‘Because I’m always moving’: a mobile ethnography study of adolescent girls’ everyday print and digital reading practices

ABSTRACT

With increased access to technologies for reading, more understanding is needed about how adolescents engage with print and digital reading across school and out-of-school contexts. In this study, mobile ethnography was used to document the everyday print and digital reading practices of adolescent girls from one all-girls’ school. They responded to real-time researcher prompts about their reading across various timings, locations, and devices over four days, and participated in photo-elicitation interviews. Findings showed that as students moved between locations, they also transited across devices, platforms, and formats, making use of different print and digital resources for varied ways of reading. Their ability to ‘style-shift’ flexibly across the boundaries of school and personal spaces, various devices and platforms allowed them to independently optimise reading as a resource for their everyday leisure, information seeking, and learning purposes. Insights, implications, and challenges for learning in a post-pandemic digital age are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Literacy
• technology
• reading
• mobile ethnography
• adolescent girls

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Ms. Erna Sia Jingyun for her assistance with data collection and initial coding as well as the school and students for their participation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Singapore MOE and NIE NTU, Singapore. Ethics approval was obtained (IRB2019-03-026-04).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The streaming system will be abolished by 2024 (Davie 2019).

Additional information

Funding

This study (DEV02-20 LCE Designing School Libraries of the Future Study) was funded by the Ministry of Education − Singapore [grant number DEV02-20 LCE] under the Education Research Funding Programme and administered by National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.