Presentation for Masters of Education 2014

1. Groups
Kats Frogs Cherries ala naturale
Yox Michael Jessica Jan
Riccardo Kate Rose Bron
Taresa Dana Tara Joyanne
Catherine Karen Ian Trudy

2. Questions
Do you feel there is a divide between the ICT
experiences of our students and our own?
Using the survey data of our students:
Comment on any results in the survey. What
confirms or contradicts your suspicions?

3. Brendan Crawley and
Andrew Napier
Beyond the ‘digital natives’
debate: Towards a more
nuanced understanding of
students' technology
experiences
Bennett & Maton 2010

4. Overview
● Access to technology
● Research on technology-based activities.
● Key issues for educational researchers
● Conceptualizing the issues
● Advancing the Debate

5. ● There is popular image of a generation of tech
savvy students ‘digital natives’, for whom our
education system cannot cater?
● Based on claims rather than evidence (p. 321).

6. ● Flaws in this argument
● More likely a diversity
among our students
● Sense of urgency about
widening gap between
‘natives’ and ‘immigrants’
(p. 321).

7. Digital Natives v Digital Immigrants
Urgency about being left behind

8. In Perspective...not a new issue
Baby Boomers,Gen X, Gen Y, post
industrial society, post modern society,
service society, status society

9. Catering for change
● Highly adept technical users who are
fundamentally different in their behaviours to
those who are not, due to their use of
technology
(p. 322).

10. Access to Technology
● Access to technology is an obvious precursor
to use
● Cost and family attitudes a factor
● Access only tells part of the story -
school/home differences, differences between
households
(p. 323).

11. Research on technology-based activities
Focusing on the types of activities:
● communication, information access, content
creation (including both ‘academic’ and
‘everyday’ activities)” (p. 323).
● video games (p. 324).

12. What does the Research suggest?
● “Some activities are undertaken frequently by a majority of
respondents” (p. 324).
● Examples of activities undertaken by fewer respondents include
content creation activities (p. 324).
● With the exception of social networking only a minority of
respondents undertook activities associated with Web 2.0 tools
such as blogs and wikis and revealed that they were unsure what
they were (p. 324).

13. Research relating to Video Games
● People have less time and motivation for playing
games as they grow older (p. 324).
● “...specialization in particular types of technology-based
activities may develop at an early age” (p. 324).

14. Further Reflections
● “...significant variations across age, gender and socio-economic
status” (p. 324).
● School children are a good representation of the broader
population compared to say university students (p. 324).
● Other than the activities that are undertaken frequently by the
majority (e.g. Facebook), there is a great “diversity of interests,
motivation and needs” amongst young people (p. 325).

15. Issues for Education Institutions
● Lack of Evidence for Digital Native Generation
● Does not mean there should be no change
● Integration of technologies and skills into
education. Students may not be as highly skilled
as assumed (p. 325).

16. Issues for Education Institutions
The type of use is important - information seeking v
synthesis and critical evaluation
V

17. Conceptualising the Issues
(building a conceptual framework)

18. Bourdieu’s fields, capital and habitus
(Breaking down what we mean by a context)
“According to Bourdieu (1990), actors occupy a variety of social
fields of practice, each with its own unwritten ‘rules of the game’ or
ways of working and acting that structure these different contexts.”
(p. 326)

19. Fields
● sportsfield
● online gaming communities
● classroom
● Facebook

20. Why are fields, capital and habitus important?
● ‘embodied dispositions’
(p. 326). (habitus)

21. Why are fields, capital and habitus important?
● ‘embodied dispositions’
(p. 326). (habitus)
● The basis of an agent's
position (p. 326). (capital)
● “social contexts in terms of
their degree of relative
autonomy from other
contexts” (p. 326). (field)

22. Different Forms of Knowledge
Horizontal Discourse (everyday knowledge)
● context specific and dependent “Usually learned in social relations” (p.
327) rather than a formal setting,
Vertical discourse (educational knowledge)
● “...coherent, explicit and systematically principled structure”
(Bernstein, 1999, p.161) Cited on (p. 327).
● ‘sequentially ordered’ (Moss, 2011) Cited on (p. 327)
● ‘Pedagogized’ (p. 327). The teacher is recognised

23. Bernstein goes on further to say that...
“The forms taken by knowledges in different
disciplines are different, as are their structures
of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment”
(p. 327).

24. Advancing the Debate
● Historical Amnesia? Not a new situation?
● 1960’s - students living with a foot in two worlds
● Social media taking gossip to new heights
● Technology taking bullying to new heights
(p. 328).

25. Advancing the Debate
● Certainty - Complacency Spiral
● Unchallenged/Unquestioned claims of digital
natives divide perpetuates the idea of the Digital
Native Generation

26. Overall Conclusion
The Digital Native is a Myth!

27. Discussion
● Consider your classrooms as fields. Outline the range
of habitus and capital that exists within the cohort.
● Discuss the sense of urgency to design effective 21st
century learning experiences that cater for this range of
capital and habitus.