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Unpacking Emergent Teaching Practices with Digital Technology

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Emergent Practices and Material Conditions in Learning and Teaching with Technologies

Abstract

What changes when digital technology is used in the classroom, and how do we identify these changes? These questions motivated the present study, which sought to contribute to the discourse on the digitalization of schools from the perspective of teachers’ everyday practice. The analysis was grounded in the scrutiny of 11 semi-structured interviews and field notes stemming from ethnographic observations carried out in classrooms, breaks, and teachers’ workshops. The data were analyzed in terms of materials, competences, meanings, and experiential qualities (i.e., referring to how certain properties of a digital design are experienced in use). The experiential qualities that emerged from the analysis of the data show an interrelation between the elements of practice; in particular, they reflect a visible, problem-solving and adaptive teaching practice that develops with the use of digital technologies in the classroom. Such a practice is characterized as effective, evidence-based, and liberated from time and space communication. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to, the emergence of the teachers’ practice of experimenting with the digital materials, and the emergence of a managerial communication practice in the elementary school. The chapter contributes to the discussion of the tensions between incremental and radical changes in teaching with digital technologies and offers an elaboration of the relevance of a lens on practice in studies about technology and education.

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  • 09 July 2019

    This book was inadvertently published with missing citations. This information has been introduced into the updated book.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the Swedish Research Council, which funded the present study through grant no. C0503801 and to all the teachers, learners, and colleagues who participated in the PLACES research project. In particular, I am thankful to Isa Jahnke, who provided me with comments on the work presented in this chapter, and to Marcelo Milrad, for a fruitful collaboration during our research work in the frame of the PLACES project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Teresa Cerratto Pargman

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  1. Teresa Cerratto Pargman
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Correspondence to Teresa Cerratto Pargman .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Kista, Stockholm, Sweden

    Teresa Cerratto Pargman

  2. School of Information Science and Learning Technologies, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

    Isa Jahnke

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Cerratto Pargman, T. (2019). Unpacking Emergent Teaching Practices with Digital Technology. In: Cerratto Pargman, T., Jahnke, I. (eds) Emergent Practices and Material Conditions in Learning and Teaching with Technologies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10764-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10764-2_3

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-10763-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-10764-2

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