The connected child: tracing digital literacy from school to leisure

Abstract

This article directs attention to how young students make sense of the connections and disconnections of digital practices between school and leisure. By using New Literacy Studies as a frame of reference, we study how students’ conceptions of digital literacies and their positional identities are defined across school and home. In contrast to most other studies of similar issues, we study children in the age range from 9 to 13 years old. The methods used are qualitative interviews and video observations of these students at three Norwegian primary schools. The analysis shows how various digital practices in the classroom become meaningful in the translation to leisure time. We discuss how digital practices initiated in the classroom may be relevant to students’ out-of-school worlds, based on how they get opportunities to unite and translate practices between these two contexts. This has to do with how school’s digital practices may be important in connecting identities across contexts. We argue that the issue of identity must be understood as connected to digital literacy. Our main thesis is that the school context plays a prominent role in introducing youngsters to new digital practices that might be important in developing their digital literacies.

Keywords:

• digital practices
• digital literacy
• children
• identity
• school
• contexts

Introduction

Recent educational policy and curriculum debates raise questions about children’s engagement in new and changing literacy practices, like content production and social networking, and how their formation of competencies challenge earlier conceptions of literacy and learning in formal education (Drotner, 2008). However, less attention has been directed towards how children understand their engagement in various literacy practices involving digital technology, and how these practices are integrated in their daily lives across different contexts (Erstad & Sefton-Green, 2013). We need to gain more knowledge about how such competences and changing literacy practices are negotiated and understood by children themselves in the intersection between different sites, such as formal schooling and informal practices at home (Ludvigsen, Lund, Rasmussen, & Säljö, 2011). This is important because the extent to which children are able to position themselves as learners and to negotiate identity and agency in changing literacy practices has implications on how we understand and study learning and literacy as an interrelationship between activities in and out of school (Erstad & Sefton-Green, 2013).

Framed by these issues and with the school context as the point of departure, this article explores the translation and boundary crossing (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011) of school-based digital practices into leisure time. The article focuses on how children’s digital practices from the classroom intersect with, challenge, and inspire their digital practices outside the classroom. We explore how students interpret the connections and disconnections of digital practices in the transition from school to leisure. We investigate how they sometimes make translations and sometimes define sharp boundaries with respect to digital practices between these settings. The main focal point is how these young students make sense of the connection of digital practices from one setting to another. Our intention is to further contribute to an evolving field of research that challenges the opposition between children’s engagement in literacy practices inside and outside the school (Aarsand, 2010; Björkvall & Engblom, 2010).

Our analysis is based on semi-structured interviews and video observations of students between 9 and 13 years of age in three Norwegian primary schools. In our analysis, we draw on research from New Literacy Studies (Street, 2003) and theories of identity as positional (Moje, Luke, Davies, & Street, 2009). Our particular point of focus is on digital literacies as multiple, complex and contextual. We contend that the relationship between school and leisure is actually more dynamic and complex than previously assumed, and the same applies to the ways of conceptualizing learning contexts (Leander, Phillips, & Taylor, 2010). We perceive children as active and intentional participators in their own learning (Hedegaard & Fleer, 2008).

The research question is focused on what children might learn from participating in various digital practices. Our main thesis is that the school context is important for young students in developing their digital literacy with implications on digital practices outside of school. The choice of topic is especially relevant, since several countries (Norway, Finland, Singapore, Australia and other countries) define digital skills and digital literacies as central to the development of school curricula and as part of twenty-first century skills. Teachers are now being urged to scaffold the digital practices of the classroom in order to support connections between the learning space of the school and the sociocultural world of the student (Mills, 2010, p. 35).

The connected child and New Literacy Studies

There are numerous detailed accounts of children’s engagement in using digital technology outside the classroom. The project EU Kids Online (Livingstone, Haddon, Görzig, & Ólafsson, 2011) indicates that European children are highly connected and engaged in a variety of activities online and that these might facilitate digital literacy. A recent Norwegian study indicates that half of the children in kindergarten between 0 and 6 years of age have already been introduced to computers (Gudmundsdóttir & Hardersen, 2011). Being connected is generally understood as being connected to the Internet. Our approach is broader and seeks to conceptualize in what manner technology might be a mediational means capable of drawing connections between contexts in which digital practices are evident (Ito et al., 2013). Our point of view is in line with insights from the New Literacy Studies tradition, which during the last two decades has become an increasingly important lens for studying children’s digital practices within and across a variety of social contexts (Maybin, 2007). According to Maybin, researchers have tended to concentrate on children’s literacy practices in the classroom and to highlight the home–school opposition, especially within minority groups, though often not involving digital technology.

We are now witnessing a growth of studies concerned with how children draw from a range of experiences with digital technologies in negotiating practices and meaning (Bulfin & North, 2007, p. 249). Maybin (2007) re-examines the relationship between literacy in and out of school by exploring how young students’ informal literacy practices blend into schools’ formal practices. Björkvall and Engblom (2010) investigate how students between 7 and 8 years of age become engaged in self-directed learning activities within literacy practices at school. Aarsand (2010) demonstrates how young boys position themselves outside and inside the classroom by utilizing negotiating competences on computer gaming. Katz (2010) documents how immigrant children develop linguistic and cultural competences in school, or “facilitate their parents’ connections to and understandings of traditional and new communication technologies” (p. 299). The underlying approach in these studies has sought to override the dichotomy between literacy practices in and out of school, and to extend an idealized and abstract notion of what counts as literacy, as we often find it in studies of both “schooled” and out-of-school literacy (Maybin, 2007).

Digital literacy across social practices

During the last decade, digital literacy has emerged as a key term in policy, practice and research. Still it is often unclear what this term implies. Some researchers have conceived digital literacy as a narrow set of technical skills (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008). Building on sociocultural approaches to literacy and learning (Wertsch, 1998), the so-called New Literacy Studies have defined literacy as embedded and situated in specific social practices, and also as something that changes over time due to changes in cultural tools (Street, 2003). We draw on Lankshear and Knobel’s (2006) approach to digital literacies “(…) as socially recognized ways of generating, communicating and negotiating meaningful content through the medium of encoded texts within contexts of participation in Discourses (or as members of Discourses)” (p. 64).¹ For our purpose, discourse can be seen as social context, like school, family, group of friends, online social groups, etc.

Building on insights from New Literacy Studies, we employ notions that connect school and leisure through theories of practice. Learning is approached as the capacity to adapt to changing roles when participating in practices within different contexts (Hull & Schultz, 2002). We investigate how children frame their own participation in various digital practices in terms of why and how they use computers in playing and learning activities. The concept of practice directs attention towards the interplay between individual definitions of digital practices and contexts; that is, how children gain opportunities to access digital practices as resources for action and agency, and how they participate in new ways of experiencing themselves as successful participants among family, friends, classmates and teachers. Both school and leisure-time contexts are arranged in certain ways and with specific intentions that direct individual framings and social practices. This implies that using computers to read, play or communicate mean different things at school and in leisure (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006). We approach context as something we produce as we choose and contextualize cultural resources as relevant in certain activities and settings (Van Oers, 1998). The notion of contextualization is helpful in recognizing how context matters, and at the same time highlights connections and relations. This approach runs counter to traditional approaches to context as some surrounding activities, like classrooms (Van Oers, 1998).

In New Literacy Studies, the link between learning and identity is central. Learning is not just about learning something, but to become someone. Who you want to be, is influenced by what are available resources and the socially recognized ways of thinking and acting within the social practices you operate in (Moje et al., 2009). Our argument about positional identity is about how children make sense of the differences between digital practices inside and outside of school (Bulfin & North, 2007). We approach identity as something dynamic that may change on the basis of participating in practices, rather than as something given or static. Transformation of practice is about perceptions and experiences of what are the available resources, and of the expectations we encounter in specific contexts (Hull & Greeno, 2006). The notion of identity as positional and as related to agency provides opportunities to study how children appear and reveal themselves in certain activities when using computers. With these issues in mind, it is pertinent to discuss how teachers facilitate such possibilities, a matter we touch upon in the final section.

Rather than approaching school and home/leisure as opposing contexts and the digital practices of children in these contexts as having little relevance to each other, we highlight the dynamic and constitutive relationship between practices and contexts. We argue that the ability to understand contexts and different ways of participating in digital practices are vital aspects of digital literacies. This includes the capacity to recognize and explore digital content and ways of utilizing cultural resources across learning contexts, whether you intend to compose digital stories in the classroom or chat with friends while at home.

When referring to this approach for studying digital literacies, we emphasize that we do not assume in a naïve way that it is an easy task to study connections between digital practices in and out of school. Especially not since it is commonly assumed that the digital practices of children in leisure time are somehow more interesting or advanced than in school settings (Palfrey & Gasser, 2008).

A Norwegian context

Today most young people in Norway have good access to digital media both at home and at school (Arnseth, Hatlevik, Kløvstad, Kristiansen & Ottestad, 2007). Girls tend to be more engaged in social networking than boys, while boys are more engaged in computer gaming (Brandztæg, 2005). Experiences of digital practices, such as writing texts and applying information, are widely reported in both school and leisure time contexts. There is less knowledge of experiences in both contexts with respect to content production (Arnseth et al., 2007). Such findings indicate that young people do not experience wholly different digital practices in leisure and at school. The media ecology of Norwegian children in the age group 9–13 years is comparable with international studies suggesting that digital practices are closely connected with social interests and activities with families and friends. Parents are important in terms of how digital media are used within the home setting, and in offering support to ways of connecting with schools (Ito et al., 2010, 2013).

Studying digital practices in Norwegian school settings is interesting in several respects. Most importantly, the national curriculum of 2006 defines “digital skills” and “digital competence”, including knowledge, creativity and attitudes, as one of five basic skills and competencies running through all subjects, and on all levels. The other four basic skills are reading, writing, numeracy and oral skills. The curriculum aims to bridge the perceived gap between the use of digital technology inside and outside of school by committing both teachers and students to use digital media as part of learning activities at school (Arnseth et al., 2007). The data presented in our study were collected in an early phase of the implementation of the new national curriculum. Within both research and practice, there has been an increased interest in Norway concerning issues of digital literacy.²

Methodology

In this study, the main method of data collection has been qualitative interviews and video observations. Our intentions using qualitative interviews have been to increase our understanding of the articulated experiences and perceptions of a sample of Norwegian students. Our findings cannot be generalized and regarded as true of Norwegian children in general. The aim is rather to contribute to the development of theories by means of analytical generalization (Kvale, 1997). The methods were selected in order to gain access to the meaning-making of children in their use of computers, both at school and at home. The methods were also used to investigate how different digital practices at school appeared to this particular age group. Concerning leisure time, we did not have direct access to practices at home, but rather the ways in which these children made sense of their practices by talking to the researcher in personal interviews and with peer groups in focus group interviews (Wetherell, Taylor, & Yates, 2001).

Since the interviews took place at school, it is relevant to reflect upon whether the answers could have been influenced by the context and the manner in which they were recorded. This might have limited the way the students expressed themselves about ways of using computers outside of school. However, our impression was that they elaborated quite a lot in their meaning-making about ways of using computers in different contexts. The responses show how they relate to both the differences and similarities between school and leisure practices and how digital practices flow between contexts. The children quickly became accustomed to the recording equipment. Since our focus is on school settings, we link this to practices outside of school as the students talk about this in the interviews or as part of the observations. As it can be challenging to interview youngsters at this age level, we used observations of school practices to support and validate data interpretation. Observations can enhance our understanding of how interpretations and practices are framed by contextual factors.

Data and context of the study

The data were collected by video observation and semi-structured interviews with 37 students between 9 and 13 years (from fifth to seventh grade) in three classes in three primary schools, all representative for Norwegian schools in terms of size, technical equipment, numbers of students and teachers and socio-economic status. The schools were equipped with their own computer rooms and some computers were additionally to be found in the classrooms. According to the students, they did not have access to computers on a daily basis. They used computers mainly for project-related work. At the time of data collection, the schools participated in a national project called “Learning Networks” (http://www.itu.no/no/Om_ITU/English/). The project sought to gain more knowledge about changing pedagogical practices using digital technology. It also sought to enhance students’ and teachers’ digital skills in accordance with the new curriculum and to prevent digital divides among students and schools. The schools in this study were strategically selected as representative of schools with extensive experience of using digital technologies as a central component in teaching and learning.

The video observation focused on digital production in three classrooms, especially on what the students were talking about in front of the computer screen. We were interested in how they positioned themselves, their competences and how they negotiated ways to work and select content. The students worked in groups of two or three and we concentrated on the most active groups. The observation period lasted for 6 weeks and resulted in over 300 episodes. The episodes lasted between 15 seconds and 4 minutes.

All interviews took place at school and each interview lasted for about 45 minutes. Twenty-four interviews were carried out with individual students, eight in each class, and four interviews were conducted in groups of 3–5 classmates (one for each school and two groups in the largest school). Teachers assisted in the selection of students for the interviews. We started each interview by asking them to tell about their favourite digital practice in general. We asked them to elaborate on how and why they were engaged in different kinds of digital practices, and how these practices were different or similar at school and at home, for example, about using search engines, communication tools, computer gaming and content production, like Power Point and digital stories. The study was introduced to teachers and parents, and it was emphasized that participation was voluntary and complied with the ethical codes of the Norwegian Social Science Data Service.

Data analysis

The transcribed interviews and video episodes were analysed on the basis of being open to how the main themes emerged from the data. The first phase after data collection consisted in transcribing all the interviews in addition to processing the field notes for coding. The next phase focused on close reading of all the transcribed interviews to get some impressions of themes and overall issues that came up in these interviews (Bernard & Ryan, 2010). The third phase was to upload all the text files to the software programme Transcriva in order to proceed on coding the data. The coding was done according to our main interest in possible connections and disconnections between ways of using digital media inside and outside of school in the ways the students talked about this. The coding labels and protocols followed the two main categories of inside and outside of school, as well as a third category where they explicitly talked about the interconnection. Based on this coding and analysis, we identified four main themes of interest for this article focusing mainly on the role of school practices using digital media for developing digital literacy across different contexts.

Extracts from the videos were used to illuminate the main themes in the interviews. Since we focus on the situatedness of actions, in this case on how computers as mediational means represent potentials for realizing participation and learning in specific contexts, “mediated action” becomes relevant as the analytical unit (Wertsch, 1998, p. 24). A focus on mediated action oriented our construction of the interview-guide as well as the analysis in itself.

The four main themes that were identified as common patterns in the interviews with the students were all related to the theme of connections and disconnections between school and out-of-school practices and opinions using digital media. These themes are all important because they say something essential about ways of understanding digital literacy among students at this age, about their different ways of positioning themselves within the possibilities and constrains of these contexts, and about the role of school activities.

1. Defining differences and similarities.

2. School introduces young students to new digital practices.

3. Defined as irrelevant in leisure time.

4. Changing status of digital literacy within family.

Digital practices in motion from school to leisure

We have grouped the presentation of the results from the empirical study into the core themes mentioned above. The excerpts are selected from the larger corpus of data because they offer typical configurations of how digital practices are either connected or disconnected between the school and the leisure contexts.

Theme A: defining differences and similarities

Our material provides several examples illustrating that digital practices differ in school and leisure-time contexts in terms of intentions, goals, rules, norms and the structuring of time. Asking students about differences and similarities using computers at school and in leisure time provided descriptions about how contexts matter in different ways. While schools often focus on finishing tasks on time, by, for example, using search engines to finding facts to include in assignments, the leisure-time context offers opportunities to linger in the process without necessarily having to focus on the end product or time constrains (Drotner, 2008). The following examples from our material illustrate this point. Roger, an 11-year-old boy in sixth grade, referred to what he called huge differences related to using computers doing schoolwork at home versus in the classroom:

I guess I would have been working a bit slower … because then I wouldn’t have anything else to do, and then I could cool down a bit. But at school, if we are allowed to finish homework you finish it at once. But being at home I do some other things while doing homework, so then it will take some more time (…) sometimes I’ll eat a sandwich or something or I watch television and stuff while doing it (Roger, sixth grade).

Roger’s explanation can be seen as an example of how contexts regulate and structure digital practices. Sophie, a 10-year-old girl in fifth grade loved to be outdoors with her friends and to play music and handball, and to communicate with friends and family at Nettby³ and chat-services. She used the Internet to search for information “to see what I might find”. Sophie’s view illustrates that everyday digital practices are influenced by what children experience as important, exciting and relevant at that particular moment (Drotner, 2008). The home seems to be a context that encourages a strategy characterized by having no beginning or end. Sophie’s way of searching can to a certain degree be understood as a radical learning practice since it displays inconclusiveness and making things up as you go along. According to Drotner (2008), through engagement with digital technology in leisure time children experience that learning can be different from being taught at school. The following example from a video observation in a fifth-grade classroom can also illustrate this point. When negotiating how to colour their digital story, two boys discussed their use of Google in leisure time:

Eric:

You know, Oliver, at home I look up stuff about dinosaurs on Google. Do you do that?

Oliver:

Yes, sometimes.

Eric:

I watch videos so as to find out how to do things. And I look for pictures too, for my homework.

The example shows how the boys drew on their leisure-time experiences and interests in technology into the production practice in the classroom. Eric used to spend a lot of time at home creating Power Point presentations about his favourite interest, namely dinosaurs. Other examples from our observations also reveal how such “unofficial literacy activities” (Maybin, 2007, p. 6) from leisure time, became visible in and intersected with “official literacy practices” in the classroom. Eric and Oliver were in charge of explorative processes nurtured by self-styled digital practices and non-linear forms of learning, where they gained knowledge about particular rules, norms and technical requirements for online communication and information searching (Drotner, 2008, p. 172ff).

By drawing on these examples, we suggest that Roger, Sophie, Eric and Oliver might experience how identity, developed in different contexts, can support or rub against each other. Eric was one of the most technically skilled students in his class, and during the time of production he helped in scaffolding other students as well as the teacher. By this, he positioned himself as a successful learner. In the classroom context, content production and information searches crossed boundaries, and were seen to be supporting similar activities, but with different scopes and objectives. However, the teacher did not seem to notice their informal literacy practices blending into the formal literacy practices. Taken together, the examples presented above illustrate how school has an important role mediating connections between identities developed in different contexts. By this, school can contribute to develop students’ awareness on how to utilize resources for learning across contexts, as part of becoming digitally literate.

Theme B: school introduces young students to new digital practices

Both the video observations and the interviews contain a rich collection of examples on how school introduces students to computer programmes and digital practices, such as Movie Maker and Photo Story for storytelling and Power Point, to present assignments and homework. These practices were new to many students, as these utterances exemplify:

I had never heard about Photo Story as a programme, as we use it at school, … it is a bit funny. And I learn new things also, how to write or fix things by using Word and such programmes (John, 12 years, seventh grade).

Yes, it is for instance to learn to use new things that might be useful at school and for homework and stuff, as for instance Its Learning, Power Point. Many students don’t know how to use this yet (Cole, 11 years, sixth grade).

The examples emphasize that children’s experiences of digital practices introduced at school represent new ways of doing things, like writing and arranging content. New programmes offer new possibilities to manage learning at home and at school. Digital content production in the classroom provides opportunities to cooperate and take turns as mentors, as Eric introduced above. During content production at school, students tended to work in groups of two and three to find facts, create and present stories about, for instance, foreign countries, geography or language. The teacher confirmed the importance of giving them time and space to play with new devices. Many defined Power Point as a relevant resource to translate into leisure-time activities related to personal interests, hobbies and family life in general. Anna, a 10-year-old girl in fifth grade is a typical example. She started to make covers for schoolbooks after being introduced to Power Point in the classroom:

Anna:

I make covers for schoolbooks and the like, or for school projects and the like, or just drawings on Paint if I don’t have anything else to do.

Interviewer:

What do you find the most exciting?

Anna:

Covers, because there are so many strange images that can be used (. …) And it is possible to paste in images, for example cars or the like (. …), I can change the colour and such.

Interviewer:

How do you use the things you make?

Anna:

I just make them and then erase them if I don’t want them any longer.

This excerpt illustrates how computers and Power Point are being interpreted as powerful tools for the production and sharing of social content in leisure time. Anna also used to create book covers for her little sister. Our material embraces a range of examples on how students translate practices initially introduced at school into cultural production at home. Andrew, also a fifth grader, owned a lot of pets and he was very interested in animals. He described how he started to use Power Point at home to create books about animals. Together with his friends, Andrew took pictures to put into books.

These examples reveal that children’s digital literacies can be traced from the classroom context into the leisure-time context. In this process, their competences are being challenged by new opportunities provided by technology. As technology becomes part of learning activities, the activities in question change (Cole, 1996). As a consequence, students are forced to make a number of choices that are different from using pencil and paper, like Anna, uttering that she could “change the colour and such”. Many students expressed both uncertainty and playfulness when exploring content production programmes: “You have to press that one … what is wrong with that key?” (Christian, fifth grade). “We pick that one, it is computer-ish” (Sophie, fifth grade). Such utterances illustrate how digital content production at school can provide competences that are different from, but at the same time additional to competences gained in leisure time. But, as some of the students mentioned, not everyone had access at home to programmes used in school.

Based on these examples, we suggest that school plays an important role in offering access to, and introduce young students to new digital tools and practices, as for instance in presenting digital content. By providing opportunities for engagement in explorative production practices that blend into more familiar practices, school can enhance experiences of learning that nurture identity and agency. However, and maybe more important than translating into the home context, by being introduced to these programmes, students learn to cope with classroom demands in ways of learning with technology. Specifically, they need to learn how to use technology in the classroom in order to learn subject matter.

Theme C: defined as irrelevant in leisure time

Despite the fact that our material is rich in examples illustrating how digital practices in schools become integrated in children’s leisure-time practices, there are also some examples showing that digital practices from school are framed as irrelevant in leisure. Cordelia’s (fifth grader) answer is typical: “We don’t learn a lot at school, or on the computer. Or … we learn new things but we don’t use it at home, only if it is homework”. Her utterance, together with similar ones, illuminates that some students make a fairly clear-cut distinction between how they engage in digital practices inside and outside of school, especially for some activities using digital media.

When asking a group of 11-year-old boys (sixth grade) about how digital storytelling and content production programmes can be relevant in leisure time, one of them considered that it might be relevant – but under certain conditions: “(…) if I had bothered. I made a snowboard movie as sort of a test. I am snowboarding”. These excerpts show that outside the classroom students want to create content about matters of relevance to their personal interests. They struggle to combine identities developed inside and outside of the school contexts. The boy’s perceptions of his own identity as learner did not seem to mediate action or promote agency. Teachers might intend to include technology to connect the learning spaces of school to the student’s broader sociocultural worlds. At the same time, teachers have to develop the student’s skill in mastering digital practices related to academic learning typical of the school context.

Theme D: changing status of digital literacy within family

Our study further shows how the family is an important context for encouraging the use of digital media. This is supported by studies of children and media use in general (Livingstone, 2009). Digital technology provides children with the possibility of participating and sharing experiences in new ways, and hence to experience themselves as successful learners and participants in the family. From the examples presented below, it is possible to suggest that the position of children within their families might change due to their skills and experiences in using digital technologies. In a group interview, Marie and Christina explain how technology in education intervenes in family life:

When I come home talking to mum, then she says, like this, “have you heard about the presidential election and stuff?” Then I tell her everything I know (…) She thinks it is nice that we have Smartboard since we learn a lot more. We watch the news every day at school (Marie and Christina, sixth grade).

This excerpt illustrates how digital expertise related to the presidential election enables children to interact as competent interlocutors with their parents. Students strengthened their positions as competent contributors into the family using competencies from school. To quote Katz (2010), children can “broker”, or “facilitate their parents’ connections to and understandings of traditional and new communication technologies” (p. 299). Katz sees children’s brokering activities as a form of dynamic interplay between parents and children, allowing parents to contribute with their adult understandings and experience of the world. Our material contains a range of examples where the children explain how mum and dad or older siblings help and guide them if they encounter technical difficulties. Parents might position their children as experts in digital technology, and traditional parent–child relationships might change. However, it is not the technical expertise in itself that is important here, but what the technology allows children to do. New digital practices learned in school can provide children with new roles as mentors and experts, as well as letting them experience new learning identities related to who they are and what they are capable of doing (Hull & Greeno, 2006). Our material reveals how important it is for the children to present their digital productions to family members. Many of the children experienced the opportunity to present their digital content productions to family and friends. Anna in fifth grade, introduced above, often showed her schoolbook covers to her mum and dad. Eric, also a fifth grader, argued that he liked the idea of making “others learn something”. Engagement in digital practices offers opportunities to experience “(…) a shifting sense of agency” (Moje et al., 2009, p. 432). Our results contribute to nuance traditional understandings of the technology use relationship between adults and children (Ito et al., 2010).

Discussion – tracing digital literacies from school to leisure

The examples presented in this article illuminate how children interpret and understand digital practice in different ways according to the activities, intentions, goals, values, rules and contextual requirements. This is nothing new. However, what is important here is the way children’s framings and understandings of digital practices can influence how they perceive that they can bring their learning in digital practice between school and leisure. Individual interpretations have a bearing on whether learning can be realized across the school and recreational context (Lantz-Andersson, 2009). The way children perceive the possible transitions and breaks between digital practice in and out of school has also to do with opportunities to position who they want to be, namely to position their identities as learners. As our examples indicate, children explain that computers offer new ways of learning, and that learning to operate the technology results from exploring it as intertwined in daily activities, related to personal interests, needs and possibilities (Erstad, 2010). The children in our study engaged in new digital practices at school, while transforming and reshaping them at home by creating new content, for instance as covers for schoolbooks, or by using and reusing content based on other goals and intentions. However, some of them did not manage to translate digital practices from school into leisure-time practices. They framed school’s digital practices as irrelevant or meaningless for their leisure-time interests in technology. Our data reveal that sometimes children are able to make translations and sometimes they define sharp boundaries between digital practices across school and leisure-time contexts. Hence, it is advisable to view digital practices as intersecting across contexts, but in each case offering different levels of potentials for realizing participation and learning in specific activities and contexts.

This article seeks to direct attention towards what exactly schools might mean for digital practices among young students. Based on our findings, we suggest that school plays an important role by bringing children into contact with new digital practices that urge them to compare and contrast these practices with digital practices outside school, thus training their capacity for critical judgement. Our findings indicate that tracing digital literacies from school to leisure has to do with critical abilities connected to the capacity to recognize, transform and explore content and methods across learning contexts. The students communicated an awareness on how contexts regulate and structure their use of search engines and programmes. They expressed conscious reflections about how to use computers and programmes based on what is accepted within school and leisure. We suggest that tracing digital literacies from school to leisure has to do with an awareness of contexts. This implies being able to manage and utilize different “literacy-practices” outside of and inside the classroom (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006).

School is still a central site for competence formation and democratic participation and has the potential to provide access to all kinds of media as mutual resources to all children (Drotner, 2008). Based on this, the school is an important arena for linking identities across contexts. We argue that the concept of positional identity (Hull & Greeno, 2006) can be helpful in understanding the way children make sense of the differences and similarities between digital practices inside and outside school. The concept of positional identity makes it possible to discuss how children might experience the way engagement in digital practices produce alternative ways to behave and learn, whether this includes “learning new things” by using Power Point, or engaging in new roles as content-producers and experts. For instance, if the teachers had integrated Anna’s habit of creating schoolbook covers by using Power Point as a topic for discussion in the class, maybe Anna and her classmates would become more conscious about potential connections and disconnections between school-based and leisure time-based knowledge. Positional identity relates to choice of content and ways of working. In our material, this can be seen operating both within leisure-time digital practices, like in movies about snowboard, and within school-based digital practices like digital stories and Power Point presentations. We argue that digital practices from school offer opportunities to be attentive towards and understand one’s own identity as learners as vital to literacy performance. This has to do with the ability to identify learning resources and contexts in a proper manner to ensure that these resources can be mobilized (Erstad, Gilje, Sefton-Green, & Vasbø, 2009, p. 105).

Towards twenty-first century competencies

The issues presented in this article are important because they point towards contemporary discussions about twenty-first century skills and literacies (Griffin, McGaw, & Care, 2012). The examples discussed direct attention to broader conceptualizations of digital literacy as a cultural competence, integrating aspects like basic technical skills, analysing the media as object in itself, being critical to content and technology and acquiring learning strategies for searching and utilizing information and learning to learn. In other words, digital literacy as a cultural competence implies learning within, and being part of a digital culture (Buckingham, 2006).

Based on our empirical findings, it is possible to argue that positional identity contributes vital aspects to an understanding of digital literacies. This includes the importance of being conscious of and recognizing different cultural resources available to us across contexts and situations. Hence, digital literacies can be conceptualized as mediational means (Wertsch, 1998) preparing individuals to change their ways of participating in and recognizing different digital practices across contexts. This approach is in line with recent research highlighting the necessity of understanding learning as connected across learning contexts (Erstad & Sefton-Green, 2013; Ito et al., 2013). This viewpoint calls for broader and more in-depth perspectives on digital literacies in schools, as proposed by Buckingham (2003) and Lankshear and Knobel (2006). This implies connecting learning in meaningful ways to the learner’s identities and social and cultural practices, providing the possibility of integrating new with established practices. A broad approach involves providing opportunities to engage and compare, as well as contrast and reflect upon different literacy practices in different settings with the goal of critically navigating different practices (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006). It is important that schools help students understand how contextual framings and their own meta-cognitive interpretations of these might impact on how they learn in the intersection between formal and informal learning. We are not suggesting that digital practices in classrooms should resemble digital practices in leisure. Rather, we should recognize that – from the children’s point of view – there is and there should be a difference between home and school, but also similarities understood as border crossings or bridges between practices. We need to rethink education and the use of technology adopted in an unequivocally child-centred approach (Buckingham, 2003).

This article has shown that there is no simple answer to complex pedagogical issues regarding cultural continuity versus discontinuity between home and school. We have outlined some possible themes that are central to children’s digital practices in various everyday contexts. More research is needed to obtain a fuller picture of how children understand learning mediated by digital practices across different learning contexts.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all blind reviewers and Professor Pär Nygren (Lillehammer University College) who have contributed to this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne Mette Bjørgen

Anne Mette Bjørgen is an associate professor at the Department of education and social work. She is also a specialist in educational media at the Centre for lifelong learning at Lillehammer University College, Norway. She has published on issues of technology and learning, digital literacy and digital competence, as well as on issues of distance and flexible education. She is also a member of research groups studying technology in education, media education and child and youth competence development at Lillehammer University College. Her research interests evolve around how we engage in digital practices including digital technology in educational settings and everyday life.

Ola Erstad

Ola Erstad is a professor at the Department for Educational Research, University of Oslo, Norway. He has been working both within the fields of media and educational research. He has published on issues of technology and education, especially on “media literacy” and “digital competence”. He is leader of a research group called “TransAction” and is leading several research projects studying media use among young people and the interrelationship between formal and informal ways of learning.

Notes

1. Their definition is inspired by Scribner and Cole’s (1981) conception of social practice as “(…) a recurrent, goal-directed sequence of activities using a particular technology and a particular system of knowledge” (p. 235), and by Gee’s (1990) distinction between Discourse and discourse (as cited by Lankshear & Knobel, 2006, p. 12ff).

2. Several research communities are doing research on digital literacy, for instance, InterMedia (http://www.uv.uio.no/english/research/groups/intermedia/), Transaction (http://www.uv.uio.no/english/research/groups/transaction/index.html) and the Research Centre for Child and Youth Competence Development (http://www.hil.no/eng/research_areas/child_and_youth_competence_development_ph_d/phd_program). A national centre has been established for research and development concerning these issues (Centre for Information and Communication Technology in education (https://iktsenteret.no/english)). Several conferences have been held targeting teachers and school leaders, and the provision for digital literacy in teacher education has been a priority.

3. Nettby was a popular Norwegian website which closed down in 2010: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettby