In the spring of 2020 and through the end of the 2021 school year, educational communities pivoted classroom instruction to digital spaces and incorporated digital tools to accommodate remote and hybrid learning. During and through this transition, there was wide discussion of best practices, intents, and outcomes throughout educational environments, and disagreement amongst different stakeholders (teachers, students, parents, administrators, etc.). In particular, many groups attempted to frame outcomes through the lens of digital literacies. To illustrate these different perspectives, consider the metaphor of homographs..
Homographs are words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. For example “run” may mean to take a jog, try to get elected president, or to generate power through the use of gasoline. Despite our language being filled with these homographs, we are still able to communicate and understand the differences on a complex level.
In education we run into the idea of homographs as well, but often miss that we have created different definitions for the same words. There is complexity and nuance in many of the terms that is lost . It can be assumed that teachers, administrators, parents/guardians, and students have the same complex understanding of terms used, but in reality there are multiple meanings and, therefore, ways of assessing or implementing said terms. For example, what is meant by “engagement”? Do the expectations of engagement look the same for each teacher? Are students engaged if they participate? Turn in assignments? Do parents understand what behaviors their child is or is not exhibiting when a teacher gives feedback about “lack of engagement”? There is nuance in even the most basic sounding educational term.
In the age of COVID-19, “digital literacies” has revealed itself to be a homograph that is necessary of attention. Our research group, TILDE, conducted 3 focus groups with educators from different districts. We asked educators about their experiences with digital literacy and remote/hybrid learning. In speaking of their students, one interviewee commented,
They were able to sort of navigate Google Classroom. They could navigate a Google slide deck if I shared it with them. They had some typing skills. They could certainly navigate with a mouse. My other learners, however, to even get them to know how to access Zoom was tricky. What do they do on the Zoom screen? So not even anything to do with the technology. How do they interact with somebody through a screen where they can't rely on full body visual cues and body language?
The focus here is on basic navigation and access. These are executive functioning skills that are, clearly, an important component of digital literacies. Other commenters also noted executive functioning skills extending into the organization and tracking of classwork:
I had them practice uploading an assignment before it was actually math work, so that they could practice taking pictures and make sure that they had familiarity with that before it was a math graded assignment. Just to make sure that everybody was on the same page and submitting work using Google Classroom the same way.
When the pivot happened, and attention spans were battered by the stress of the pandemic, dealing with these basic functions was triaged to the forefront. With hindsight and some distance, what could a robust and intentional understanding or application of digital literacies look like? How could we teach students what it means to interact virtually?
In the same way that teachers interpreted “digital literacies” primarily through the lens of classroom organization, administrators defined the term and its application through their own sets of needs, often focusing on uptake and attendance as evidence that digital tools “worked.” Students and parents, additionally, defined digital literacies in ways that reflected their own expectations and definitions. For many in these groups, the ability to access lessons and resources were often the first and best examples of “digital literacy”.
In reality, though, none of these experiences are digital literacies writ large, because 1) digital literacies are complex, with multiple definitions that must all be addressed simultaneously through the work of school, and 2) digital literacies do this work both within the current framework of school and also alongside and relationally to it. The homographic nature of digital literacies can overwhelm what each of these different groups is doing, and until we create an environment in which different constituencies can come together and incorporate each other’s basic expectations of digital literacies, we will get no closer to answering the question crucial to our students- What does it mean to be digitally literate?
This reflective blog post comes from our work with TILDE (Transformational Inquiry in Literacy and Digital Environments) through the University of New Hampshire.
Emily Geltz is a seventh grade ELA teacher at Oyster River Middle School in Durham, NH.
David Baroody is a middle school educator at The Derryfield School in Manchester, NH
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