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This article is based on a number of theoretical and epistemological assumptions about literacies, new technologies and schooling in the 21st Century.

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First, following the work of the New Literacy Studies (Street, 2005) literacy practices

are assumed to be social practices that are always active and interactive and occur

within particular social and cultural contexts.

For more than 20 years, there has been significant and detailed research outlining the

differences between the literacy practices of young people in their homes and

outside lives, and those literacy practices valued and normalised in schools. There is a

seemingly inevitable and wide gap between the literacy practices engaged with in a

variety of homes and cultural and social contexts, and those practised in schools.

There seems to be little purpose or reason for governments of any political

persuasion with any kind of ideological approach to the purposes of schooling to

enforce any kind of standardised and regimented approaches to literacy education

including the use of national testing and reporting standards or the regulation of

‘scientific evidence based’ teaching approaches unless there is serious and purposeful

attention paid to the bridging of this gap.

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Second, new technologies have now infiltrated all corners of our post-capitalist and globalised, 21st Century lives. Most people living in post-industrialized centres engage with texts via screens whether that screen is provided on a television, mobile phone, game console, or a computer.

As well, despite the binaries supported, argued about, and discussed in many arenas, between countries with poor and excellent bandwidth, students with no computers at home and those with their own laptops, the young digital natives and the older generation immigrants, there is increasing evidence that these new binary constructs are artificially produced and easy to disrupt.

Three research anecdotes from my own experiences begin this disruption. One research participant in the remote region of the East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea is communicating with the research team in Port Moresby via mobile phone text messages. During focus group interviews students at schools in low socioeconomic areas of Brisbane, Queensland all claimed at least one computer in their homes, all owned game consoles, and most owned their own mobile phones. In the last two studies focusing on the use of digital texts in classrooms (Honan, 2008, 2009) there was no difference in usage, approaches, or pedagogical styles between teachers under or over the age of 30, while my undergraduate classes in 2009 included at least two young women who complained to me about my focus on integration of new technologies because of their lack of knowledge of computers. It seems to be most likely that our young students are engaging with literacies outside of schools via screens of all kinds (even these young women were using the screens on their mobile phones constantly). The digital divide dichotomy may however describe the differences between these digital literacy practices and those used inside classrooms as the gap increases between the kinds of technologies used (mobile phones versus desktop computers) and the kinds of texts engaged with when using these technologies (social networking sites versus word processing documents).

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Third, as globalization changes the economies of the world, and as new technologies change the communications of the world, it is possible that the purposes of schooling must also change. Certainly it seems to be unfeasible that the ideals of the Enlightenment that led to the development of formal schools and the construction of the ideal humanist child who would develop into the industrial worker of the 18th and 19th Century could be still those required in the 21st Century. Arguments about the use of particular texts including the retention of the canonical works of Shakespeare that are regurgitated within English teachers’ professional journals as well as in the daily press especially during the current Australian discussions about the new National Curriculum are illustrations of the unresolved tensions between traditional and postmodern purposes for schooling. Traditional arguments for the purposes of school seem to centre on the importance of young people learning the discourses of schooling including reading print texts, writing narratives, and studying and rehearsing the routines and procedures for examinations and standardized tests while a more postmodern understanding would emphasise the importance of equipping students with the skills, capabilities and dispositions required for informed and critical participation in contemporary societies.

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Illustrations of the intersections between these three sets of ideas, about literacies, new technologies and the purposes of schooling in the 21st Century, can be found in many arenas of our daily lives, especially if we engage with young people on any kind of social level outside of school. For example, the 17 year old daughter of one friend draws comics and writes journal entries and posts both on her own website that she designs and maintains, as well as providing links to the entries on her Facebook page. Another link in her virtual world is the YouTube channel she has set up to broadcast her comedic routines (http://theadventuresofizzie.com/main/page_home.html). In the section of her webpage About Us, Isobella writes, All comics on this site are done by Isobella, who was always told off in school for doodling while she should have been doing something school-related. Now that her oddness is being released on the internet in cartoon format, all that procrastination suddenly makes sense.

Kathleen Yancey (2004, p. 298) comments insightfully on the ‘tectonic change’ to writing practices illustrated here by Izzie’s use of literacies, and points out that:“Never before has the proliferation of writings outside the academy so counterpointed the compositions inside. Never before have the technologies of writing contributed so quickly to the creation of new genres”. Yancey also notes that current schooling and assessment practices are still print and paper based but are being directed at: “Students who write words on paper, yes – but who also compose words and images and create audio files on Web logs (blogs), in word processors, with video editors and Web editors and in e-mail and on presentation software and in instant messaging and on listservs and on bulletin boards – and no doubt in whatever genre will emerge in the next ten minutes”

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These three sets of ideas about literacies, new technologies and the purposes of schooling have informed the analysis of a set of data collected in 2008 in Queensland, Australia, around the use of digital texts in classrooms. The analyses discussed in this paper focus on the pedagogical practices of the four teachers involved in the study, as it is here in the praxis of the classroom that the realisation of these ideas occur. Aims and focus of the studyThe impact of socioeconomic status on the use of digital literacies in schools was funded by the auDA Foundation in 2008 (au Domain Administration Ltd is the policy authority and industry self-regulatory body for the .au domain space). The aims of the study were to investigate teachers’ valuing of students’ knowledge of digital literacy practices in low and middle-SES (socioeconomic status) schools and to examine the differences and similarities in low and middle SES schools’ uses of digital literacies and how they relate these to academic literacies (see Honan, 2009).

The strategies employed were to:Identify and compare the digital literacies (including their functions, applications and specific practices) used by students in low and middle SES schools;Examine teachers’ attitudes to the digital literacy skills and knowledge of students in low and middle SES schools;Identify the impact of students’ socioeconomic status on teachers’ understandings about the relationship between digital literacies and conventional academic literacies.

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Four primary schools in Brisbane, Queensland participated, two schools located in low socioeconomic communities (named here as Hill and Valley) and two located in high to middle socioeconomic communities (named here as River and Mountain). I met with school principals and the teachers who expressed an interest in the study, and provided them with both verbal and written information about the project’s aims. I explained that my use of the term “digital texts” referred to any kind of text designed to be read or produced on a screen, and those screens could be on a computer, a hand-held game, a gaming console, a digital camera, and so on. One Year 7 teacher from each school agreed that I could observe five literacy sessions in her class (Year 7 is the last year of primary school in Queensland). All teachers who agreed to participate were female.

I am especially interested in the daily practices of primary school teachers, teachers doing “business as usual”, rather than investigating the exemplary, unusual or special. In my initial discussions with teachers and school principals I therefore emphasised that I wanted to capture their regular practices using digital texts, and that I did not expect them to plan anything new or different to cater for my presence.

The classroom observations were videotaped using a small, lightweight, hand-held digital camera that allowed me to roam around the classrooms zooming in on particular students or activities. The focus of the observations was the use of digital technologies in literacy lessons, and so, wherever possible, I captured the work students were doing using these technologies. All the interactions observed involved students using a computer. At the completion of the series of five observations, I interviewed the classroom teachers and a focus group of five to six students. I audiotaped these interviews that focused on discussions about the context of the lessons observed, as well as teachers’ and students’ understandings of the connections between their home use of digital technologies and the observed practices in the classroom.

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A Deleuzean philosophical framework applied within educational research contexts (Semetsky, 2004) has been used to develop the methodology for this study. Following Deleuze and Guattari’s explanations of rhizomatics (1987), a rhizotextual analysis (Honan 2007) treats discourses as intersecting and overlapping, rather than linear or operating in planes. Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be… A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, social sciences, and social struggles (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 7).

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For those of you who don’t know Deleuze, he was a French philosopher, died

in 1995, Guattari also – he died in 1992, most famous for the two books they

wrote together. A lot of their work is pretty difficult to read but if you are

interested then i would urge you to at least read the introduction to A Thousand

Plateaus.

i should also point out that a lot of people think they are quite mad-

Foucault famously said that the 20th C was deleuzian – usually interpreted as a

joke between colleagues – but i think if either Foucault or Deleuze had lived to

see the 21st C they would agree that this prediction was accurate although

premature. The linguistic complexities of language learning in Finland, the

permeation of global trends interpreted in local contexts, the rhizomatic of the

internet, the impossibility of viewing politics, the economy, or education in

simplistic binary terms, are all examples of the deleuzian nature of the 21st C.

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Deleuze and Guattari in a thousand plateaus use the figuration of a rhizome to

counter structuralist representations of knowledge as fixed or linear. Rather

than thinking about the tree of knowledge which has a linear structure of a

trunk with fixed branches and a limited root system, rhizomatics allows us to

think about knowledge as an unending series of interconnections and linkages

– with branches, shoots, and nodules merging and connecting in all kinds of

ways. These are some images of the amazing flowers that come from

rhizomatic plants – the bird of paradise, bromeliads, heliconias, gingers, all

grow rhizomatically.

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This drawing by Warren Sellers is a diagrammatic representation of the

rhizome – there is no one particular starting place – no final end or beginning,

no host tree.

This is a diagrammatic representation of the internet – an illustration of a

rhizome most often used in media studies. The reference is to Marg Seller’s

phd thesis completed last year where she undertook a rhizomatic analysis of

young children’s play in kindergarten settings.

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Thinking rhizomatically helped me understand more fully the complexity of the

poststructural notion of subjectivities – the ways in which we as subjects take

up at any moment in time a diverse and complex range of subjectivities within

a range of contradictory discourses – how do we deal with this complexity and

these contradictions. If we think of discourses operating in lines or layers then

we can’t make sense of the contradictions – but if we think of discourses as

rhizomatic, then the discursive systems form a map of possible pathways. At

any one moment, through any discursive moment, the ground shifts, the path

alters, the “plane of immanence and univocality” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987,

p. 294) forms and unforms, and it is in this process of becoming that one deals

pleasurably with contradictions.

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Understanding texts as rhizomatic enables the production of an account of the linkages and connections between discursive plateaus operating within a text. A rhizotextual analysis involves mapping the connections between these plateaus and those operating within other texts, including the textual representations of stories told by researchers and research participants. Within and across any one text, discursive lines can be mapped, following pathways, identifying intersections and connections, finding the moments when an assemblage of discursive lines merge to make plausible and reasoned sense to the reader. Any one discursive pathway does not render another (im)plausible. Elizabeth Grosz describes this understanding of texts as rhizomatic:“A text is not a repository of knowledges or truths, the site for storage of information…so much as a process of scattering thoughts, scrambling terms, concepts and practices, forging linkages, becoming a form of action” (1995, p. 126)

St.Pierre (2000, p. 279) explains that this goes beyond the layering of a palimpsest that relentlessly overwrites, but rather lines of flight are always in the middle, in flux, “disrupt*ing+ dualisms with complementarity”. Each discourse interweaves and interconnects with others forming a discursive web or map. Each text’s complex web~map also connects with other texts, so that forms of discourse taken up within one text can be mapped across and into other texts. This kind of analysis reveals that there are lines of flight that connect discourses to each other through linkages that are commonalities and taken-for-granted assumptions that seem reasonable and unquestionable. These discursive linkages are like the lumpy nodes that can appear within a rhizomatic root system, or like the couplings that connect varied systems of pipes in underground water systems and it is these linkages that can explain the plausibility of seemingly contradictory discourses.

In the analysis of the data collected during this study, I map the

discourses evident within four literacy classrooms, across and through

the teachers’ talk about their pedagogical practices, and across and

through the students’ talk about working in these classrooms. These

discourses, although at times appearing to be contradictory and

(im)plausible, work together within the rhizomatic network of the

classroom to construct versions of literacy pedagogy that have become

routine, normative, and taken-for-granted. Indeed even though the data

was collected within one particular small region of Brisbane, it has been

easily understood and recognisable in contexts such as Johannesburg in

South Africa, Jyvaskyla in Finland and Sheffield in the UK. (Previous

analyses of this data were presented in Honan (2009) and reviewed by

international peers who, while offering constructive and useful critiques

on the paper as it was being edited, did not seem to have a problem with

understanding the classrooms or the teachers who were the focus of the

data).

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the discourses that operate within literacy classrooms are viewed as those operating

within a complex rhizomatic network. In some attempt to map the complex relations

between different discursive systems operating in these four classrooms, I present this

(in)finite list, a very un-Deleuzean mode of writing, dot points and semicolons, line spaces

and upper case letters separating these discourses in ways they cannot be separated in

the utterances, behaviours and actions of those operating within these systems. I followed

the lines of flight that the analysis provided to examine the linkages between the

discourses taken up by:

the teachers in the interviews as they constitute themselves as competent literacy

teachers who are interested in using digital technologies;

the teachers working in schools in low and high socioeconomic areas as they describe

their expectations and attitudes towards “these kids”;

the students in the classroom activities as they constitute themselves as competent

students, competent users of computers in classrooms, and (in)competent literacy users;

the students in the focus group interviews as they constitute themselves as ‘tech-savvy’

young people who are also competent students;

teachers and students as they interact with each other and the texts on computer screens

during my videotaping sessions, as they negotiate with each other, with me, and with the

texts, their versions of literacy practices.

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As explained earlier, a rhizotextual analysis can shed light on the connections and links

between different, often contradictory, discursive systems.

These ‘provisional linkages’ are commonalities and taken-for-granted assumptions that seem

reasonable and unquestionable, in this case, about what counts as literacy and what counts as

pedagogy in literacy classrooms. The analysis sheds light on the significance of these

discourses characterising what Cope and Kalantzis (2009, p. 182) have termed the “deadening

institutional inertia in schools” that operates within “the institutional architecture of

educational bureaucracy” and the predictability of the discourses that are constituted within

the “pedagogical habits and routines” (McWilliam, 2005, p. 1) of the literacy classroom. It is

these discourses that teachers take up to construct “a widespread and resilient logic of

practice” (Johnston & Hayes, 2008, p.110 ). As Johnston and Hayes explain, this logic of

practice is so resilient that any new idea or innovation is “recontextualised and adapted to fit

within the logics of practice that shape what is seen to be possible within these classroom” (p.

111). And as Erica McWilliam points out:

“By re-enacting such pedagogical habits, we make a culture of teaching and learning that

parallels a predictable and regular social world. When supply is linear and stable, when labour

is shaped by relatively simple patterns of time and space, when consumption is a passive

activity, then such behavioural and attitudinal habits make sense. (2005, p 1).

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Another of these provisional linkages is provided through mapping the lines of flight that connect the teachers’ talk and practices with the versions of literacy embedded within current curriculum and professional development policy documents. Elsewhere (Honan, 2009, 2010) I have suggested that teachers are caught in the complex dichotomous position of both mastery of and submission to the discourses that operate within these institutional documents. Teachers must appear to be expert, competent teachers who can enact the position of literacy pedagogue through mastering those routines and activities espoused in the policies, while simultaneously they enact positions of submission through taking up these same discourses that appear to dictate and mandate their daily work.

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This figure attempts to illustrate this mapping work of the disparate

discourses and provisional linkages that have been identified in the data.

Of course there are many different pathways through the data, so others

may see discourses that I have not seen, may not even find the pathways

that I see so blindingly obvious, or may follow pathways that take them

in different directions. Also, the discussion of these discourses and the

linkages in this paper needs to be limited by linear space and word

counts, so the figure represents lines of flight and mapping that are not

later discussed.

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In the focus group interviews most of the students constituted themselves as

tech-savvy with access to a range of digital technologies. Specifically in

reference to their uses of computers at home, they engaged in a variety of

text-related practices. This excerpt is from Mountain school where the tech-

savvy young person is one who plays games off and online, uses MSN, checks

emails, and downloads music:

The contradictory positions of tech-savvy young person and competent

student are alluded to in this excerpt when Student D reminds the whole

group of the difference, “I was meant to be reading”. This seems to imply that

she did not actually do the reading required, and perhaps further provides the

cues to her fellow-students that in this space of a focus group interview in a

school (in the school staffroom in fact) that they are supposed (or meant) to

be students rather than tech-savvy young people. Just moments later (nearly)

all the students take up this position of competent student when I ask them to

describe what they see as valuable uses of digital technologies

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Despite the emphasis on playing games in the previous excerpt, the

students here remind us that they are good students after all who know

what is counted as worthy and valuable in school contexts. Displaying

their competencies as students ensures they also display their

knowledge of the value of certain literacy practices in classrooms. It is

only at the end of this excerpt that Student B admits that playing games

can be ‘quite good’, but even here, this is expressed in quite adultlike

terms, in terms of game playing as a reward for hard work, or as stress

relief, something to do in one’s ‘downtime’.

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In the teachers’ talk during the interviews, there are some contradictions

between a sense of admiration for their students’ digital literacy skills,

and the place of these skills in classrooms. For example, here is the

teacher from Valley, a school located in a low socioeconomic area. During

the interview, the teacher acknowledged that the students do use digital

technologies at home:

She goes on though to wonder if these skills can be transferred to the

classroom, yet in this excerpt, actually lists a number of key resources

needed to engage with digital texts, not only the operational skills of

keyboarding but also there are hints here of the 21st Century learning

attributes described by Gee (2003) of risktaking, thinking laterally, and

‘just-in-time’ learning:

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Yet this admiration for the students’ literacy resources is contradicted by

her complaints about the students’ conventional literacy practices in the

classroom. Here she dwells on the literacy practices that are common in

literacy classrooms:

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The emphasis here is on editing and spelling that appear to be the most

important and valuable parts of literacy connected with the emphasis on

NAPLAN (the new Australian national literacy and numberacy tests) and

the test results that will test spelling but not keyboarding or searching

the internet or playing games. The practices described here are those

familiar to literacy classrooms: writing a letter then ‘typing it up’; the

process of peer and self-editing followed by editing by a teacher; even

the creation of ‘my brochures’ mentioned at first. In terms of the resilient

logic of the everyday practices of a literacy classroom these routines

seem reasonable and sensible, yet the teacher’s comments about these

routines seem puzzling. A dictionary cannot be used when writing on a

computer screen? Someone else cannot check or read your writing when

using a computer? Using a digital spell-checker is not editing? Of course

these are all practices that writers use regularly, and of course this

teacher would recognise them as good editing practices. But in the

context of a literacy classroom these are not recognised as part of the

writing process.

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In the video data there are many examples of the resilient logic of classroom

pedagogical routines that require teachers and students to engage in practices that

are on one level implausible and incoherent, yet at the same time by engaging in

these practices they demonstrate their competencies as classroom participants.

For example, the teacher at River in one lesson demonstrates to her students how

to add new sections to their graphic organisers created with Inspiration. The

students all engage however with the teacher and her demonstration through

various circuitous methods.

one student turned fully around with his back to his computer screen so he can pay

full attention to the teacher. Two girls sitting side by side listen to the teacher’s

words and guide each other through the process by pointing at each other’s screens.

One boy has obvious trouble keeping up and his screen shows he is three steps

behind in the teacher’s demonstration, while immediately next to him is another boy

who is already ahead of the demonstration. What is striking about this scene is not

the practices themselves, but the compliance of both students and teacher to the

practices. They all know that this is how literacy is performed, and despite the

ridiculousness of the situation, continue to perform it competently.

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An even more implausible and incoherent situation is observed at Valley when the videocamera zooms in on Teresa who is working industriously at one of the set of computers in the classroom. The group of students on these computers are involved in one of the activities planned for ‘literacy rotations’ related to the theme of ‘healthy living’. The teacher has explained the task earlier:

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In the video excerpt one first sees Teresa behind a computer screen. She appears to be diligently on task. As an observer in the classroom I had noticed that Teresa seemed to have difficulties decoding print text and was interested in how she managed to engage with digital texts. I moved around the bank of computers to observe more closely and found that Teresa had covered her computer screen with the worksheet and was busy trying to copy from the worksheet the web address that she had to type into the browser window.

Teresa uses her finger to point at words on the worksheet, peers around the worksheet to see the computer screen, turns to her neighbour for assistance in finding the ‘w’ on the keyboard. In all these actions she appears to be diligently pursuing her role as competent student. Yet her task appears to be virtually impossible, as she tries to balance the old and the new, the printed worksheet that is the embodiment of literacy-as-usual with the task of typing the address of a webpage into a browser. It is not until later that I realise I have commented myself to the teacher in this classroom about the impossibility of this balance when my words are captured on the transcript of one of the video episodes.E: I didn't realise how hard it was to balance a worksheet, a book, and a computer keyboard.

In attempting this balancing act, Teresa exemplifies the contradictions in these classrooms, where teachers are enthusiastic about using digital technologies and texts while at the same time tied to the routines and practices of the 19th Century.

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I have presented here only a small part of the data and a small part of the ongoing analysis

but even this reveals the omnipresence of the rituals and normative practices of the literacy

classrooms that obstruct engagement with new texts and new literacy practices. This

analysis counters claims of teachers’ lack of expertise or knowledge or skills in using new

technologies. All of the teachers in the study were enthusiastic about the need to

incorporate digital texts and new literacies into their classrooms and all were working hard

to accommodate these new practices into their literacy teaching. Yet the observed

pedagogies are instantly recognisable as those related to teaching about print-based texts in

normative and routine ways. I do not believe that these teachers were pedagogically

incompetent, in fact, all four were skilled and adept teachers who continually engaged their

students in meaningful and challenging tasks. I do believe that part of their competence is

made visible through their compliance to “the institutional architecture of educational

bureaucracy” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 182), and that until this architecture is broken

down and destabilised, teaching-as-usual will continue, and new literacies and new

technologies will be absorbed and adapted into the old routines and logic of the traditional

literacy classroom. Such a destabilisation of existing institutional practices and discourses

must begin with policy makers paying serious and close attention to their own ideas and

philosophies about schooling. To engage teachers in critical self-reflection of their own

practices, I often begin with the question, ‘why do you do the things you do?’ We cannot

begin to ask teachers as competent professional experts to disengage with the policies and

discourses that surround their work if we do not first ask policy makers to explain their

adherence to 19th Century ideas and ideals of the value and worth of literacy and the

purposes for schooling.

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