Lankshear- The Challenge of Digital Epistemologies
Starting from the idea that the everyday life is more and more digitized, Lankshear looks at the way that the change from 'atoms to bits' in everyday practices cause specific changes to knowledge, knowledge processes. Specifically he says that "these are ‘changes in the world to be known’, ‘changes in conceptions of knowledge and processes of coming to know things’, ‘changes in the nature of knowers,’ and ‘changes in the relative significance of different modes of knowing.'"
First, the knowledge changes in value from that of a valuable resource to that of a commodity to be used. Secondly, knowledge becomes externalized, so it is not a property of the individual but rather a shared resource existing between people. This also impacts the essential knowledge for a task. Internalized knowledge was needed in the past to complete a task, that is the one performing the task needed to know the information, now one must know how to access and operate the technology to bring up the information to be used in the task. Lankshear discusses that this shift is really that of shifting from propositional knowledge, or knowing what, to procedural knowledge, or knowing how. Even so, "the abstraction and decontextualization of classrooms from mature forms of authentic non-scholastic social practices has seriously limited the range of possibilities until recently" (p. 177).
All of this questions the current way knowledge is looked at and understood and suggests the need to develop an understanding of knowledge in the digital age. There are references to the ways in which schooling is impacted by this such as recognizing the change to shared knowledge work in the wider, online world does not truly change the individualistic approach in schools. "Ultimately, schools too operate on this assumption at the level of their ‘deep structure.’ For all of the group work and collaborative activity that has entered classrooms in recent times, knowledge is seen in the final analysis as a private possession, and is examined and accredited accordingly" (p. 176).
Leander- Tracing of everday sitings of adolescents online
Leander and McKim discuss the need to "understand online literacies as social practice" p. 211. As such they problematize the dichotomy of offline/online practices which is often addressed in the literature regarding online practices. They suggest that this is primarily an aspect of moving from analysis of one type of place, that is a static conception of space to a different understanding of social space, that is a relational notion of space. They provide examples from the research that make the case that offline and online are not separate but are rather interconnected and interwoven.
They suggest that there needs to develop new methodologies which could be grouped under the context of connective ethnography. This is the ethnographic study of relational interactions through multiple contexts and not tied to a specific physical space, but rather defining space as "performance of place" which is done through boundary creation. These boundaries are continually defined by practices which have embedded meaning within that space.
In my own critique, it is here that I would want to further explore this idea of space and place. If the performance of place does involve that definition of boundaries, yet there is a desire to define place by the relational aspect, then it is difficult to see how we would in reality develop that context of study. The continual enactment of the place would mean that the space that is being study would be a shifting and changing entity and perhaps lose clarity for the study in this shifting. I believe that this is not an issue which is irresolvable, but rather needs to be further refined and discussed.
Leander- You won't be needing your laptop
In this discussion of a study done at a private school, Leander examines the ways in which traditional definitions of literacy and instructional practices intersected with the "open" framework provided by every student having a laptop connected to the internet. The implications from his study is that the provision of access to the technology is not enough to change the practices in school around teaching and learning with these technologies. Leander does not address this issue from an organizational culture or even the momentum of 'habitus' in recreating itself. However, he discusses the technologies which are used to "spatio-temporally produce and organize schooling as a particular kind of activity" (p. 27). The observed practices of ths use of the laptops, for the most part, were for common practices that were just the transfer from print interactions, such as taking notes and the processes surrounding handing out and submitting homework. Yet, even in these traditional practices, the use of the laptops did provide opportunity for changes to these practices.
Leander also highlighted tensions between competing concepts of identity (strong wired women versus vulnerable frightened girls), information (unlimited, open digital library versus questionable and unreliable online postings), and classroom interaction (ongoing, shared discussion versus scattered, disruptive and unobserved side chatter). Most helpful is Leander's chart depicting the space-time productions seen in school and that in the online.
Although Leander's shift to the idea of space-time is very helpful in approaching the issue of the use of online practices in the school setting, he is recreating the very binary that, in other works, he problematizes of in-school/out of school. I do not see that this is a contradiction, but merely the tension in discussing how we can address this complex interaction. Leander does reference Soja's work on spatiality which recognizes the complexity of space-time by understanding it as trialectically created, with the trialect being comprised of social, historical and spatial aspects. This is an area that could use further exploration. How do these three intersect? What can actually be seen as the social, historical and spatial aspects? and How do these interact to produce social space?
Starting with an example of chalk writings on city walls explaining how to access wireless internet, Leander highlights four ways that this act provides entry into understanding online literacyscapes: 1) the writing is about the digital world but not in it, 2) explicitly shows the 'working of social-spatial boundaries' 3) a practice of identification and 4) uneven distribution of identity and knowledge related to online work. Pulling from both spatial theory (primarily Soja, 1989 and Lefebvre, 1991) and narrative discourse analysis (Holloway & Valentine, 2001) Leander suggests that the research needs to move beyond looking at the artifacts created by youth in online spaces and begin to understand the process or 'travels' through this cyberspace as an important aspect of study. He specifically discusses the need to recognize the crossing of practices without limiting to the in school literacy practices or out of school online activities only.
Leander provides a brief critique of the use of activity theory to analyze the shifting interactions of literacy across various literacyscapes; offline, online, home, school, out of school, etc. He suggests that this theory has potential as a lens, but is limiting in that it is so often tied to the concept of communities of practice which suggest a history of practices that are passed through an apprenticeship model. This reduces the explanatory power of such a lens when applied to rapidly changing forms of interaction which are developed and redeveloped through use with others who are also new to them. However, he does end with the suggestion that this lens is a useful one to examine and perhaps modify to help understand "how new literacies are learned and culture is being transformed' (p. 396).
Themes playing across these articles
First, it should be recognized that these articles were selected specifically since they addressed the ideas and themes seen in Leander's Connective Ethnographies chapter in the Handbook on New Literacies Research. Thus, the themes were in some ways already known going into these articles. However, there were in deed specific themes seen:
· The focus on the everyday practices shifts our analysis from that of recreating the online/offline binary to understanding how the new literacies practices shape and change the way that people interact and construct identity, space and knowledge. In this way the new literacies need to be seen as always emerging and changing, but that they are not new as in novel. The very everydayness of their use suggests a broader impact and transformation of practice and interaction.
· There is a shift to understanding space and literacy as relational. The social interactional aspect of activity and the connectedness of these interactions changes the primary assumptions about space and literacy as bounded and defined by one location or type of interaction. This understanding brings into play the historical trajectories of interaction as impacted by the current technologies for relating.
· Finally, all of these articles highlighted the conflicts and tensions that exist within systems and organizations which were designed and developed out of traditional literacy practices and yet now are beginning to try and utilize new literacies practices. These articles suggest that there needs to be an actual shift in mindset or change in foundational epistemologies for the new literacy practices to be put into place and also to be effectively researched and understood.
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