Enabling exemplary teaching: a framework of student engagement for students from low socio-economic backgrounds with implications for technology and literacy practices

Abstract

Engaging students in effective technology use and literacy learning is an ongoing challenge, particularly for students who are impacted by poverty. Exemplary teaching and teachers’ pedagogical choices play a critical role in addressing this challenge. This paper illustrates the practices of teachers, identified to be exemplary in engaging students in low socio-economic status (SES) locations, with a focus on their use of technology and associated literacy practices. The data is drawn from a large-scale study of the practices of 28 exemplary teachers in low SES primary and secondary schools in New South Wales, Australia. Using the Fair Go student engagement framework, we illustrate the ways these teachers used high cognitive, high affective and high operative strategies with technology to build students’ discipline and literacy knowledge, to scaffold their learning and to create a nurturing environment for literacy learning. Technology-literacy markers are presented as a pedagogical guide that draws on exemplary practice by teachers in a range of low SES settings. The analysis presented also provides forward-thinking input to governments and policymakers for re-conceptualizing educational technology for students in these contexts.

Keywords:

• low socio-economic status
• student engagement
• technology-literacy markers
• exemplary teaching

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jon Callow

Dr Jon Callow is a senior lecturer and the coordinator of the Master of Teaching program at the University of Sydney. He is an experienced academic and literacy educator, having worked in schools, universities and in professional development for teachers in Australia and internationally. Working across early childhood, elementary and secondary schooling contexts, his research areas include visual and multimodal texts, the implementation of a visual metalanguage in classroom practice and the study of children’s picture books. Other areas of expertise include English and literacy pedagogy, social justice and digital media.

Joanne Orlando

Dr Joanne Orlando examines contemporary life through the lens of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to understand how ICT contributes to our actions, knowledge and identity. In particular, her research focuses on how ICT sits alongside and against established social and cultural practices in formal and informal learning contexts. She examines this focus across educational contexts to include early childhood education, primary and secondary school, higher education, as well as the learning of adults outside formal education.