Enveloping pedagogies: the codification of instructional technologies

Abstract

A multitude of new technologies and curricula are being introduced in schools as the panacea for equalizing student differences and facilitating student success. However, we can find a pattern in how teachers have historically employed instructional innovations in the spaces of their classrooms. This article examines the manner in which two White elementary teachers codify instructional technologies with institutional systems of knowledge. Drawing on poststructuralist theories of discourse and practice, the author analyses the speech acts and pedagogical practices of these teachers to identify the process and knowledge in which they codify instructional resources with a psychological/individual discourse in order to give them meaning. The article illuminates how the social practice of codifying curriculum materials, computer technology and texts within this system of reasoning bounds how instructional resources can be used, and by whom. Furthermore, the analysis builds upon other empirical work to describe the entwinement of the codes that envelop instructional technologies and those that inscribe subjectivities upon students.