computer at home than at school.
- Boys spend more time with the
computer at home than girls.
- The teachers use the computer for the
same purposes at home as at school.
- Male teachers spend more time using
the computer at home than female
teachers.
- Male and female teachers spend as
much time with the computer at home for
preparing school work.
- Many students get parents, siblings and
friends to help doing home work with the
computer at home.
- Computers are mostly used at school to
search the Internet and text-based
services by both students and teachers.
- There are small differences between
gender in how computers are used , both
among students and teachers.
- The students use computers at school
mostly in connection with project work.
- Teachers mostly use computers at
school to prepare their teaching.
- Computers are not much integrated in
subject domains, all levels.
- More than 50% of the students report
that they use computers at school less
than one hour per week integrated in
subject activities.
- The teachers spend more time with
computers at school than students.
From one survey (Erstad et al., 2005), with students age 14 and 17 (n=2330) and
teachers (n=762),

Networking, content creation, remixing,
sharing
(Diakopoulos, 2006)
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2. Media/digital literacy

From the margins to the core
 Within media studies in schools from the 1980s
 Since end of 1990s one of the key aspects of 21st
century
competencies
 Written as one of eight key competencies by the EU
(KeyCoNet project)
 In the national curriculum of Norway
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Basic skills Be able to open software, sort out and save information on the
computer, and other simple skills in using the computer and software
Download Be able to download different information types from the Internet
Search Know about and how to get access to information
Navigate Be able to orient oneself in digital networks, learning strategies in
using the Internet
Classify Be able to organize information according to a certain classification
scheme or genre.
Integrate Be able to compare and put together different types of information
related to multomodal texts
Evaluate Be able to check and evaluate if one has got the information one
seeks to get from searching the Internet. Be able to judge the quality,
relevance, objectivity and usefulness of the information one has
found. Critical evaluation of sources.
Communicate Be bale to communicate information and express oneself through
different mediational means.
Cooperate Be able to take part in netbased interactions of learning, and take
advantage of digital technology to cooperate and take party in
networks
Create Be able to produce and create different forms of information as
multimodal texts, make web pages, and so forth. Be able to develop
something new by using specific tools and software. Sharing.

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Dimensions of digital literacy
Dimension 1 Skills in using ICT
Dimension 2 ICT as a specific knowledge domain
Dimension 3 ICT integrated in different subject domains
Dimension 4 ICT and strategies of learning
Dimension 5 Digital bildung / Citizenship

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Dimension 1: Skills in using ICT
 Computer driving liscences
 Basic understanding of ICT
 Using computers and operative systems
 Word programming
 Spreadsheets
 Database
 Presentation and drawing programs
 Internet and e-mail
 Certificate of skills

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Dimension 2: ICT as a knowledge domain
 The history of technological development: Todays media have a prehistory
that most young people are not aware of.
 Media and power: Digital media are essential sources of power in our
society. Who are controlling the access to information?
 Form and content: Modes of communication. Design. What is
communicated?
 Media genres: How different media develop different genres.
 The use of different media: How children, youth and adults use different
media for different purposes, the meaning making process involved and
social consequences.

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Dimension 3: ICT and knowledge
construction within different subjects
Even though you are not good at drawing you can show what you are good for
when you use computers. That is good. (student, Møre & Romsdal)
I believe Robo Lab makes it easier to understand how things work, and I believe
it is easier to understand mathematics and physics when you see things ‘in
the natural life’. But I believe it is important the teacher is there with us.
(student, Møre & Romsdal)
In biology we got in and looked at diseases. We found a lot about new methods
of treatment and medicines. It came out after out book was written. We
learned a lot from it, but what we find on the Internet is not defined as part of
the curriculum. (student, West-Agder)

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Dimension 4: ICT and learning strategies,
information literacy
 Interviewer: Could you have worked the same way if you had not had
computers?
 Boy: Not at all.
 Interviewer: Why not?
 Boy: Because we learn much more on the Internet.
 Girl: Yes, more interesting. Because it is so boring to go to the library to
find a book and look through. It is easier and it is more fun.
 Interviewer : Yes. Do you think it is easier to find information on the
Internet?
 Girl: Yes, I think so.
 Interviewer: But everything on the Internet is not the same quality. Do you
know when you discover the good pages and what is correct information
and so forth?
 Boy: If you search on Kvasir (browser), then it is mostly the things on the
top that are correct. The things below are just stupid things that just came
along.

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Dimension 5: ICT and digital
bildung/citizenship
 ”Bildung today can be described as interface. Interface is, as
the word states, a border. It is not first of all about the self or
culture, but about the interface where they meet.
Technocultural bildung should, as the classical understanding,
be a basic idea about bildung for humanity, like the literate
human being. The challenge is to transform the classical
concept of bildung’s triade - the self, the world and the
transformation - to the interfaces of technology and humanity
and for the subject as distributed and situated. The
technoculture is the culture of meeting spaces.” (Løvlie 2003)
 Being a literate person in a digital age! Reflection and action

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3. The School and Transformative Learning
Environments

Developments
 Access
 Implementation
 Use (differences in and out of school)
 Media literacies/competencies
 21st Century Skills
 Policy. No more action plans. Embedded in the curriculum,
but what now? A more holistic perspective needed.

Time and Space – within and across
learning environments
 On places and spaces for learning (Bekerman, Burbules & Keller,
2006; Gruenewald, 2003)
 On context (M. Cole, 2006; van Oers, 2009)
 Timescales (Lemke, 2000)
 New literacies
 ’Bridging out-of-school literacies with classroom practice’ (Hull & Schultz,
2002)
 ’Spatializing literacy research and practice’ (Leander & Sheehy, 2004)
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Learning environments – boundary crossing
 What is a learning environment/space? (People, activities,
resources, content, outcomes)
 Online - Offline
 In and out of school
 Towards studying literacy and knowledge practices across
contexts

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4. Examples

A) Online-offline learning environments:
Space2cre8
B) Connected learning across contexts:
Learning Lives
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’Space2cre8‘
(www.space2cre8.com)
A social networking site, like Facebook. Made at
UC Berkeley (Glynda Hull).
S28 is a social networking site that connects 12 to
18-year-old students in India, Norway, Australia,
South Africa, UK and the US.

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’Space2cre8’ - Norway
 29 students in one 8. grade class (13-14 years old)
 During one academic year. English lessons.
 The school is located in a suburban low income area of
Oslo, high percentage of non-western immigrants, and
more than 40% of those living in the area are under the age
of 19.
 Classroom observations (fieldnotes,
video observations, interaction analysis,
’postings on S28’). Interviews.

Two muslim girls
Girl 1: Kuyna
From Kurdistan (Iraq). Attends Koran school in the afternoons and
weekends, and wears a hijab at school. At school, Kuyna appears to
be a relatively quiet and withdrawn, but values being with friends.
Uses her computer, at home, for a couple of hours per day, playing
games, chatting via MSN, and doing homework. Likes Kurdish music
and Arabic films. She does not use e-mail or Facebook profile, but
chats with friends and family living in Iraq. She perceives S28 as
safer compared to other commercial sites. She had 75 friends out of
a total of 162 members on S28.
3213/05/13

Two muslim girls
Girl 2: Yasmin
Born and raised in Norway, family from Turkey. She neither wears a
hijab nor goes to Koran school. An ambitious, active student and
gets good grades. Interest in becoming an architect. Yasmin uses
her computer for about two hours per day, uses MSN to chat with
her friends and and visits Facebook and Biip.no frequently (one of
the most popular Norwegian social networking sites). Her profile
name in S28 is Yasminx3u-. She has added an “x” and a “3” to her
name to symbolize a heart, and a “u” and a “–” (hyphen) because
she thinks it looks nice. She often changes her profile picture
because she wants to use the most recent photo of herself.
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Theme 1: New spaces – new possibilities
 School oriented (Yasmin):
 “If it had marks I would have been working much
harder.”
 Friendship oriented (Kunya):
 “If I had Facebook, I don’t have, but if I had, and someone
added me, and I didn’t know the person, then I wouldn’t
talk to it, but this here is like school x or what it is, like
from school, I feel that, it is like better to talk” (Kunya)
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3513/05/13
Yasmin: School oriented
Ya: hello check out the IUP thing (individual education plan)
where you can see which grade you have in the different
subjects and stuff, but only the subjects in where we
had L (teacher) for example in religion and stuff
Ya: She says what results we have got in tests.
Ya: She says I am glaying [gligger] a 5 in written Norwegian
:D:D:D:D:D.
Ya: I am laying on, I ment.
Om: Good.
Ya: Check out you too.
Om: I will og into my IUP thing (individual education plan) to
check.
Ya: Ok.
Om: Just wait a little bit.
Ya: Wait, I will check out Am`s.
Ya: hahahaha
Om: hahahaha
Om: I am laying on 4+.
Om: That`s because of not so good fantasy.
Om: Where is Am laying?
Om: Where is Amal laying?
Om: Where are you in laying in natural science?
Om: I`m laying on 5.
Ya: Ahhaha.
Ya: Am is laying in 2-3 in religion
Ya: And 3- in Norwegian
Ya: Hahahahahah
Ya: Lol
Om: hahahaha

3613/05/13
Kunya: Friendship oriented
N: Hi
N: hi
Ku: hi
Ku: what time is it there
Ku: ?
N: hi
N: its 9 in da mornin
Ku: :O
N: wat time is it there?
Ku: its 18.20
Ku: 18.30
N: o
N r u a boy or a girl
Ku: i am a girl
N o...nice
N how old r u?
Ku: 13 how old are you
Ku: ??
N 13, too
N where r u from?
Ku: ok
Ku: Iraq
N really
Ku: hehe yes
N is it like really hectic there?
N u kno, wit all da war and stuff
N wats it like there?
Ku: I'm not actually from iraq
N wel...then where r u from?
Ku: I am from kurdistan but it is not a country but
but Kurdistan is in Iraq
N o
Ku: yes
N so r u in kurdistan rite now?
Ku: now i am in Norway
Ku: i live in Norway

Theme 2: Content creation
 Positionings and identity markers
 Representing Youth and Identity by Making Movies
 The case of Kunya
 School project on ’Youth and Alcohol’
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Making a video, shared on Space2cre8
 Kunya takes an active role
 Video; ’Have you forgotten? I am a muslim!’
 First half filming one person chatting with a friend on
’Space2cre8’
 Second half about a girl who is pressured into drinking
alcohol and parents reactions
 Moral dilemmas about being a muslim girl. A ’true’ story from
her own community
 Created discussions within the network
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4013/05/13
Findings
 Personal trajectories. Becomes a different kind of resource for
different kinds of students. (School - Friendship)
 For some students the social networking site became a third
space (E. Moje) that provided them with opportunities to use
resources from a wide range of practices. (Content creation as
potential for empowerment)
 As a school activity. A web of formal and informal activities
(Vasbø, Silseth & Erstad, 2013)

B) ICT and literacy through ‘Learning Lives’
 Not only looking at the technology per se.
 Breaking the ’classroom as container’ metaphor. Learning as
’intersections‘.
 Expansive learning (Engeström, 2009). New conditions created by
digital technologies.
 Two dimensions:
 Vertical axis: Critical moments of transitions within the school as a
system
 Horisontal axis: Follow learners from school into the community
and their everyday practices

The Learning Lives project
3 Cohorts: age groups 5-6y, 15-16y and 18-19y.
Informants: 20 children/youngsters and their families in each
cohort.
Ethnographic approach, using different methods.
(videotaped events and fieldnotes across settings, Interviews in
(pre)-school, at home and at leisure time activities, online questionaire, data
produced by the informants)
From qualitative to a quantitative study

Institute of Educational Research, University of OsloGirl West (ethnic-Norwegian)
Monday:
I got up around 6.30. I was awakened by the terrible sound from my mobile. The first
thing I did was to get dressed and make breakfast before I sat down with the breakfast in
front of the PC. I then checked Facebook, even though I know that very few updates came
during the night or that early in the morning, but it has become a habit. A bad habit! I went
into by blog to update it.
At school today, we visited the “Clinic for Health and Sexuality Education” with the class.
At the clinic, I took a number of photos of my friends with my camera that I later might
use for my blog or just as nice and funny memories. When I came back to school after the
main recess at noon, I sat in the computer lab to find some information about the Cuba
crisis for a test in social sciences tomorrow.
When I arrived home from school, I uploaded the photos I took during the school day to
my PC and edited some of them with Photoshop. Since I have problems to leave things
aside that I think are fun, I continued making some web designs in Photoshop, because it is
one of my hobbies. In addition, I am a bit upset because my MSN does not work after a
crash with Windows Vista and the newest MSN. Ahh, I should pull myself together… It is
just an awful small luxury problem! Later on, I sat down and read in the social science
book and wrote notes on the computer because of a test tomorrow. When I finished the
notes, I printed them out in order to read them again. At 18:00, I have extra math. At this
teacher’s, I get help with assignments I believe are difficult and to understand the
connection between different themes better. Before I went home after extra math, I bought
Costume, a magazine I read every month. This magazine I read in bed before I lie down to
sleep. When I came home, I put on a TV series that I like a lot. It runs on MTV and is
called The Hills, but I have several season packages (DVDs) at home, which I put on when
I am tired or do not have anything special to do. I have also downloaded some music to my
iPod and it is charged now, tonight, because I like to listen to my iPod when I am going to
sleep. Now I have some new music! Goodnight

Example
 Video: ‘Love the way you lie, Hedda’
 Project about Ibsen’s play ‘Hedda Gabler’
 Students in language education and Media and
Communication studies
 Drawing on different resources, beyond the immediate
learning environment of the classroom
 Teacher’s assessment, combined Norwegian teacher and
Media and Communication teacher
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5. Implications

How literacy practices challenge
 Assessment: What are we assessing and how?
 Curriculum development: How does it cater for the
interrelationship between knowledge practices inside and
outside of school using digital technologies?
 Teacher education: Literacy practices across contexts is
something teachers deal with in the classroom, but which
teacher education does not prepare them for.
4713/05/13

’The Expanded Classroom’
 New literacies and transformative learning environments:
 Mobility created by digital media influences teaching
and learning.
 We need to better understand how activities are
connected for learners to understand teaching and
learning with ICT.
 The classroom is not an isolated learning space.
 Teachers need better strategies on how to take advantage
of the digital experiences of students.

4913/05/13
Thank you!

New literacies and Transformative Learning Environments

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