My research began with questions about how students and teachers negotiated the role of\ technology in classrooms where its presence was policy-driven (mandated) and where both motivation to use networked devices and experience with specific platforms was uneven.
Advocates for digital literacy instruction suggest that these conditions offer an opportunity to de- center classroom authority and revitalize the curriculum with projects that leverage students’ technology skills and multimedia interests. Opponents suggest that technology use in classrooms constitutes—at best—adding “bells and whistles” to the curriculum, often at the expense of more traditional and traditionally valued academic literacies. At worst, they argue, technology actually interferes with a student’s ability to sustain deep engagement with texts and peers, destroying students’ ability to think critically and live compassionately.
The twenty-four students and three teachers who participated in this study revealed that these dominant discourses, which frequently take an all-or-nothing approach to technology use, miss much about how networked technology reconfigures the relational space of everyday classrooms. Brief connections through text and social media have been largely dismissed as unworthy sites of investigation for either writing or relationships (Brandt, 2014; Turkle, 2011), but my data suggests that they often mediate meaningful relationships that students and teachers sustain with one another and with those outside the classroom through reading and writing. Because much of the research conducted on young adults’ uses of technology relies on survey data that seeks to understand broad patterns of use, one underlying aim of this research was to demonstrate the value of more fine-grained information about what a student’s time on screens
actually represents. In this study that turned out to be the blackboxed relationships that give students a sense of security, mobility, and independence. What one participant characterized as “distraction” or evidence of “addiction,” another interpreted as answering a commitment to be a particular kind of digital reader and writer for a specific audience.
In exploring the multiple interpretations of networked device use in secondary
classrooms and the multiple policies meant to define and guide instruction in such use, this study contributes two key findings that hold relevance for policy and teaching as well as the fields of digital literacy studies and teacher education. First, this study contributes a more detailed understanding of the impact of networked devices on secondary classroom contexts, especially with regard to relationships, maintained by literate activity, both within and beyond the
classroom walls. Students at both schools generally felt positive about their teachers and reported knowing that it was important to avoid the pull of other relationships on networked devices when the teacher was talking to them. They rarely positioned their momentary moves to interaction on cell phones or laptops as prompted by a lack of respect or regard for their teachers, although teachers often framed students’ behavior in this way, noting that it was discourteous to be off- task. Students felt less protective of their time at school in general, often interpreting lulls in structured activity as time that they could manage in agentic ways that suited their priorities and goals, especially when they felt device use was less disruptive to the classroom crowd than other available activities. In other words, what teachers were sometimes perceiving as distracted or disrespectful behavior was often the result of thoughtful deliberation on the part of students who were trying to make productive use of their time in non-disruptive ways.
When students took a moment during class time to respond to a text from Mom or to reach out to a friend in crisis, or even to buy a shirt or like a friend’s prom picture on Instagram,
they were adhering to social norms of the classroom crowd. They were occupying their time in a way that minimized distraction to others while waiting for the teacher to signal a turn to the next activity or for the bell to release them from class. The data analyzed here suggests that they did not feel compelled to engage in these activities and, thus, the language of addiction and dramatic brain re-wiring that obstacle-focused research laments does not reflect a complete picture of the situation. At the same time, they were not actively engaged in continual learning, as the
opportunity-focused scholarship tends to argue. Instead, they were making ethical decisions regarding their participation in multiple coextensive visible and virtual networks, maintaining the integrity of the classroom crowd by pursuing their own goals quietly, and managing the
relationships that were most important to them.
Second, this study revealed tensions in how standards and policies defined and advocated for the use of networked devices in promoting 21st century literacy skills. These tensions were not a matter of being pro-technology or anti-technology, but rather a product of activity systems with different goals for students. The activity systems represented by standards, plans, and policies were designed to have a unifying effect, but their reach into classroom spaces was uneven, and as these systems came into contact with one another and with classroom practice, different goals and commitments to particular social configurations in the classroom became apparent. International, national, and state standards were consistent with opportunity-focused scholarship that advocates an open ethical frame with respect to classrooms and supporting students in building an involved ethical frame with respect to society. Policies at the district and campus level were more concerned with maintaining the authority of the teacher to define the boundaries of the classroom, aligning with closed ethical frames that make developing involved