nordic journal of digital literacy

2013

NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY

4 7. ÅRGANG

Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy 04-2013, VOL. 8 Editorial Morten Søby Horizon: Technology Outlook for Norwegian Schools Page 187 Articles Ingrid Helleve, Aslaug Grov Almås & Brita Bjørkelo Social Networking Sites in Education – Governmental Recommendations and Actual Use Page 191 Anna-Lena Godhe Tensions and Contradictions When Creating a Multimodal Text as a School Task in Mother Tongue Education Page 208 Toril Aagaard & Andreas Lund Mind the Gap: Divergent Objects of Assessment in Technology-rich Learning Environments Page 225

EDITORIAL

Horizon: Technology Outlook for Norwegian Schools Mapping and analyzing prospective technologies for learning Morten Søby

The Technology Outlook for Norwegian Schools 2013-2018 presents the findings of a project led by the New Media Consortium (NMC). The New Media Consortium is an international community of experts in educational technology. This includes many stretching from practitioners who work with new technologies on campuses every day to the visionaries who shape the future of learning at think tanks, labs, and research centers, but also staff, boards of directors, advisory boards, and others helping the NMC conduct cutting edge research. Since the launch of the Horizon Project in March 2002, the NMC has held ongoing dialogs with hundreds of technology professionals, campus technologists, faculty leaders from colleges and universities, and representatives of leading corporations. As the centerpiece of NMC's Horizon Project1, the NMC Horizon Report series charts the landscape of emerging technologies for teaching, learning and creative inquiry around the globe. Each year, an Advisory Board considers the results of these dialogs and also looks at a wide range of articles, published and unpublished research, papers, and websites. This is done to generate a list of technologies, trends, challenges, and issues that knowledgeable people in technology industries, higher education, and museums are thinking about. The Horizon Project Norway is a collaboration between the New Media Consortium, authors of the Horizon Report series, and the Norwegian Centre for ICT in Education. The goal of the project was to create a special Horizon Project report focused expressly on primary and secondary education (K-12) in Norway. The report from Horizon Project Norway identifies significant developments in technologies supporting teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in Norwegian primary and secondary education. Mapping and analyzing prospective technologies for learning is not rocket science. It is rather about systemic knowledge, trends, and scenarios. All the work underpinning the report makes use of the NMC’s Delphi-based process for bringing groups of experts to a consensus, in this case concerning the impact of emerging technologies on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry in Norwegian schools the next five years. Dozens of technologies, meaningful trends, and critical challenges are examined for possible inclusion in the report. _______________________________________________________________________________________ This article is downloaded from www.idunn.no. Any reproduction or systematic distribution in any form is forbidden without clarification from the copyright holder.

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EDITORIAL | HORIZON: TECHNOLOGY OUTLOOK FOR NORWEGIAN SCHOOLS

Every NMC report draws on the considerable expertise of an internationally renowned Advisory Board that first considers a broad set of important emerging technologies, challenges, and trends. It then examines each of them in progressively greater detail, reducing the set until the final list of technologies, trends, and challenges are identified. The final topics, challenges, and trends in the present report are:

Technologies to Watch: Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less • Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) • Cloud Computing • Flipped Classroom • Social Media

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years • Games and Gamification • Mobile Learning • Online Learning • Open Content

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years • Learning Analytics • Natural User Interfaces • Real-Time Machine Translation • Wearable Technology

Top Trends expected to have significant impact in Norwegian schools To assure this perspective, the advisory board researches, identifies, and ranks key trends that are currently affecting the practice of teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in education. It then uses these as a lens for its work in predicting the uptake of emerging technologies. These trends are surfaced through an extensive review of current articles, interviews, papers, and new research. Once identified, the list of trends is ranked according to how significant of an impact they are likely to have on education in the next five years. The following trends have been identified as key drivers of technology adoptions in the period 2013-2018. They are listed here in the order they were ranked (from the most important to the less important) by the Norwegian advisory board: 1. Social media is changing the way people interact, present ideas and information, and communicate. © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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2. Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning, and collaborative models. 3. People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want. 4. As the cost of technology drops and school districts revise and open up their access policies, it is becoming more common for students to bring their own mobile devices. 5. Openness: concepts like open content, but also open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information are becoming valuable.

Key challenges related to teaching, learning, or creative inquiry that Norwegian schools will face during the next 5 years They are listed here in the order ranked by the Norwegian advisory board. Like the trends, the ten challenges - described below - were drawn from a careful analysis of current events, papers, articles, and similar sources. However, the personal experience of the advisory board members in their roles as leaders in education and technology is also included. 1. Initial teacher training and in-service training is lagging behind in the digital domain. Current approaches to initial teacher training and in-service training in digital tools and pedagogies are insufficient for the need. 2. Teachers and schools remain dependent on physical textbooks. Norwegian teachers are grounded in a strong textbook culture. 3. Digital skills and the use of ICT for learning do not appear to be embedded in reform efforts, measurement strategies, prioritized areas, and national programmes to any appreciable extent. 4. The demand for personalized learning is not adequately supported by current technology or practices. 5. Digital competence in the curriculum should be revised or embedded in new ways. The Norwegian Horizon report brings inputs to the debate about technologies expected to play a decisive role in shaping future learning strategies in the short-, medium-, and longer term. I do hope the Norwegian report constitutes a reference and straightforward technology-planning guide for educators, researchers, administrators, policymakers, and technologists. It is our hope that this report will help inform the choices that institutions make about technology to improve, support, or extend teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in primary and secondary education. We need to consider the introduction and implementation of technologies in learning in relation to the dynamics, evolution and needs of learning systems in further discussion. Learning takes place in a complex ecosystem where one must be aware of technology trends, but at the same time not become too technology driven. Thus, technologies become inseparable from their affordances and impact on learning. Furthermore, education is understood in a holistic manner. From this perspective, policy making should not be “bewitched” by fashionable technologies, or risk massive cyclical investments in different kinds of technologies that have little effect on developing better © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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teaching and learning practises and outcomes. A systemic approach to school innovation is inspired by technology and driven by pedagogy. According to the new OECD report Innovative Learning Environments: “Innovating the elements of the ‘pedagogical core’ - the content, the digital and physical resources, and the profile of teachers goes hand in hand with organisational relations and dynamics appropriate to transform such innovations into powerful learning for the 21st century. In many cases this means to rethink the kind organisational patterns that deeply structure schools - the single teachers, the classroom segmented from other classrooms each with their own teacher, the familiar timetable structure and bureaucratic units, and traditional approaches to teaching and classroom organisation” (OECD, 2013, p. 72).

References NMC Horizon Report: http://www.nmc.org/horizon-project OECD (2010): Inspired by Technology, Driven by Pedagogy. Paris: OECD publishing OECD (2013): Innovative Learning Environments (Draft edition)

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http://www.nmc.org/horizon-project

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ARTICLES

Social Networking Sites in Education – Governmental Recommendations and Actual Use Ingrid Helleve, Aslaug Grov Almås & Brita Bjørkelo ____________ PEER REVIEWED ARTICLE

Ingrid Helleve

Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway [email protected] Aslaug Grov Almås

Associate Professor, Stord/Haugesund University College, Stord, Norway Brita Bjørkelo

Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway/Norwegian Police University College, Oslo, Norway

Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore to what extent and for what purposes pre-service teachers (Study 1, n = 474) and upper secondary pupils (Study 2, n = 324) use social networking sites (SNS), and how the Government’s recommendations correspond to the two groups’ understanding of their educational institutions’ SNS guidelines. Results show that the majority in both groups want to communicate with peers, not with each other. Both report negative SNS experiences. Pre-service teachers do not use SNS for pedagogical purposes, pupils do. Governmental recommendations are discussed in relation to the findings regarding institutional guidelines. Keywords: Social networking sites, SNS, preservice teachers, upper secondary pupils, teacher education, school, governmental, pedagogical use, learning

_______________________________________________________________________________________ This article is downloaded from www.idunn.no. Any reproduction or systematic distribution in any form is forbidden without clarification from the copyright holder.


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Ingrid Helleve, Aslaug Grov Almås & Brita Bjørkelo | SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES IN EDUCATION – GOVERNMENTAL RECOMMENDATIONS AND ACTUAL USE

Introduction Norway is at the forefront of the OECD region in terms of Internet access (Frønes et al., 2011). In spite of great economic investments, results from tests like PISA and TIMMS show that Norway does not come out at the top of international educational competitions (Kjærnsli, 2007). So far, attention seems to have focused more on the computers themselves than on learning outcomes. From a Governmental perspective, the Norwegian education system aspired to be among the best in the world concerning development and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in teaching and learning (MER, 2003). Another political document: Whitepaper 44 makes strong arguments for social networking sites (SNS) to be utilised as a support for learning (MER, 2008- 2009). Schools’ SNS usage relates to pupils’ confidence in digital media, development of identity and social competence. Youths are highly engaged with SNS in everyday life, and the policy also recommends that these sites are well suited for pedagogical purposes. The Whitepaper claims that since more than 90 per cent of pupils in upper secondary schools use SNS, these sites may strengthen the relevance of education. Further, it is argued that SNS can contribute to young individuals’ critical reflection, development of basic competencies, social capability, and build a bridge to young individuals’ lives. The relationship between SNS, ethics and legislation is not addressed. Since Norwegian teachers have no national, ethical guidelines, experienced as well as pre-service teachers and schools are left to make their own personal decisions concerning ethics and SNS in education. Confronted with Governmental expectations as referred to above, one of the most important decisions a teacher makes is no longer if, but rather when, how, and why ICT can and should be used in education. In the process of transforming curriculum into actual practice, studies have shown that teacher reflections include both conscious and unconscious ethical dilemmas guided and ruled by personal attitudes, values and feelings (Helleve, 2010). As teacher attitudes, values, and desires for change are decisive for how a curriculum is transformed into practice (Almås, 2009), teacher education is of great importance. Teaching is a profession surrounded by ethical dilemmas (Carlgren & Marton, 2001). Still, teacher education seems to be more devoted to training in educational theory than in ethical reflection and use of technology. If political aims and purposes concerning SNS are to be realized, future teachers, pupils, and educational institutions must play central roles. In order to gain knowledge of how ethical teacher education should be practiced, it is important to provide knowledge about SNS usage among pre-service teachers and pupils. The study, which is limited to the Norwegian context, is part of a comparative study on ethics, social media, and teacher education in Norway and Australia. The aim of this study is to investigate and compare: (1) pre-service teachers’, and upper secondary school pupils’ experiences with SNS and Facebook (FB), and (2) how these experiences relate to school guidelines and national policy documents.

Background Theoretical foundation An often asked question is if the ethical challenges connected to digital media are new, or if they represent a continuum of what we already know as ethical dilemmas. Ess (2009) concludes that there are three fundamental differences between digital and analogue media, thus giving reasons why digital media ethics should be developed. First, digital media have the ability of fostering © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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convergence, which makes it possible to share common information. Second, the information is greased and consequently spreads easily; and third that the media have interactive abilities making it possible to give responses. Further, Ess argues that across global cultures privacy is regarded a value. In some cultures this may concern individual privacy, in other the collective privacy as in Asia. There is a limit however, for what people regard as their private zone. The possibilities for sharing thoughts and feelings may change individual conceptualisations of privacy. Privacy can thus take on another meaning when individuals communicate just as much and easily with familiar as well as unknown individuals. In turn, issues and conversations that were earlier hidden in secret written diaries and kept for intimate conversations with friends are now posted online. This can in turn lead to false representation, for example through cyber bullying. Ess (2009) distinguishes between three kinds of privacy; accessible, decisional, and informational. The first is the right to be left alone, the second is freedom from interference, and the third is the possibility to control personal information. Ess’ conclusion is that people are more vulnerable to violations of privacy concerning digital media and that increased vulnerability requires increased responsibility. This would be an ethical responsibility that is distributed across networks. One of the most frequently applied SNS’ (Kuss & Griffiths, 2011), where the ethical responsibility and privacy is at risk, is FB. FB is associated with friendship and privacy (Carter et al., 2008). The name FB originally referred to the printed face-books containing names and pictures that were supposed to inform staff and new students about life on campus. The irony of the name is that it eludes face-to-face closeness even at a distance. According to van Manen (2010), FB allows potential access to what used to be regarded as private. Referring to the Momus’ window in Greek mythology, he shows how young individuals’ experiences of privacy, secrets, and intimacy may be altered through what he calls the Momus effect. As the god of mockery and sarcasm he criticised those who created the first woman for not having placed a window into her breast making it possible to investigate her secret thoughts and feelings. van Manen argues that SNS have made Momus’ wishes a reality. Ess (2009) makes a distinction between ethical absolutism, relativism, and pluralism. When people make their judgements based on ethical absolutism they understand an ethical dilemma as either right or wrong. Relativists are tolerant and regard different beliefs as legitimate, while ethical pluralism is in between the two. The question in our digital, global world is to know which value, norm, or rule is relevant? Referring to Aristotle’s concept of ‘phronesis’, Ess argues that there are no general rules. In the digital world people must draw on practical experiences before conclusions are made. The fact that ethical dilemmas are understood differently according to different cultures should be accepted. However, what is emphasised in ethical pluralism is the ability to learn from listening to other views. Thus, the emergence of SNS’s, such as FB have paved the way for digital ethics that can help us to explain and understand the play between ethical responsibility and privacy.

Literature review SNS can be used for many purposes, such as accessing information, debating, socializing, and for entertainment (Brantzæg, 2012). The usage differs according the purpose of communication, i.e. MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, or FB. SNS are systems featuring Web 2.0 (dynamic web) functionally catering to large groups of users (Ellison et al., 2007; Brandtzæg & Heim, 2011). A distinction should be made between SNS and Learning management systems (LMS). An LMS is a broad term used for a wide range of systems that organize and provide access to online learning services. These systems usually include access control, provision of learning content, communication tools, and organization of user groups (Paulsen, 2002). © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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One SNS presented in this article is FB, which enables its users to present themselves in an online profile, accumulate “friends” who can post comments on each other’s pages and view each other’s profiles. FB members can also join virtual groups based on common interests (Ellison et al., 2007). Some of the existing research on FB focuses on identity presentation and privacy concerns (ibid.). Norwegian research suggests that individuals have a low degree of control concerning what is published about their private life (Brandtzæg & Lüders, 2009). FB-members claim that they are less concerned with security adjustments, since these are difficult to understand and argue that they find it safe to publish personal information since “everybody does it” (Brandtzæg & Lüders, 2009). The research concludes that, based on these attitudes, there is reason for concern about how private information is dealt with, especially in light of the commercial aspect of FB. It would be impossible for a company to make advertisements on the physical walls of a school building in Norway, while FB delivers it directly to the pupil’s desk. Teacher education is responsible for educating pre-service teachers how to teach pupils in line with the National Curriculum Plan. According to Søby (2007), the Norwegian teacher education is largely unconcerned with teachers’ digital competences. According to Selwyn (2010), teachers should be warned against pedagogical uses of SNS as FB is an informal channel. Students use SNS predominantly for identity building rather than for educational purposes (Selwyn, 2010). Kirschner and Karpinski (2010) also caution against the use of SNS in education; the findings from an explorative study indicated a significant negative relationship between pupil uses of FB and academic performance. The interruption such activities have on learning in school has been found in other studies (Krumsvik et al. 2011). Others have emphasised how SNS usage is associated with social capital, such as face-to-face interaction, number of acquaintances, and bridging social capital (Brandtzæg, 2012), and making a distinction between “teacher-defined” activities and “off-task” activities (Mifsud & Mørch, 2010). “Off-task activities” are defined as negative activities and disruptions to lessons. Based on a socio-cultural perspective on learning, which focuses on the interdependence of social processes, tools, and mediated actions, they draw on the works of Vygotsky (1978, 1986); Wertsch (1995); and Säljö (2000). Through classroom studies Mifsud and Mørch (2010) argue that the assumption that learning is restricted to teacher defined activities needs to be updated. Instead of “off-task” they want to use the term “student-defined activities”, because these activities may also provide educational gains. Mazer et al. (2007) agree that SNS is suitable for pedagogical work and claim that pupils are motivated when they connect with teachers who present information about themselves. However, Mazer and colleagues recognise that there can also be negative outcomes if teachers use FB for learning purposes, for example that the teacher reduces his or her professionalism. Contemporary theory perceives learning as a horizontal process between multiple systems, such as school, work, and home. According to Roblyer et al. (2010), pupils are more likely to use SNS not only for social contact, but also as support for school work. Results of their study indicate that teachers and students have different opinions about use of FB as an educational tool. Students are more open-minded in regard to using SNS. Roblyer et al. (2010) warn that unless teachers change their attitudes, SNS may become yet another example of technology that had a great potential for improving education but failed to be adopted.

Context From an overall view, we now turn to the nation of investigation, Norway. In 2007 all Norwegian pupils in upper secondary school were given a computer (Blikstad-Balas, 2012). In the MoER National Curriculum plan of 2006, it is further stated that digital competence is regarded as one of © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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the five basic education competences, in line with reading, oral expression, writing, and mathematics (MOK, 2006). In Norway, as many as 98 per cent of the 15 year-olds report that they have always had an available computer at home (Frønes et al., 2011), which means that in Norway, almost all pupils are online. The average among OECD nations is 10 per cent lower (CERI/OECD, 2010). More than 40 % of Norwegian 15 year-olds report that they use the computer for assignments and collaborative activities once or more during a week (CERI/OECD, 2010). This is twice the average of other OECD countries. In addition almost all Norwegian upper secondary pupils report that they are online daily throughout the school day (Helleve & Johnsen, 2012). In the following the aim of the study will be presented.

Overall aim of study The overall aim of this study is to better understand how ethical education for pre-service teachers should be based on comparative knowledge about SNS usage among preservice teachers and pupils and how Governmental recommendations correspond to the two groups understanding of their schools’ guidelines. More specifically, the research questions addressed are: 1. To what extent and for what purposes pre-service teachers (Study One) and pupils in upper secondary schools (Study Two) use SNS? 2. How the Government’s recommendations correspond to the two groups’ understanding of their educational institutions’ SNS guidelines?

Methodology This paper reports data from two different studies. In the following section the methodology and results from the two studies will be presented together.

Procedure During 2011, data from pre-service teachers in their third and fourth years of professional teacher studies, as well as students in the program for Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), were collected from six teacher education institutions located in the north, middle, and eastern parts of Norway during 2011. The teacher education institutions were approached through gate-keepers (i.e., teacher educator personnel that the researchers already knew within each institution). Questionnaires were distributed and filled out with an across site response rate of 80 per cent (N=474). Approaching eleven schools located in the central region of Norway during 2011 gave data from pupils in upper secondary schools. The schools were approached through gate-keepers (i.e., pre-service teachers from the University). The web questionnaires were distributed and filled out with the Learning Platform “It’s Learning”1 (ITL, N=324). The pre-service teachers approached the pupils in their respective practicum classes across different schools by providing an invitation and an address to the web survey. Registration of how many of the pupils were approached and finally decided to participate was not made, which hampers the possibility of knowing the pupils’ study response rate. Thus, a mixture of a convenience and purposive sampling procedure was applied (Coolican, 2004). Both studies have been approved by the Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD2). Numerical data was analysed with the IBM SPSS Statistics3 version 20 and the open response categories were analysed with Microsoft Word and Excel. © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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Samples The mean age in the pre-service teacher sample was 30 (SD =8.2, n = 437) and 64 per cent of the sample were female. The mean age among the pupil sample was 17 (SD = 0.9, n=323) and 55 per cent of the sample were female.

Questionnaires This study applied an Australian questionnaire developed by Morris (2010) that consisted of five parts: part A: Demographic questions, part B: SNS questions, part C: Why not SNS use (Questions 1 to 2), part D: FB demographics, and part E: Evaluations of the appropriateness of a variety of potential interactions and behaviours (Questions E1 to E30). Part E was measured with the Professional Interactions and Behaviours Scale (PIBS, Morris, Watt, & Richardson, 2011, 2012). The Norwegian version of the questionnaire was developed based on a committee approach (Brislin, 1970). This implies that several researchers read the questionnaire and translated it into the new language. Based on this, a consensus version of the Norwegian questionnaire was constructed. Then, the Norwegian version was back-translated to English by a professional translation bureau. The back-translated version was then compared to the original version. In addition to the five parts of the Australian original, the Norwegian version of the questionnaire also consisted of part F, which investigated SNS and teaching. The pupils’ questionnaire was developed from the pre-service teachers’ questionnaires, except for part E, and included some identical questions and some different questions. Both questionnaires were piloted before application. The pre-service teachers’ questionnaire was piloted by two of the authors as well as a colleague holding a Master’s Degree in pedagogics and led to the inclusion of blogs as a type of SNS in part B, as well as to a change of questionnaire format. The pupils’ questionnaire was piloted by two pupils in 10th grade and was supplemented with a question concerning FB for educational purposes between peer-pupils.

Ethical issues One of the ethical issues related to the project has been which role to play. It has been important not make moral judgments as to whether the application of social media in schools is good or bad, but explore this topic and provide data into what is actually going on in regards to SNS use among the two groups. This may again provide a common ground to discuss what actual situations look like and what our options and alternatives are concerning how we can understand and interpret the empirical data. Another ethical issue is the impact of compliance when researchers invite participants to a study and are present when doing so. Approval for approaching participants in both studies was made to gate-keepers at teacher education institutions and schools. Gate-keepers then made internal requests to ensure institutional approval to approach the participants. Teacher educating institutions and schools are assumed to have an overview of studies undertaken and to have the capability to hinder over exposure of their pre-service students and pupils.


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Results In the following section the results from the descriptive data analysis from both samples are presented. Research question 1: To what extent and for what purposes do pre-service teachers and pupils in upper secondary schools use SNS? The majority of pre-service teachers (90 %, n=411/456) and upper secondary pupils (97 %, n=315/324) reported having a SNS profile. The SNS with most pre-service teachers not registered was Bebo (98.2 %), LinkedIn (86.1 %), MySpace (81 %), Other, (78.4 %), Blogs (72.2 %), and Twitter (69.6 %) respectively, with Facebook being the SNS with least participants not registered (1.4 %). The SNS with most pupils not registered was Bebo (82.1 %), LinkedIn (81.5 %), MySpace (76.8 %), Blogs (67.3 %), Twitter (58.9 %), and Other, (51.5 %) respectively, with Facebook being the SNS with least participants not registered (1.8 %). In figure 1 and 2 the SNS usage and frequency among preservice teachers and pupils in upper secondary schools is illustrated.

Figure 1. Currently applied SNS and frequency (%) among pre-service teachers (n=474)

Figure 2. Currently applied SNS and frequency (%) among pupils (n=324) Further, pre-service teachers as well as pupils report their top three motivations for SNS usage to be: (1) ‘communicating with friends’, (2) ‘to keep in contact with old friends’, and (3) ‘sending or receiving messages’.


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Figure 3. Why do you use Social Networking Sites? Frequency (%) among preservice teachers (n=474). Rating (1= extremely important to 7= not at all important)

Figure 4. Why do you use Social Networking Sites? Frequency (%) among pupils (n=324) On average, pre-service teachers had been members of FB for more than three years and had approximately 300 friends. When asked about prospective behaviour when qualified as teachers, nearly all (95.8 %) pre-service teachers reported that they would not send a friend request to a ‘current pupil’ at their school. Few (0.5 %) anticipate that they will delete their current account when they start teaching, and most pre-service teachers (82.2 %) would never send a friend request to a previous pupil (i.e. a pupil who has finished Year 12), nor accept a friend request from a current pupil at their school (81.6 %). Among pupils, most of them had been members of FB for more than three years and had over 400 friends. When pupils were asked similar questions, most reported that they would not send a friend request to another pupil’s parent (82.2 %) or to a current teacher at their school (70.9 %). In terms of telecommunication with teachers, most (79.8 %) pupils would neither call a teacher about their private problems/difficulties or in general in their spare time (73.4 %). Figure 5 and 6 presents a visual summary of pre-service teachers’ prospective online SNS behaviours and upper secondary pupils’ thoughts on communication with their teachers in schools.


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Figure 5. Prospective actions preservice teachers report they are likely to do when they qualify as a teacher. Frequency (%, n=474)

Figure 6. When it comes to contact with teachers would you? Frequency (%) among pupils (n=324) A third (32.9 %) of pre-service teachers reported negative experiences whilst using SNS’s. The data from the open response categories contained 134 answers. The results showed that the most frequent negative SNS experience was bullying (n=113). This category included mobbing, “face raping” (i.e., stealing another person’s identity), sharing pictures and videos, quarrel, hatred, and gossip. One participant reported: “A friend of mine was sued for comments made on Facebook”. Other preservice teachers had been contacted by unknown individuals (n=10). A small group (n=6) reported spending too much time on SNS. A few (n=3) were concerned with the privacy settings, for instance: “There are unclear limits between your profile as a private person and the influence you experience from your professional life as a teacher (friends’ experiences)”. Nearly 40 per cent of pupils reported negative experiences using SNS’s, with 199 pupils providing open ended responses. The results showed that bullying was the most frequent negative SNS © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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experience (n=65). One example is a pupil that had to move to another school. She used her webcamera to show pictures of herself to a person she thought was her boyfriend. The person turned out to be her boyfriends’ brother and his friends. These boys harassed her every time they met, which led to a situation where she developed psychological problems. The second most frequent experience was related to negative social emotional outcomes from using SNS, including anxiety about dependence on SNS and guilt for using SNS during lessons (n=32). In addition to these main experiences, a few (n=8) had been contacted by unknown individuals or reported fear of SNS addiction (n=3). Approximately 20 per cent of the pre-service teachers had observed pedagogical use of SNS during their practicum. Over 70 per cent had not observed such usage, while a minority (8.5 %) did not know whether they had observed pedagogical use of SNS during class or not. With regard to their own teacher education institution, the majority (62.7 %) had not observed pedagogical use of SNS, while almost 26 per cent had, and almost 12 per cent were not sure. According to pupils, the minority (16 %) of teachers utilise SNS as a part of their teaching. Altogether 68 of the pupils supplemented their response by applying the open answer categories. The types of SNS most frequently used by teachers were mobile phones, ITL, and FB. Two examples of FB for educational purposes are: “Once in a lesson in Norwegian we were asked to make poems of Facebook statuses” and “Our geography teacher has made a Facebook group where we publish videos and talk about the subject and things like that”. Almost 70 per cent of pupils report that they use SNS during lessons or as homework for “on-task activities”, as work and as homework. The data from the open response categories yielded 378 answers. The responses were coded into two main categories: media and manner. Media describes what they use for communication. FB (n=106) and mobile phones (n=29) are by far the most frequently used. Further they use Skype, msn, mail, wiki, and ITL. Manner describes the how pupils describe that they use SNS for pedagogical purposes. Here the main responses were: (1) communication (n=45), ask for help (n=41), share (n=33), collaboration (n=19), help others (n=17), and discussion (n=14). Some of the participants also arranged their own FB group where they could talk to each other, make plans, do their homework and share (n=13) and plan and exchange information (n=7). Research question 2: How the Government’s recommendations correspond to the two groups’ understanding of their educational institutions’ SNS guidelines? Around 50 per cent of the preservice teachers were unaware whether their practicum schools had any guidelines regarding SNS usage or not. Almost 30 per cent knew about such guidelines, while some 20 per cent of the preservice teachers reported that their school did not have one. The open response question yielded 101 responses and suggested two important rules. First, that teachers are not allowed to be friends with their pupils on FB (n=33). Second, that pupils were not allowed to use SNS during the lessons (n=28). The remaining responses revealed that schools had blocked the access to the Internet and pupils had to be admitted by the teacher (n=9), other schools focused on pupils’ ethical awareness (n=13), while a minority of schools had written rules (n=8). Close to 60 per cent of pupils were aware of the fact that their school has guidelines for SNS. The open answer categories yielded 189 pupil responses. By far, the most known rule is that pupils are not allowed to use FB during lessons (n=139). Pupils were not allowed to use the PC without teacher permission (n=44). A third of the pupils (32.7 %) did not know if such guidelines existed, while eight per cent were certain that their school lacked guidelines for SNS usage.


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Strengths and limitations One of the strengths of this study is that it incorporates perspectives from both pre-service teachers as well as pupils. Still, the cross sectional study design limits inferences for SNS behaviour over time. A follow up study that can investigate these topics longitudinally is therefore under progress. A second strength of this study is that it investigates pre-service teachers from several geographical locations in Norway and the pupil data was collected from several classes at eleven schools. Yet, the pupil data was collected from only one geographical location, which limits the generalizability of study. Future studies are therefore encouraged to provide more data on this topic from pupils across different Norwegian geographical locations. Lastly, the data on SNS guidelines was gathered from third parties (i.e., pre-service teachers and pupils). Future studies are therefore needed to document the future existence of SNS guidelines in teacher education institutions and schools in Norway.

Discussion This study has investigated to what extent and for what purposes pre-service teachers and upper secondary pupils use SNS and how the Government’s recommendations correspond to the two groups’ understanding of their educational institutions’ SNS guidelines. Regarding SNS usage, the results indicate that it is common for pre-service teachers as well as pupils to have an SNS profile. More than 90 per cent in both groups reported that they used FB daily. The main reason for SNS usage across groups is the wish to stay in contact with friends and family. This finding corresponds to other research within the field (Boyd, 2008). FB enables its users to present themselves in an online profile, accumulate friends who can post comments on each-others’ pages, and view each other’s profiles. SNS supports maintenance of existing social ties as well as the formation of new connections (Brandtzæg et al., 2010; Ellison et al., 2007). The two groups also seem to agree when it comes to mutual friendship. None of them want to become friends with each other. They want to make a distinction between their lives as pre-service teachers and pupils and their private and social lives. In terms of using FB for pedagogical purposes the pre-service teachers and pupils reported little observation of such. Norwegian research shows that ICT mainly is used for administrative purposes for example sending messages, plans or completing homework through LMS (Arnseth et al., 2007; Erstad et al., 2005). While teachers do not use ICT in general or FB in particular for pedagogical purposes, pupils do. The Norwegian Centre for ICT in Education4 (Arnseth et al., 2007) has investigated how Norwegian pupils and teachers use ICT. They categorize SNS as a spare-time activity and claim that these activities are only sparingly reflected in schools. Consequently they distinguish between ICT school activities and spare-time activities in surveys (Egeberg et al., 2011). One reason for making this division is empirical, as multiple studies demonstrate that pupils have different kinds of access and use it for other activities in school than they do at home (Arnseth et al., 2007; Erstad, 2008; OECD, 2010). It is therefore important to make a separate category for school activities. The second argument is normative and claims that ICT used for educational purposes should reflect the schools’ institutional requirements and education and not deal with digital media as entertainment (Egeberg et al., 2011). According to the current study, SNS activities for pupils are to a large extent a combination of school activities and homework. The activities are initiated and driven by pupils themselves, not by © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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the teachers who do not participate in this private sphere. Close to three quarters report that they use SNS for homework and assignments. These findings are consistent with the findings from Mifsud and Mørch (2010) regarding “student-defined tasks". Their research concludes that the borders between deemed “teacher-defined” and “student-defined” tasks are porous. Our study shows that pupils also collaborate and interact through FB on activities that may be understood as “student-defined” or “learning”. An example from the open responses says: “If we have group-work and I need to communicate with other pupils, or if I feel uncertain about how to solve a problem, I can talk to them through for example FB and have their opinions on how the task should be solved. We also use it for sharing documents if we are working on common projects”. The socio-cultural perspective addresses the social and cultural contexts. Computers cannot be seen as isolated objects (Wertsch, 1998). ICT, and in this case FB, offers an extra space for collaboration. In a socio-cultural perspective, learning may be understood as an innovative process of inquiry where something new is created. Engeström (1998) uses the concept “zone of possibilities” as an equivalent to Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development”. What he shows is that when individuals collaborate they not only acquire existing knowledge; they also create new knowledge (Helleve, 2007). The pupils in the current study report that they collaborate, share, and learn from each other through FB. These activities run concurrently with social communication in which the pupils do not want to involve teachers or parents. The fact that pupils want to be on their own can be a reason why SNS may become yet another example of ICT that, according to Roblyer et al. (2010), schools can fail to adopt in spite of a great potential for improving education. Fewer pre-service teachers than pupils were aware of the fact that the school where they spent their practicum or belong to as pupils have guidelines for how to use ICT. However, the two groups’ general understanding of the guidelines’ content seems to correspond. Either the pupils are not allowed to use their computer until the teacher tells them, or they are not allowed to use FB during lessons. Further, teachers and pupils are not allowed to be friends. The underlying attitude from schools seems to be that SNS should not be part of the pupils’ school day, which contradicts the directive arguments from Norwegian political authorities. The results showed that pre-service teachers and pupils have observed and experienced negative usees of FB, with pupils reporting such incidents approximately ten per cent more often than the pre-service teachers. That textual communication becomes a common rather than an individual property through ICT is discussed by Wegerif (2007), for instance. Referring to societies where oral, rather than written communication has been the norm, he claims that such cultures possess a kind of “common wisdom” that is absent in cultures where individual writing is more common. Additionally, the technology has the possibility of storing these texts forever (Helleve, 2012, but what is shared and stored may not necessarily be wisdom. It may just as well be harassing. One of the pupils says: “what previously used to be private is now public”. This corresponds to Ess (2009) who claims that, when it comes to digital media, people are more vulnerable to violations of privacy than in face-to-face contexts. Schwartz (2010) argues that FB is an extension of the classroom for pupils. It can be likened to a lounge where all kinds of connections occur. The possibilities for sharing and storing false identities through “face raping”, equals the possibilities for sharing student-defined tasks such as learning. Strikingly, pupils rarely share the information they have about negative experiences with others. Ess (2009) concludes that in order to overcome these challenges, the solution is to learn from others who think differently through what he calls ethical pluralism. This study shows that the different groups such as pupils and pre-service teachers seem to live in different digital worlds. An important task for teacher education institutions in future should be to teach students and pupils © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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to understand and learn from other peoples’ ethical dilemmas, even those with whom they disagree. Ethical pluralism as described by Ess (2009) emphasises learning from empirical cases with no correct answers.

Conclusion The overall aim of this study was to investigate how ethical training for pre-service teachers should be carried out based on comparative knowledge about SNS usage among pre-service teachers and pupils and how Governmental recommendations correspond to the two groups understanding of their schools’ guidelines. Summing up, pre-service teachers and pupils do not necessarily want to become friends. Both groups primarily use FB for maintaining social relations and contact. To a small extent, schools and teacher education institutions use SNS for learning purposes, while pupils use it a great deal. Both groups understand their schools’ guidelines to be restrictive concerning use of SNS. Yet, Norwegian political authorities recommend SNS as a tool with pedagogical uses, claiming that SNS sites may strengthen the relevance of education and contribute to pupils’ development of collaborative abilities, and social competences - especially since SNS is used so enthusiastically by pupils. SNS contact includes positive as well as negative experiences. The Ministry of Education and Research has applied the metaphor “to build a bridge to young individuals’ lives” (MER, 2008-2009, p. 27, our translation) to describe their ambition of ICT in school. According to this study, it seems to be difficult to build bridges between pupils’ and future teachers’ private worlds through SNS like FB. The two groups express a desire to stay separate, and even if they should want to use SNS to stay in contact, schools’ guidelines would be a hindrance. The study indicates that schools, teacher education policy-makers, and future teachers, as well as pupils, seem to have different expectations concerning how SNS should be used in education. Schools are motivated to warn and protect their pupils and teachers against use of SNS in spite of the strong political requests of its importance. Further complicating the situation, Norwegian pupils are surrounded by technology and pre-service and professional teachers have no national ethical guidelines. According to Ess (2009) the essence of digital media ethics is to develop a shared understanding based on norms and values that are interpreted through the lenses of different traditions and applied in different cultural contexts. Learning from disagreement and different opinions seems to be necessary if the different groups are to build bridges across different opinions. In Norway there are Governmental ambitions and a high level of ICT in and outside school. Still, the decisions of how, when, and why ICT should be used in education seems - to a large extent left to the personal and private choices of individual teachers. One way to go about this is to include these issues into the centre stage of ethics in teaching and to learn from the perspectives of others (Ess, 2009). Teachers’ attitudes and values have previously been found to be critical in shaping how ICT is implemented in school. In order to encourage pre-service teachers to reflect on how to deal with challenges connected to SNS in education, teacher education is crucial.

Acknowledgements We wish to thank all the participants in both studies for making this paper possible. Study 1 (preservice teachers) was initiated by Brita Bjørkelo and Zoe Morris (Monash University, Australia) and study 2 (pupils) was initiated by Ingrid Helleve. The data collection for study 1 was funded by the Digital Learning Communities research group at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen5. Both studies were also funded by the University of Bergen, the Norwegian Police University College, and Stord/Haugesund University College. In study 1, thanks goes to Anniken © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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Solbue for parts of the data punching, to Live Gravdal, Kristine Ludvigsen, and Hege Høivik Bye for parts of the efforts in the questionnaire translation process, and to Maria Wester for parts of the data cleaning. In study 2, thanks goes to Christian Johnsen for his cooperation.

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ARTICLES

Tensions and Contradictions When Creating a Multimodal Text as a School Task in Mother Tongue Education Anna-Lena Godhe ____________ PEER REVIEWED ARTICLE

Anna-Lena Godhe

Phd student, Department of applied information technology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden [email protected]

Abstract With digital technology it has become possible and relatively easy to create texts, which contain different kinds of expression, such as images and sound. This challenges the concept of literacy and what it means to create texts in education. By exploring tensions and contradictions in and between different components in the activity system of creating texts in classrooms this article attempts to illuminate conditions for transforming this activity. Activities are here conceptualized as activity systems where components at local and systemic levels influence and constitute each other. Tensions and contradictions at both levels, reflect general issues related to the concept of literacy, as they concern what kind of expressions are considered valuable and primary when creating and assessing texts in educational settings. Keywords: multimodal texts, literacy, Cultural Historical Activity Theory, boundary



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Anna-Lena Godhe | TENSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS WHEN CREATING A MULTIMODAL TEXT AS A SCHOOL TASK IN MOTHER TONGUE EDUCATION

Introduction With the increasing use of digital technologies in classrooms, it is now possible for students and teachers to engage in tasks, which were previously out of reach. Language education and mother tongue education in particular are sensitive to changes in the communicational landscape as the subjects deal with different ways of communicating, such as literature, film and other media (Jewitt, Bezemer, Jones & Kress, 2009). With the use of digital technologies the possible ways of communicating and expressing meaning have been altered, which in turn affects classroom activities. Literacy has traditionally been associated with spoken and written language, but is currently also associated with other kinds of expression (e.g. New London Group, 1996; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Johnson & Kress, 2003; Turner & Katic, 2009). Barton and Hamilton (1998), for instance, write about the notion of literacy practices as a way, “of conceptualizing the link between the activities of reading and writing and the social structures in which they are embedded and which they help shape” (ibid., p. 6). Literacy practices thus relate to and are affected by the context in which they take place. New Literacy Studies has likewise attempted to rethink literacy as local and situated, rather than as a set of skills or competencies that are acquired through education (e.g. Scribner & Cole, 1981; Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Street, 1998; Jewitt, 2008). Conceptualizing literacy as a social phenomenon brings with it a paradigmatic change in how to research literacy. From the sociocultural perspective, literacies are always regarded as situated, which means that they have to be studied in their context (e.g. Gee, 1996). In this sense ‘new’ primarily refers to how we understand and describe literacy practices (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008). ‘New’ in connection to literacy may also refer to changes in practices, which involve new “ways of producing, distributing, exchanging and receiving texts by electronic means” (ibid., p. 25). Lankshear and Knobel (2008) conceptualize a difference between conventional and ‘new’ literacies, where the conventional is connected to an individual view on learning and intelligence, while expertise is viewed as centralized. In ‘new’ literacies, knowledge is instead considered a collective practice and expertise is seen as distributed (ibid., p. 38). Related to this conceptualization we find changes in practices, which Gee (2004) terms ‘affinity spaces’ and Jenkins et al. (2006) refer to as ‘participatory cultures’. Compared to engaging in conventional literacies, these ‘new’ literacies are seen as being more collaborative and participatory (e.g. Gee 2004; Jenkins et al. 2006; Lankshear & Knobel, 2008). The New London Group (1996) argues for the need of a ‘pedagogy of multiliteracies’, in which diversity is accentuated. This concerns both the diverse and globalized societies of today as well as the variety of texts associated with information and multimedia technologies. Jewitt and Kress (2004) advocate a multimodal approach to literacy in which all modes are recognized as meaning making devices. Spoken and written language is viewed as merely one way of making meaning amongst others, rather than central and sufficient for learning. The multimodal texts referred to in this article are short films, which contain still images and recorded speech. The students use their own voices to create soundtracks to go with their multimodal texts. Transitions between images are used to create movement in the multimodal texts and music may also be included. Creating multimodal texts in language education may enable the students to make use of abilities connected to the use of technologies in activities outside of the educational setting (Erstad & Silseth, 2008). This could be a way of bridging the gap between the different textual worlds, in which students seem to live (Bergman, 2007; Olin-Scheller, 2006). Tools and technologies have always been part of the educational setting, but they have changed over time. Previous practices, as well as possible future developments, are therefore embedded in © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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the usage of tools and technologies in classrooms (e.g. Säljö, 2000). The introduction of new tools has often been accompanied by questions and discussions about their appropriate use in education as well as conceptions of how they will change education (e.g. Lankshear & Knobel, 2008; Karlsohn, 2009). As tools and technologies have different affordances and constraints, an alteration of tools is likely to lead to changes in what classroom activities entail. To reach an understanding of the meaning of new tools and activities in an educational setting, this article argues that it is necessary to relate to a wider context where societies in general, but also the educational environment, are taken into account. As an institution, education has its own history, which is mirrored in peoples’ actions and the activities carried out in this setting as well as in a common notion of what school is in a society (e.g. Säljö, 2000). The aims and goals of a national, educational system are stated in the national curricula, which is thus a document that influences activities in classrooms. Subjects taught and the respective core content, but also grading criteria, further indicates what teachers and students are expected to focus on. In language education there exist established practices of creating and assessing texts mainly typographical texts written with pen and paper or on a computer (e.g. Lankshear & Knobel, 2008; Turner & Katic, 2009). These traditions implicitly or explicitly serve as points of reference for students as well as teachers. Indeed, both guide and influence their actions and activities. Emerging practices will be influenced by norms and rules connected to older approaches. Therefore negotiations are necessary in order for the participants to understand what the new activities entail and how they relate to older, established practices. By studying emerging practices, such as the creation of multimodal texts in language education, insights may be gained as to how they relate to the established practices in which they appear. In the present article, activities in a classroom are conceptualized as activity systems, which contain components at both the local and systemic levels. At the local level the components consist of the subjects engaged in the activity, the tools that are used and the goal of the activity, the object. The systemic level contains the community, rules, and division of labour (Engeström, 1987). Activities at the local level of the classroom are related to and affected by components at the systemic or structural level. However, Engeström (1998) points out the need to pay attention to a middle-level between the local and the systemic in order to understand classroom practices. Engeström (ibid.) considers processes at the middle-level to be fundamental as they involve how students and teachers perceive schoolwork. Historically evolving tensions and contradictions can be detected in or inbetween the components in an activity system, but they may also arise between intersecting activity systems (Engeström & Sannino, 2010). By exploring tensions and contradictions at and between the three levels, the article contributes to an understanding of how emerging classroom practices, which relate to ‘new’ literacies (Lankshear & Knoble, 2008), are constrained or rendered possible. The process of incorporating several kinds of expression - some of which are closer to practices outside of education (Erstad & Silseth 2008) - into multimodal texts created in class work, are aspects belonging to the middle-level (Engeström, 1998). Indeed, this also counts for the process of assessing these texts. Tensions and contradictions may become evident at this level, since students and teacher negotiate how to perceive schoolwork in general and activities relating to the creation and assessment of multimodal text in particular. How these processes are negotiated at the local level of the classroom and how components at the systemic level affect these processes are analytically explored - both in connection to empirical data as well as to previous research. © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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Theoretical framework This article adopts a sociocultural perspective on learning, which is considered as originating in social actions and subsequently mediated through interaction, and the use of various tools. Knowledge is considered as a resource for solving problems and managing situations appropriately (e.g. Säljö 2000; Wertsch 1998). As Lemke (2001) points out, sociocultural perspectives not only concern social interaction, but “are more significantly about the role of longer timescale constancies and how they constrain, afford, and intrude into moment-to-moment activity” (ibid., p. 19). The analysis of activities in classrooms must therefore be related to the sociocultural environment, in which they take place. An important aspect in a sociocultural perspective on learning is that mediational means are part of, and shape human actions. Wertsch (1991; 1998) even claims that actors could be seen as “individual(s)-acting-with-mediational-means” rather than merely ‘individual(s)’. In Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), as conceptualized by Engeström, the prime unit of analysis is “a collective, artefact-mediated and object-oriented activity system” (Engeström, 2009, p. 56). Engeström (1998) calls the components: subject, object, and mediating tools ‘the tip of the iceberg’ as they represent the “visible instrumental actions of teachers and students” (ibid., p. 79). The less visible components in the activity system are community, rules, and division of labour. This formal systemic level contains the structure of school systems, whereas the local level relates to content and methods of teaching. CHAT focuses on how components in activity systems relate to and constitute each other. Engeström (1998) states that school reforms tend to focus on either the local or the systemic level. Conceiving the relationship between the systemic and the local level as dichotomous may be a reason why it is generally considered difficult to reform the culture of classrooms. Engeström (ibid.) argues for the necessity of paying attention to the middle-level as a strategic focus of change in classroom practices, since the processes at this level imply how schoolwork is perceived. Activity systems have historical layers and thus contain sediments of earlier history as well as ‘buds’ of possible futures (Engeström, 1993, p. 68). As activity systems are generated and transformed over time, intrinsic constraints and potentials must be understood against their own history (Engestöm, 2009). Activity systems are characterized by their inherent multivoicedness, which requires translation as well as negotiation, and is a source of both trouble and innovation (ibid.). When students in a classroom negotiate activities, these are then governed by how activities are usually carried out in that setting. Activities in a classroom have a history as certain rules and division of labour apply in that environment. The students, as well as the teacher, relate to these when negotiating the activity. There is therefore a ‘double dialogicality’, since both the local practice and the sociocultural practices of the educational setting are related to by students and teachers (Linell, 2009). An activity commonly relates to several activity systems and may also be seen as constituting a smaller part in a larger system. The activity of creating a multimodal text in language education can therefore relate to activities outside education, such as creating and/or watching short films on YouTube, but can also be regarded as a minor part of the educational system as a whole. When several activity systems are involved, the object of the activity may be shared and can be seen as a boundary object. In a review of the literature on boundary crossing and boundary objects, Akkerman and Bakker (2011) define ‘boundary’ as “a sociocultural difference leading to discontinuity in action or interaction” (ibid., p. 133). They conclude that descriptions of boundaries as well as people and objects at the boundary show signs of ambiguity as “the boundary belongs to both one world and another” (ibid., p. 141).However, the boundary can also be regarded as ‘in-between’, belonging to neither one nor the other world (ibid.). This means that boundaries connect as well as divide the activity systems © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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involved. People and objects at the boundary act as bridges between the related worlds, but may simultaneously also represent the division between them. Contradictions are historically accumulated systemic tensions within and between activity systems. These are important in CHAT as they are considered the driving force of change and development (Engeström, 2009; 1993). They may appear within and between components in an activity system, but also between intersecting activity systems (Engeström, 1993; Engeström & Sannino, 2010). These contradictions generate disturbances and conflicts, but may also engender innovations, which attempt to change the activity system (Engeström, 2009). While contradictions relate to systemic tensions within or between activity systems, conflicts relate to individuals and may affect their shorttime action (Sannino, 2008) Sannino (ibid.) considers the roots of conflicts to lay in contradictions. Conflicts at the local level, as well as dilemmas and local innovation, may then be seen as manifestations of systemic contradictions (Engeström & Sannino, 2010). Sannino (2008) argues for innovations in school to be conceptualized as a “process of interplay between dominant and non-dominant activities which includes conflicts and almost unnoticeable transitional actions” (ibid., p. 329). By taking sideways actions, which cross boundaries between dominant and non-dominant activities, these transitional actions may lead to the activities merging and hybridizing (ibid.). Studying contradictions may provide insights into what the transformations involve as well as how and why they occur. CHAT can thus be seen as a framework for understanding transformation (Engeström & Sannino, 2010). If creating multimodal texts in language education is compared to the established practice of writing typographical texts, there are obvious changes in the components of the activity system since the tools, object, as well as the outcome, have been altered. When a component in an activity system acquires a new quality, tensions arise in and between this component and other components in the activity system (Engeström, 1993). Similarly, when elements from the outside, such as new technologies, are adopted in an activity system, this often leads to contradictions between new and old elements as well as between emerging and established practices (Engeström, 2009). In this article, activities at the local level of the classroom are put into a wider perspective by relating components at the local level to components at the systemic level. Alterations at the local level concern the tools and object of the activity and are tangible, while changes in components at the systemic level are more abstract. By relating empirical observations at the local level, but also discernible tensions and contradictions at this level to components at the systemic level, the aim of this article is to illuminate aspects, which enable and restrain transformations.

Methodology The classroom studies on which this article is based were conducted in two cycles during 2009-2011; the participants created multimodal texts in Swedish language education, which was new to the students as well as to the teachers. The studies can be regarded as interventions done in collaboration with the teachers, where the researcher took active part in implementing the activities. As such, it closely relates to design-based research (DBR). Here the aim is to design, study, and subsequently refine theory-based innovations in realistic classroom environments, which then influence practices and gives rise to a better understanding of theory (McKenney & Reeves, 2012). The intent is, as Cobb et al. (2003) write “to investigate the possibilities for educational improvement by bringing about new forms of learning in order to study them” (ibid., p. 10). The intervention was therefore an attempt to bring about an activity relating to ‘new’ literacies, where students used multiple kinds of expression in their text. The main focus of attention in the first cycle of research was to study this activity and to develop a theoretical understanding of the processes involved. When analyzing and revising the results, the © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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importance of assessment in classroom practices became apparent. For this reason assessment of the multimodal texts became central to the second cycle of research. The cycles of research in these studies can be characterized as an iterative design process as the conjectures in the different cycles were changed underway (Cobb et al., 2003). The first cycle of research, focused on how a ‘new’ activity in the classroom, which potentially facilitates ‘new’ literacies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008), was enacted at the local level (Godhe, 2012; Godhe & Lindström, accepted). The second cycle of research was designed as a follow-up to the first cycle and the intension was to study the same students and teachers creating a second multimodal text. However, when the students were given a second assignment to create a multimodal text, they questioned how the multimodal text was to be assessed and how it related to the course they were taking in Swedish, but also grading criteria. Based on these questions, the design of the task was altered so that the students were given explicit grading criteria for the assignment at the start of their work. The students’ questions meant that the conjecture of the research changed, which in return influenced the focus of the second cycle so that how the multimodal texts were assessed became central. In the first cycle focus was primarily on the local level of the activity system and how the components of subject, tools, and objects constitute each other. Student utilisation of different kinds of expression in their multimodal text was a concern in this analysis, as well as the incorporation of references from other contexts (Godhe, 2012; Godhe & Lindström, accepted). In the second cycle of research, focus was on assessment and how the process of assessment was enacted at the classroom level in interaction between teacher and students (Godhe, 2013; Godhe & Lindström, submitted). Both connections to contexts outside of education and assessment practices belong to the middle-level of the activity system (Engeström, 1998) and they relate to each other since references to other contexts, as well as different kinds of expression, were included in the assessment of the multimodal texts. Moreover, the activity of creating multimodal texts in classrooms, as an activity at the boundary, where the multimodal texts could connect intersecting activity systems, was an aspect which was relevant to both cycles, and which connected them. The multimodal texts created by students in this study could also be called digital stories. However, as they are of different genres, both narrative and argumentative, they will be termed ‘multimodal texts’, rather than digital stories. Another reason why this term is not used is that digital stories are often created outside of classrooms, such as has been described by Hull (2003) and Hull and Katz (2006). When creating a text in a classroom, the institutional habits of creating texts in education will influence what students do, as well as how they do it (e.g. Heap, 1989; Erstad, 2007). The focus upon telling a personal story is less prominent in classroom settings and factors such as time constraints also affect the activity (Lowenthal, 2009). The first cycle of research was done in four different classes in three upper-secondary schools in the south of Sweden. Altogether, thirteen students, working in groups of two or three, were video recorded while they made their multimodal texts. The topics given to students in different classes varied, but the students were mainly asked to create narrative texts. In the second cycle, video recordings were made in two classes at one of the schools, which had been part of the first study. 1 Altogether, twelve students were video recorded in this cycle while they created their multimodal texts. In one of the classes the students were given a hand-out which aimed to clarify what was assessed in their work and which stated the different grading criteria at the start of the project. The © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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task was to create an argumentative, multimodal text and the students were given topics, which they had to argue for or against. Seven students from this class were recorded when they had subsequent assessment-talks with their teacher and they were also interviewed at the end of the project. In line with the Swedish Research Council’s ethical guidelines for research (Codex, 2010), the students were given information about the research and were asked to fill in a form where they stated whether or not they consented to being video and audio recorded. If the students were under 18 years of age, the agreement had to be signed by their parents. Only groups where all students had given their consent to being video and audio recorded could be filmed, which meant that there were never too many pairs or groups to record. Consequently, the students who had been recorded had actively given their consent to take part in the study. Following the data collection, all recordings were reviewed and transcribed. The transcripts were then colour-coded in order to discern what was in focus in the interaction and a number of cases were selected for further analysis. The first study questioned how the student texts were developed in interaction, and the second study questioned the assessment of the multimodal texts. The cases were chosen on the basis of these questions and involved multiple selection criteria. The analysis of the interactions aimed at examining interpersonal processes (Mercer, Littleton & Wegerif, 2004) and how participants make use of the resources available to them in particular situations (Jordan & Henderson, 1995). Neither context nor the artefacts that mediate activities can be separated from activities. For this reason analyses were concerned with the “content, function and the ways shared understanding is developed in social context, over time” (Mercer, Littleton & Wegerif, 2004, p. 203). Mercer (2004) points out that from a sociocultural perspective on learning, language is regarded as a tool for thinking collectively. In studies of interaction in classrooms, what students and teachers say, as well as how they act with different artefacts becomes central. The analysis is hereby grounded in data, thereby avoiding speculative interpretations of what people may think (Jordan & Henderson, 1995).

Tensions and contradictions when creating a multimodal text as a school task In the following section, the tensions and contradictions of creating and assessing multimodal texts in a classroom are analysed. This takes into account how such tensions and contradictions can be discerned at the local and the systemic level of the activity system (Engeström, 1998). The point of this is to explicate how classroom activities are affected by tensions and contradictions at, and between the local, the middle-, and the systemic levels of an activity system, but also how this in turn affords and/or constrains alterations in practice. As argued by Barton and Hamilton (1998), the link between activities in classrooms and the social structures, which they are part of, needs to be conceptualized in order to understand literacy practices. However, systemic components, such as curricula and the history of the subject, which affect classroom activities, are not always visible in the classroom (Engeström, 1998). In order to elucidate how systemic components affect what is done at the local level, the results will be presented in three steps. First, findings from the empirical studies of interaction in classrooms are compiled and key findings are explicated. Second, systemic components, which are embedded at the local level, are unpacked to substantiate how these components shape activities. Finally, the implications © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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of this study and how tensions and contradictions afford and/or constrain changes in classroom practices are discussed.

Findings in the empirical studies In the first cycle of research, questions of what the activity of creating a multimodal text in language education involved was in focus. In the analysis of interaction between students and teachers during the process of creating multimodal texts, it was found that negotiations mainly concerned what the students were going to say in their multimodal texts (Godhe, 2012). Most of the students first attended to what they were going to say and only after having written that down, did they concern themselves with the other modes available. These other modes were, to a large extent, added as illustrations to the text they had written so that it was the written, and later spoken text, which was in focus in their interactions. This also governed the use of other modes. The tendency to use images and other non-linguistic features as illustrations of the text, is referred to by Sorapure as ‘mode matching’ (2006, p. 4). To combine modes so that they express something more or less equivalent can be useful when focusing on key ideas, but it diminishes the potential of creating a productive tension between modes in a multimodal text. The skills of reading and writing typographical texts are emphasised and practised in language education. For this reason this is known to the students as being part of language learning activities within the school context (e.g. Cope & Kalantzis, 2000). Since writing texts is something the students have done repeatedly in previous language lessons, they set off orienting towards this familiar action. However, the digital tools used by the students, enable them to employ and combine different modes. When the tools used in the activity system obtain new qualities this generates internal contradictions (Engeström, 1993). In this case, these contradictions mainly occur between components at the local level and components at the systemic level as the creation of multimodal texts differ from the historically established practice of creating texts containing written and/or spoken words in language education. These results are similar to what Shin and Cimasko (2008) found in their study where English second language university students created web sites. Though encouraged to use different modes of expression, the students prioritized linguistic designs. “The data point to views of multimodal academic composition defined by traditional views of academic discourse in which the linguistic mode is dominant in all instances” (ibid., p. 389). To understand the students’ actions, when creating multimodal texts in a classroom, they need to be related to the structural or systemic level and the established practice of writing typographical texts in language education, which reflect the norms of disciplines as well as communities. Assessment was the central issue in the second cycle of research. By studying interactions between students and teachers where they negotiate what assessing multimodal texts mean and imply, it is possible to discern how the process of assessment is enacted in the classroom. In these interactions the main topic was what the students said in their multimodal texts (Godhe, 2013). The same focus was found in the assessment-talks between student and teacher. What the students said was considered to be the content of the multimodal text and as such, the structure of it was important in order to get the message across (Godhe & Lindström, submitted). The use of other kinds of expression such as music, images, and transitions between images were not taken up to any great extent, but were usually only mentioned briefly. © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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In the interviews, the students indicated that it was the spoken argument in the multimodal text, which was evaluated in the assessment of their texts. They expressed an understanding of how the argumentation in their text had been assessed and were able to relate to, and understand what needed to be improved. Language teachers are trained to assess written texts and have experience doing this, but assessing other modalities is not developed to the same extent. Similarly, during their schooling, students have been assessed on their writing, but may not have had the same experience when it comes to the assessment of other features. This means that they cannot relate to former assessments as a point of reference when their multimodal texts are evaluated. The interactions among students and teacher showed few negotiations about what the assessment criteria actually meant in relation to the task of creating a multimodal text. As the meaning of the criteria related to the assessment of expressions, such as images and sound, were not negotiated, the students and the teacher did not share a common understanding of how to interpret the criteria (Godhe, 2013). Opinions on the assessment of the multimodal texts diverged primarily when considering other modes of expression, such as images and sound. While the teacher and the students differed in their assessment of images and sound, student opinions were largely in agreement with each other. The students seemed to have a mutual understanding of the use of images in multimodal texts but they found it hard to relate to the assessment done by the teacher (Godhe & Lindström, submitted). Tensions concerning how to assess multimodal texts can be discerned both at the local level and at the systemic level. The predominance of the spoken word in the assessment of the multimodal texts mirrors the predominance of the spoken and written word when creating the multimodal texts. Diverging opinions among teachers and students on how different kinds of expression should be assessed could be seen as a conflict between dominant and non-dominant activities (Sannino, 2008). Students appear to take transitional actions by crossing boundaries and creating multimodal texts, which incorporate references from several activity systems (Godhe & Lindström, accepted). The conflict between dominant and non-dominant activities displayed in the assessment of the multimodal texts, however, may affect the short-time action of students as the hybridity of the multimodal text is largely overlooked in the assessment (Sannino, 2008). Students may therefore be deterred from creating multimodal texts where the visual aspects are prominent, as this mode has been established as not valuable in the assessment of the multimodal text.

Relating the local level to the systemic level There were discernible tensions and contradictions in the analysis of the local interactions, presented in the previous section. In this section, these will be related to components at the systemic level. The tensions and contradictions discerned at the local level concerned the use of several modes when creating a multimodal text in a classroom and how students and teachers related to modes not usually used in school texts, such as images and sound, during the creation and assessment of the multimodal texts. Assessment practices and connections to contexts outside the educational setting is seen by Engeström (1998) as examples of recurrent aspects of classrooms, which pertain to a level between the formal level of school structure and the local level of contents and methods of teaching. These aspects at the middle-level will be taken up when relating the empirical findings at the local level to the systemic level.

The subject of Swedish and the notion of text The student preoccupation with what to say in their multimodal texts reflects certain traditions in the subject of Swedish. The subject of Swedish can be seen as a community, which - as a component © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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at the systemic level of the activity system - affects what is done at the local level. As a mother tongue subject, Swedish has traditionally viewed literature and language skills, for instance grammar and spelling, as the main components (e.g. Johnson & Kress, 2003; Lankshear & Knobel, 2008). Studies, such as those conducted by Bergman (2007) and Olin-Scheller (2006), show that the connection between texts that students consume and produce outside of school and the ones they encounter in school is weak. According to Jewitt et al. (2009), there is a similar tension within the subject of English as a mother tongue subject. A fundamental change in the digital landscape of the classroom, together with a social shift where classroom activities need to be located in a broader cultural frame, has opened up for texts from out-of-school contexts to connect to mother tongue education. Simultaneously, however, a considerable amount of policies intended to modernize education have been launched. The policy interventions are often in tension and appear to be moving in contradictory directions to the technological and social change (ibid.). Several attempts to broaden the concept of literacy, to incorporate texts from different domains as well as texts consisting of different modes, have been made in past decades (e.g. Gee, 1996; The New London Group, 1996; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Street, 1998; Jewitt & Kress, 2004; Lankshear & Knobel, 2008). A similar attempt to broaden the modes of expression in educational settings was introduced in the Swedish national curricula in the year 2000 as a broadened concept of text, which included written and spoken language, as well as images (Skolverket, 2000). The broadened concept of text has, however, been removed from the 2011 national curricula (Skolverket, 2011). In the current Swedish language curriculum at upper-secondary school level, modes such as images and sound are hardly mentioned (ibid.). When it comes to student writing, only the word ‘writing’ is used and the relation to other kinds of expression are omitted. The abolishment of the broadened concept of texts coincides with a widespread introduction of individual laptops in many schools in Sweden. In the national curricula the core content of subjects as well as grading criteria are stated and as such it can be regarded as a set of rules which influences educational settings. While students are equipped with technology which facilitates multimodal texts, the curricula simultaneously appears to narrow the meaning of text to primarily mean written or spoken language. This means that working with multimodal texts could, to a large extent, be seen as an activity which is not encouraged by the curricula. This, in turn, creates a tension when it comes to didactical considerations among teachers on whether to include or exclude tasks where students create texts, which incorporate a multitude of modes. As pointed out by Oldham (2005), teacher actions are “linked in complex ways to how they define literacy and how they interpret the requirements of curriculum and of assessment” (ibid., p. 180). The hierarchy in curricula and assessment, where representations of written and spoken language are prioritised, limits teachers’ ability to recognize and reward students’ communicative skills in other modes (ibid.). There are thus tensions between the systemic components of community and rules and the object created, as well as the technological tools used at the local level. How these tensions and contradictions are discernible in assessment, which belongs to the middle-level will be taken into consideration in the next section.

Assessment of co-existing modes The task of creating a multimodal text and the assessment of it is relatively new in a school setting. In the assessment-talks between students and the teacher, what was mainly addressed and negotiated was what the students say in the multimodal texts, whereas other modes of expression were only briefly addressed (Godhe & Lindström, submitted). The students were given assessment criteria for © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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the multimodal text, but the meaning of these, in relation to the task, were not negotiated to any great extent and the multimodal texts were largely assessed as if they were written or spoken texts (Godhe, 2013). Whereas the assessment criteria stated in the curricula belong to the systemic level of the activity system, assessment practices belong to the middle-level (Engeström 1998). The criteria given to the students can be seen as material objects, which attempts to connect the systemic and the local level. What the criteria actually mean, however, will have to be negotiated at the local level and in relation to the particular activities that students and teacher engage in, if they are to be understood by students as well as teachers. In a study on teaching and assessment practices in English as a mother tongue subject, Oldham (2005) draws the conclusion that “taught literacy practices are more complex than the existing assessment arrangements allow” (ibid., p. 183). The study concerns how three different teachers relate to media and representations in different modes in their teaching and in assessment. Oldham (ibid.) writes that representations in other modes than written or spoken language cannot be assessed, since current assessment frames recognize only speaking, listening, reading, and writing as valid modes in English. The need to develop ways of assessing which incorporate several modes has been discussed in previous studies. Hung, Chiu and Yeh (2012), for example, state that there is an urgent need to “develop alternative ways of assessment in support of students’ new literacy practices in the digital age”, because of the re-conceptualization of literacy (ibid., p. 10). Cope et al. (2011) write that profound changes, which mean that it is not enough to represent something using words alone, is not reflected in the literacy assessment done in education. Therefore “curricula and assessment in their traditional formats and media need updating in order to make optimal use of the affordances of these digital spaces” (ibid., p. 84). The suggestions as to what multimodal assessment should entail are, however, diverse. While Murray, Sheets and Williams (2010) explore the possibilities of using a traditional writing rubric when assessing multimodal assignments, Sorapure (2006) states that an overreliance on print conventions may mean that, “the chance to see new values emerging in the new medium” is lost (ibid., p. 1). Although these studies have been done in other contexts and at other levels of the educational system, the findings are similar to the findings in this article as they point to the significance of developing assessment practices where the assessment of several kinds of expression are accounted for and evaluated. Rather than negotiating what the assessment of multimodal texts entails, the multimodal texts tend to be assessed as written or spoken texts. Other kinds of expression are largely ignored and it is, in extension, overlooked how they may contribute to the meaning of the multimodal text. Similar results were found by Oldham (2005), who states that “the way we define literacy influences the measure of it and vice versa”, which in turn means that multimodal knowledge among students is currently and to a large extent unmeasured (ibid., p. 171). This creates an ambiguity where, on the one hand, the students are invited to use modes of expression, which usually are associated to activities outside of school, but on the other hand, these other modes are not assessed or valued in the same way as the established modes of spoken and written words. The other modes are thereby established as not being valuable when creating texts in language education, which, in turn, leads to a reinforcement of written and spoken language as valued modes of expression, rather than an incorporation and recognition of a multitude of modes.

Discussion Findings from the empirical study of classroom interaction were, in the previous section, synthesised and related to systemic components in the activity systems of creating and assessing texts in language classrooms. The empirical study was designed as an intervention. Here an activity relating to ‘new’ © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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literacies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008) was studied as students and teachers in classrooms created and assessed multimodal texts. Bringing in tools and activities not usually employed in conventional literacies, such as digital technologies and activities where they are utilised, can lead to tensions and contradictions between emerging and established practices, but may also lead to change and innovation (Engeström, 2009). Contradictions occur both within and between components in an activity system, as well as between emergent and established practices, but also between neighbouring activity systems (Engeström & Sannino, 2010). The contradictions found in activities at the local level were related to components at the systemic level. This was done in order to understand and perhaps explain the contradictions, their origins, and their influence on language education. In this section, the implications of the discerned tensions and contradictions will be discussed further. The notion of literacy and what a text created in a classroom should or could entail were discerned as issues, which caused internal as well as external contradictions, at both the local and the systemic level. The usage of tools, which facilitate the creation of multimodal texts, challenges which features of expression should be considered valuable and primary when making meaning. In return this also challenges the concept of literacy. Education in general and language education in particular, has historically been associated with the ability to use written and spoken language to acquire, as well as display knowledge (e.g. Lankshear & Knobel, 2008; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Gee, 1996). Educational systems are, to a large extent, built upon discursive practices where the use of, and ability to use, written and spoken language is central (Säljö, 2010). Incorporating other ways of making meaning in these organisations involves an alteration of one of their core functions. Creating and assessing multimodal texts are activities at the boundary (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011) between conventional and ‘new’ literacies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008). They are also at the boundary between activities of creating texts in and outside of an educational setting (Engeström, 2009). The displayed boundaries contain several contradictions. Boundaries may connect the activity systems involved so that practices potentially become more closely related to each other. However, boundaries may also represent the division between different activity systems. Boundaries and contradictions involve potentials for change, but if contradictions lead to conflicts they may also constrain individual action, which in turn restricts the potential for change (Sunnino, 2008). The teachers and students may take transitional actions so that activities merge and hybridize (ibid.), but they may also sense that they are in a dilemma, or a double bind, where the available possibilities are equally unacceptable (Engeström, 1993). Engeström (1987) argues for double binds to be solved by co-operative actions, which can “push a historically new form of activity into emergence” (ibid., p. 165). The dilemma or double bind connected to the creation of texts in language classrooms cannot easily be solved by individual actions by teachers or students, but must rather be considered and negotiated at a systemic level as well as at the local level. Whether the potentials for change inherent in contradictions and boundaries are fulfilled or not, depend on individual action at the local level and the activities engaged in, but also to what extent systemic components restrain or enable transformations. The contradictions and dilemmas discerned in this study may be more generally applicable when digital technologies are used to engage in unfamiliar activities in educational settings. Even though the accessibility of technologies in classrooms in Sweden is generally good (European Commission, 2013), schools often seem to struggle with how to implement the technology in everyday practices in classrooms (e.g. Karlsohn, 2009; Cuban, 2001). Lankshear & Knobel (2008) point out that educational ends are directed by curriculum while technologies often are regarded “as ‘mere’ tools, the task of integrating new technologies into learning is often realized by adapting them to, or adding © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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them onto, familiar routines” (ibid., p. 56). If instead digital technologies, and subsequently new ways to communicate, are seen as challenging the way we look at knowledge and how we organize education (Säljö, 2000), transformations are needed at both the local and the systemic level. Presently, however, transformations are taking place at the local level, at least in Sweden, as teachers and students at an increasing number of schools use tools and engage in tasks, which the available technology facilitates. What is done at the local level is, however, not supported by similar transformations at the systemic level. Instead, changes at the systemic level can be seen as discouraging or opposing the transformation taking place at the local level. This, in turn, leads to tensions and contradictions at the middle-level (Engeström, 1998) in relation to issues such as what is to be assessed and graded in a multimodal text. The purpose of the intervention in this study was to explore the potential of engaging in an activity, which was facilitated by the use of digital technologies. However, the empirical studies at the local level discerned that the activity to some extent became encapsulated in ‘the game of school’ (Resnick, 1987, p. 15). If digital technologies are considered ‘mere’ tools, which in turn are added onto familiar actions and activities in classrooms, it has little or nothing to do with how digital technologies are utilised outside school (Engeström, 1991; Resnick 1987). Encapsulating activities in this way means that the potentials inherent at the boundary and in the contradictions are only partly fulfilled. By exploring tensions and contradictions in activity systems related to creating and assessing multimodal texts, this article has attempted to display the complexity of transformations and the need to relate to all three levels of activity systems, in order to understand classroom practices. Relating tensions and contradictions to the history of the systemic components in the educational setting make it possible to understand the opportunities, as well as the constraints, connected to the introduction of activities relating to ‘new’ literacies in educational settings.

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It was only possible to re-visit this one class as two of the other classes that were part of the first study had finished uppersecondary school and in the third class the teacher was on maternity leave and their new teacher did not want to partake in the study. As only one class could be revisited a second class was also recorded at the same school in order to increase the empirical material.


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ARTICLES

Mind the Gap: Divergent Objects of Assessment in Technology-rich Learning Environments Toril Aagaard & Andreas Lund ____________ PEER REVIEWED ARTICLE

Toril Aagaard

Faculty of Arts, Folk Culture, and Teacher Education, Telemark University College, Norway [email protected] Andreas Lund

Department of Teacher Education and School Research, University of Oslo, Norway [email protected]

Abstract Computers change the conditions under which learners complete assignments. Based on interviews with teachers from upper secondary school, we examine the strategies developed to deal with challenges emerging from this contextual change. The results indicate the emergence of divergent teacher strategies that seem intimately linked with fundamental assumptions about learning and knowledge. These differences are understood as expressions indicating divergent objects of assessment developing among teachers. If we want to design assessment practices with ecological validity in the networked society, such gaps are important to examine, discuss, and act upon. Keywords: assessment, digital technologies, tertiary contradictions, discursive manifestations



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Toril Aagaard & Andreas Lund | MIND THE GAP: DIVERGENT OBJECTS OF ASSESSMENT IN TECHNOLOGY-RICH LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Introduction: setting the scene In a significant editorial on the thematic issue “Assessment for the digital age,” McFarlane (2003) claims that the conventional ways of performing assessment seem to disturb and delay the development of technology-mediated learning practices. Since then, the explosion of new social network technologies can be said to have highlighted an “awkward relationship between new ‘21st century’ media practices and existing educational systems” (Hickey, Honeyford, Clinton, & McWilliams, 2010, p.107). Eight years after McFarlane’s editorial, Selwyn (2011) questions the high hopes for technology in education. Claiming that popular and political discourses about education and technology tend to be reduced to concerns about whether technology is a “good” or a “bad” thing, he recommends that we go beyond observing what happens and focus on the contradictions, compromises, and conflicts that are the underlying mechanisms explaining educational practices. He suggests that this can be done by studying issues such as how the “lived” experience of teachers and students influences their use of technology (Selwyn, 2011, p. 37). We believe that Norwegian upper secondary schools represent an interesting research arena for what Selwyn describes. Since the late 1980s the Norwegian government has paid special attention to assessment in education – an interest reinforced by the PISA results published in 2000 (Nusche, Earl, Maxwell, & Shewbridge, 2011). Also, the 2006 Knowledge Promotion Curriculum (K06) listed digital competence as a basic competence on par with reading, writing, oral proficiency, and numeracy. The reform initiated development of educational infrastructures and today all Norwegian students in upper secondary schools have access to digital tools, even during exams1. Allowing students to use computers changes the conditions under which learners show their capacity to complete assignments. This broad effort to promote the use of technology in Norwegian upper secondary schools – and in assessment – gives reason to believe that the teachers working there can provide useful insight into their lived experiences of coping with the transformed contexts for assessment. Against this backdrop, we ask: • What are some of the strategies teachers develop in order to meet the challenges emerging from students having access to computers while responding to tasks?

This article reports on a study of how Norwegian teachers approach issues of learning and assessment in educational environments, in which all students have their own laptops. We have analyzed how 13 teachers at two Norwegian upper secondary schools attempted to come to terms with assessment issues in this transformed context. Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) (Engeström, 1987; Engeström & Sannino, 2011) provides concepts for studying the development and transformation of activities in their institutional contexts and has therefore been chosen as the theoretical framework. Valid assessment practices have developed over historical time and have become institutionalized. However, when such practices meet challenges that emerge in current and, thus, much shorter time scales, contradictions arise. CHAT offers a conceptual framework, as well as a methodological approach to unpacking and understanding such contradictions. Before describing theoretical concepts in more detail, we first review the emerging research on assessment and ICT, in order to relate the present study to the research field. Next, we present an


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empirical analysis of the discursive manifestations of contradictions (Engeström & Sannino, 2011). Finally, we discuss the findings and suggest issues for further research.

Traditional and emerging assessment practices In 2009, Erstad wrote in this journal that “existing models of assessment are typically at odds with the high-level skills, knowledge, attitudes and characteristics of self-directed and collaborative learning that are increasingly important for our global economy and fast-changing world” (p. 207-208). He calls for the development of new types of assessment designed to engage students using technology while responding to complex real-world tasks. However, studies of such cultural transformation should be “analyzed as historical products which themselves are subject to dynamic transformation and change as people act within and on them” (Daniels, 2012, p.9). It is therefore essential to shed light on both traditional and emerging assessment practices. Traditionally, assessment has been intended to capture pupils’ achievements in a delimited subject area, at a certain point in time (Assessment and Learning Research Synthesis Group, 2003). Such point-in-time assessment is a historically powerful practice linked to accountability and selection mechanisms (Labaree, 1999). Designed to prove student-learning outcomes and maintain construct validity and reliability, tests with only a few controllable variables are often favored. Since the late 1990s (e.g., Black & Wiliam, 1998), more learning-oriented assessment practices have emerged. The focus is on where learners are in their learning trajectories, where they need to go, and how best to get there (Kreisberg, 1992). A particular example of such a formative assessment practice is Dynamic Assessment (DA) (Poehner & Lantolf, 2005), which builds on Vygotsky’s (1978) zone of proximal development. In DA, instruction and assessment are treated as a dialectic unit. Assistance may come from peers, experts, or cultural artifacts, such as digital technologies. Building assessment practices based on sociocultural learning perspectives implies the recognition of knowledge as shared and developed through collective and mediated processes of meaning-making (Daniels, 2009; Vygotsky, 1978). Griffin, Care, and McGaw (2012) claim that nothing is too hard to measure. Success merely depends on how measurement is defined and how we organize situations in which learning occurs and can be made visible. But due to a lack of experience with how to assess collaborative and interactively constructed learning (Scardemalia, Bransford, Kozma, & Quellmalz, 2012), such learning is often considered difficult to assess. However, some researchers explore, for example, how specific computer games might allow for the participatory assessment of inquiry learning (Hickey et al., 2010) or how software can be designed to trace individual, as well as collective, learning trajectories (Lund, Rasmussen, & Smørdal, 2009). The teachers we interviewed reflect some of the concerns listed above as they try to design tasks that include learners’ use of blogs, Internet discussions, and games. In order to review research focusing on how technology influences teachers’ assessment practices, we have searched the Academic Search Premier and ERIC databases for peer-reviewed articles between 2005 and 2012. For both databases we used the following keywords to delimit the results: “assessment”, “technology”, and “teacher”. The term “secondary school teachers” was added for the ERIC database. This search left us with eleven relevant articles. One text focused on using assessment criteria as a learning enhancement tool (Loveland, 2005). Eight show how the use of specific technologies in assessment has didactical impact (Cavanaugh & Dawson, 2010; Enriquez, 2010; Feldman & Capobianco, 2008; Krucli, 2004; Murphy & Rodriguez-Manzanares, 2009; Peake, Duncan, & Ricketts, 2007; Savage & Fautley, 2011; Savenye et al., 2003). One article (Straub, 2009) © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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analyzes the advantages and shortcomings of research on the adoption of computers in education. Straub also questions what influences an individual’s tendency to adopt a technology. He finds that often, affective aspects of technology development and teacher responses to change are neglected. He suggests that future research on technology adoption should “examine the consequences of technology to create a holistic understanding of how technology change influences the organization and the individual” (p.645), which is also an issue in the present study. Overbay, Petterson, Vasu, and Grable (2010) investigate the relationship between levels of teachers’ constructivist commitment and their reported use of technology. The results indicate that constructivist practices and beliefs influence teachers’ use of technology. This resonates with findings in the present study (cf. the analysis and discussion sections that follow). These two latter articles call for more in-depth studies to reveal how teachers’ perspectives and affective responses relate to the implementation or use of technology for educational purposes.

Analytical framework for studying challenges and response For Leont’ev (1978) and Engeström (1987), there is no activity without an object. This makes the concept of the object essential in a CHAT study of assessment. The object is what gives direction to the activity – its true motive. An institutional object of activity is considered to be multi-faceted, always including multiple interpretations and voices that invite a multitude of possible actions. A teacher’s task is to evaluate the quality and value of student processes and productions. Consequently, valid assessment is the object of their activity. However, actors construct the real meaning of valid assessment as they make sense of their actions and activities. What gives our actions direction is affected during such processes, but it is also affected by history. This implies that the construction of objects does not happen on the spot, but rather that it is a longitudinal process. From a CHAT perspective (Engeström, 1987), people’s engagement in developing and changing established institutionalized activities is understood as a response to emerging tensions. Such tensions make people question conventional and historical ways of doing things. Consequently, such tensions are seen as potential springboards for change that are important to identify and act on in institutional change efforts. Tensions are embodied in praxis and can therefore be studied. Contradictions, however, are systemic, embedded in history, and develop over time. Consequently, they cannot be studied directly. Thus, tensions indicate contradictions and can be traced by analyzing their discursive manifestations (Engeström & Sannino, 2011). Engeström describes various types of contradictions (Engeström, 1987). Even though primary contradictions (e.g. teachers that disagree on a practice), as well as secondary contradictions (for example, between exam rules and regulations and the availability of digital resources), represent relevant approaches to analyzing our data, they can also be viewed as feeding into a tertiary contradiction, which we use as our analytical focus. Tertiary contradictions can be found between an activity system and a future, ideally more sophisticated version of the activity system. For example, if traditional ways of constructing the object (in our case, valid assessment) appear to be insufficient, new qualitative forms of activity might emerge as solutions to the contradictions of the preceding form. If that is the case, a renewed version of valid assessment develops and gives directions for the activities in a revised and hopefully improved activity system. This describes a tertiary contradiction that emerges as “invisible breakthroughs” – innovations from below (Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research, n.d.). However, such innovations initiated from for example individual teachers, may become so hard to introduce and integrate at an institutional level that those involved simply give up. Thus, even if contradictions are seen as springboards for change, © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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it is important to note that the need states do not necessarily trigger the expansive development of new practices: A need state “may be 'resolved' through regression or through expansion” (Engeström, 1987, p.166). In the empirical analysis that follows, we will show how the concept of tertiary contradiction can help examine how teachers cope with educational challenges connected with assessment when their learners use digital and networked technologies. However, we first briefly describe the context and discuss our methodological approach.

The context of the study and its methodology Our empirical analysis is based on ten semi-structured interviews with individual teachers (30–90 minutes), two semi-structured group interviews involving six teachers (105-130 minutes), and one preparatory meeting between the interviewer (I), a counselor, and a teacher. The intent of the preparatory meeting prior to the interviews was to inform the teachers about the project, and to be informed about discussions on assessment in a digital age. The teacher shared relevant experiences and reflections during this meeting. Consequently, such experiences and reflections were included as data. All data were gathered in 2010 and 2011. This adds up to a total of 950 minutes of audiorecorded interviews, of which 760 minutes are transcribed. For the group interviews, the informants were asked to prepare, present, and discuss specific assessment issues with the aim of identifying what characterizes assessment practices that work well when ICT is integrated into schooling. All the 13 informants involved, teach Norwegian as a first language. Teachers Andrew, Kim, Ingrid, and Michelle (names changed) work at a Central upper secondary school. The school is located in an urban area characterized by a population with high socioeconomic status. When the school opened in 2006, all students received their own laptops. On the web, the school is presented as future-oriented, and adapted to modern pedagogical thinking and technology. Teachers Therese, Henry, Tony, Ruth, Ann, Harris, Katherine, Bill, and Rose work at Sutherland upper secondary school, which is an old school located in a historically distinguished building in a smaller Norwegian city. According to its website, its vision is to be a school that provides knowledge and culture of a high academic quality in a safe and inspiring environment. Before the curriculum reform in 2006, all their students already had their own laptops. Even though this is not a comparative study, we include this contextual information, because we need to keep in mind that institutional cultures influence people’s practices and strategies (Olson, 2003; Schofield, 1995). The selection of informants was based on their interest in acting as informants; thus, this was a case of purposive sampling (Oliver, 2006). This implies that the participants are not necessarily representative speakers of the larger teacher community. However, their reflections are hardly atypical and can be seen as empirical carriers of more general concerns. The individual interviews started by asking the informants to describe their assessment practices, before elaborating on their reflections on and experiences with students having access to computers while responding to tasks. Through semi-structured interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009), we framed the exchanges on assessment issues but avoided pre-determined categories that might compel participants to ignore their local contexts or miss out on the discovery dimension. To prevent sending normative messages or constraining the talks, we mostly took the role of a listener (Boote © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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& Beile, 2005) in both kinds of interviews. Informants who willingly shared their experiences and reflections characterized all interviews. The process of selecting, analyzing, and presenting qualitative data from studies of complex social realities is challenging, because it involves reductionism. Delimited categories with clear criteria for inclusion or exclusion rarely appear. Our analysis was done in two steps. To gain an insight into the informants’ interests in terms of student access to computers, while responding to tasks, we first performed a content analysis, identifying the recurring issues. To understand the types of challenges they face, as well as the strategies they use dealing with these challenges, discursive manifestations of contradictions are analyzed using the categories (Engeström & Sannino, 2011) presented below: Table 1. Discursive manifestations of contradictions (Engeström, 2011a, p. 34) Manifestation Double bind

Features

Linguistic cues

Facing pressing and equally “we”, “us”, “we must”, “we have to” unacceptable alternatives in an activity pressing rhetorical questions, system: expressions of helplessness Resolution: practical transformation (going beyond words)

Critical conflict

Conflict

Dilemma

“let us do that”, “we will make it”

Facing contradictory motives in social personal, emotional, moral accounts interaction, feeling violated or guilty Resolution: finding new personal sense and negotiating a new meaning

“I now realize that...”

Arguing, criticizing

“no”, “I disagree”, “this is not true”

Resolution: finding a compromise, submitting to authority or majority

“yes”, “this I can accept”

Expression or exchange of incompatible evaluations

“on the one hand... on the other hand”, “yes, but”

Resolution: denial, reformulation

“I didn’t mean that”, “I actually meant”

These four types of manifestations do not come across as discrete units; overlaps and grey areas are common. Before we put the concepts to work in the analysis, the outcome of the content analysis will be presented.

Analysis and findings Overview of the thematic issues brought up by the participants The content analysis of the various interviews resulted in an overview of recurring issues brought up by the teachers. How many of the 13 teachers who spoke about the various themes are listed in Figure 1 below:


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Figure 1. Numbers of teachers speaking of the recurring themes The thematic analysis presented in Figure 1 shows what the informants perceived to be important. However, it does not visualize the diverse and even conflicting opinions voiced on the same themes. From analyzing the informants’ reflections and articulated experiences across the themes, a pattern emerged in the shape of dichotomous views on the following four issues: concerns about and opportunities for learning, what counts as valid knowledge, teacher responsibilities in assessment, and the impact of the established exam system.

Discursive manifestations of tertiary contradictions In this part of the analysis, we seek to present the teachers’ co-existing and dichotomous views referred to above and thus to show how the notion of discursive manifestations (Engeström & Sannino, 2011) of a tertiary contradiction materializes. Excerpts are selected and combined, because they represent empirical carriers of a tertiary contradiction. Seeing them in combination, it is possible to observe patterns in the discourse that give an insight into the contradictions as underlying mechanisms explaining the assessment practices that are enacted in Norwegian classrooms today.

Concerns about and opportunities for learning In one of the interviews, Therese (Th), a colleague from Sutherland, focuses on particularly weak students’ learning outcomes when they have access to computers during task work. Reflecting on student motives for copying and pasting material found on the Internet, she says: Th: The weakest [learners] have problems making things on their own — they find so much great and fine and nice material — why should they make it their own and thereby reduce the quality [of the original material]? […] It is sad that they have to know so little. Therese equates finding and using material from the Internet with copying. Phrases such as “problems making things their own” and that “It is sad that they have to know so little” indicate that she values knowledge as an attribute of the individual and, to use a Bakhtinian term, that students © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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do not appropriate what they encounter; they merely master certain reproductive techniques. Appropriation is, indeed, a challenging process because it involves taking something from other people’s contexts and adapting it to one’s own, instilling one’s own intentions within it (Bakhtin, 2000). If students experience that it is possible to respond to assignments and “succeed” without having to invest themselves personally in the process, they would seem to enact Engeström’s observation that “The history of school is also a history of inventing tricks for beating the system, and for protesting and breaking out” (1987 p. 96). The interview with Therese is characterized by her speaking about the pros and cons of student access to computers, and even if she speaks of computers as being beneficial for many students, quotes like the ones above reflect personal and emotional involvement, which is typical of a critical conflict (Table 1). Tony’s (T) experience from Sutherland contrasts with Therese’s. In the following excerpt, he shows how computer games can be used in innovative task designs: T: I challenged a group on computer games: “Can you study the narrative patterns in computer games, then? Can you compare them with movies and novels?” And the three boys, [previously] all getting the grade 3 [slightly below average] all the time, they [now] produced some very good presentations. […] they had found articles on the Internet in which students at their own level had written some analyses. [...] And what I thought was good about these boys was that they found out what was interesting for their audience – students at their own age who didn’t know much about the topic […] And it resulted in a massive amount of questions from the girls. It was a lot of fun. In many ways, Tony’s account can be read as a resolution of Therese’s critical conflict; we see a teacher “finding new sense and negotiating a new meaning” (cf. Table 1). Tony shows the possibilities of using computers to engage students in innovative, personal, meaningful learning processes that involve collectively oriented learning. His account indicates that these students benefit from tasks that let them work across contexts, on the Internet and in school, taking what interests them as a point of departure. Thus, when learners identify parallel plots in the computer games, they are challenged to do the same with a novel on their reading list. Building on learners’ interests and the social dimensions of the web, the combination of tasks expands the horizon of educational opportunities. In addition, Tony takes on responsibilities beyond that of providing knowledge: T: (…) and then, uh… how can I relate this to the syllabus? […] ”Oh yes! It is like that!” Right? But you have to stretch out […] Through Tony’s reflections, we see how he searches for solutions by developing assessment practices that still are aligned with the rules (the syllabus) of the established activity system. This is no easy effort. He has to “stretch out” after having a eureka moment: “Oh yes! It is like that!” Thus, Tony’s account reveals a “resolution [that] often takes the shape of personal liberation and emancipation” (Engeström & Sannino, p.374), another indicator of a critical conflict. During the interview, Tony points to affordances and shares experiences from tasks, in which he found technology to mediate engagement and learning, again emphasizing the liberating aspects of such experiences: T: I use peer-based texts that they sit and read […] for example, when they interpret song lyrics. They choose their favorite song lyric, present it, present themes and translate it into Norwegian. I found several databases on the Internet where people of their own age had interpreted and analyzed and… then, one [student] that I had © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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never believed would enjoy interpreting poems, found a database with the group “The Killers” and a favorite song, which was “The Spaceman.” And then, there was this long forum string where they [young people] had interpreted this. And then, he understood the point about metaphors and a lot of literary techniques and things like that. And then, he stood there telling his colleagues, no... classmates... they almost fell to the floor... I never thought I would hear a boy like that say that, “Now, I understand the point of metaphors and things like that.” Both his students’ surprise (“They almost fell to the floor…”) and his own surprise (“I never thought I would hear a boy like that say…”) come across as personal and emotional expressions. As he highlights how technologies can be used to bridge a gap between the school subject and the learners’ lives, he addresses the ecological validity (Barowy & Jouper, 2004) of educational tasks and activities, i.e. to what extent they match with practices outside school. Thus, Tony is involved in negotiating a new meaning, a typical response to critical conflicts (Engeström & Sannino, 2011). Both Therese and Tony highlight the fact that a challenge emerging from student access to technology is to motivate students to invest in learning processes. Therese expresses serious concerns about how her less resourceful students might experience additional difficulties in a networked learning environment. Tony’s strategy is stretching out, developing new kinds of reflection-oriented tasks. Their different foci echo the contradiction between an existing and an emerging variant of an activity system.

What counts as valid knowledge? Katherine (K) is an experienced teacher who is also from Sutherland. Early in the interview she describes the problems that emerged when computers were introduced to her school: I: But with the technology, what went wrong? K: Yes, it was then that this view of knowledge emerged: that it is not so important what you know anymore, but how you use it [technology]. You should just learn how to find it [information], so the subject in itself becomes less important than the method. […] I believe that they need a foundation, a professional base. If not, they won’t reach the top... of the taxonomy. So, therefore, I mean it’s wrong that you... that the students are whipped around with demands that they should discuss all the time, that that the only thing that is worth something… that they are discussing something. And it becomes... it just becomes nonsense when they miss out on basic knowledge. They must have something… they must know something to be able to use it further, and I believe that this permeates all subjects. And with access to technical aids during the exam, the result will be groups of learners that don’t know anything, that haven’t learned anything, haven’t understood anything, but they think that they know it, and the teachers pretend that they know it. Katherine makes a connection between the use of computers and deteriorating factual knowledge. In addition, she questions the value of processes that require reflection and how such processes may cover up a lack of “basic knowledge.” We see a conflict pertaining to what counts as valid knowledge and how to learn. Katherine favors a view in which knowledge is acquired in a stepwise manner, from basic knowledge to “the top… of the taxonomy.” She contrasts this with what she perceives as too much emphasis on discussion and reflection and how to use technology – what Saljö (2010) refers to as the performative nature of learning. Katherine is ruthless in her conclusion (no knowledge, no learning, no understanding) and even escalates the conflict by accusing colleagues of covering up their pupils’ lack of knowledge. The last two sentences come across as quite emotional. They give the excerpt an air of being a deep historical dilemma that involves not merely differing views of technologies, but also the fundamental assumptions about knowing and learning. Her account is an expression of “incompatible evaluations” (cf Table 1) of existing and emerging © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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versions of the activity system of schooling. In the absence of any clear resolution, her response is to deny any potential value in emerging practices and reappraise the value of subject content and past practices. Three of the four informants from Central upper secondary school describe concrete examples of how they use social media to connect subject content with learner life worlds, expand communicative possibilities, and make collective learning processes feasible. One of these is Ingrid (Ing) – a dedicated and experienced teacher with an interest in exploring the educational potential of digital tools: Ing: There is something very sad about fighting against… ehh… when you, year after year, sense that students become less and less able to understand why, in school, they are not able to use the technology as they use it in all other situations in life. Thus, if we want them to be motivated and experience what we do as relevant, then we don’t have any alternative. While Katherine is concerned and quite harsh, Ingrid does not seem worried that students will miss out on any relevant knowledge by having access to technologies. In contrast to Katherine, she promotes the value of working with content considered relevant for today’s society and reflects on how school subjects should change in order to match “other situations in life” – a case of increased ecological validity (Säljö, 2010). Speaking with her colleague Michelle (M), they reflect on how the relevance of knowledge changes. Michelle says: M: I heard something sensible yesterday that I am sure you believe in [laughs] since you fancy the digital. […] They [she refers to presenters at a book fair] talked a lot about the text reality the students should be educated for. I am very interested in this! What text reality are they entering? Michelle and Ingrid spent most of the group interview (130 minutes) describing and discussing the qualities and shortcomings of technology-mediated assessment practices. As they become aware of how their students work with new text types, Michelle and Ingrid seek to construct relevant and meaningful assessment practices. Like Tony, they seem to be aware of contradictory motives in current education, as well as being personally engaged in resolving them. Once again, we see how a tertiary contradiction becomes discursively manifested through the articulations of a critical conflict.

Teachers’ responsibilities in assessment One traditional responsibility that may be challenged by the presence of computers is controlling individual learning outcomes. Ann (A) from Sutherland describes the complex and sometimes contradictory signals she must pay attention to: A: But I think that is bad for a nation, a society, that we educate people without knowledge inside their minds […] But, at the same time, I know that I must be more conscious about what tasks I give them. […] I must give them tasks that force them to receive and absorb knowledge through the computer, through the mediating tools. And I must give them tasks [whose outcomes] I can measure... Hesitations and her use of discursive markers, such as “But” and “But at the same time […] And I must...,” indicate a clear dilemma. Ann continues by claiming that working with problem-solving tasks is not acknowledged among her colleagues and that she has stopped giving her learners these kinds of tasks. Just like Katherine, Ann evokes a broader teacher community to support her line of action. Again, however, this leaves her with a dilemma: © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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I: But… you said that you know that working with problem-solving is smarter when it comes to learning because… A: Because it activates the students […], but since I don’t trust that they do the assignments that I give them then… then I must feed them a little bit more, be more of a mom, a control freak, overprotecting, and all that stuff. Ann’s dilemma is that she struggles to combine, on the one hand, the institutional responsibility of controlling student progress, keeping an overview of their individual learning outcomes, with the meaningful learning processes that come with open-ended and problem-solving tasks, on the other. When she says during the interview that working at Sutherland is like being “placed 100 years back in time,” this indicates that the focus on developing assessment practices to control student learning is a historical and institutionalized practice. Here, the tertiary contradiction is brought into the open in the form of a dilemma. Ann wants to engage more in problem-solving activities, but she also expresses distrust in and the need to control her students, which is a case of incompatible concerns.

Impacts of the established exam system Ruth (R), an experienced but young teacher from Sutherland, brought up the availability of digital tools during exams and how this makes it difficult to teach students factual knowledge. Like several colleagues, she suggests that assessment without access to digital tools should be reintroduced in order to correct a situation that obviously frustrates her: R: […] on the exam there is just pen, paper, and their own head – nothing more. It’s more realistic then. I: Ok, why? R: Because the students in high school are immature— they don’t understand that tools… ehh… they think it means that they don’t have to read. They don’t understand that they have to know something. […] They don’t understand that a lot of knowledge must be in their heads. Then, you can opt for easier tasks on exams and realistic demands, and… it is very good to have a lot of tools and use a PC in the learning process, but [you need] not necessarily see the learning process in the exam situation. Ruth’s hesitations can be read as a conflict, perhaps even a critical conflict, when we include her emotional engagement. The combination of immature students (she stops in the middle of the word, as if she catches herself saying something controversial) and computer support during exams is held to be responsible for the challenges she faces. Like Therese and Katherine, Ruth is quite explicit in articulating a historically rooted view of learning as an individual and cognitive effort. When she points to the value of cultural tools during the learning processes, she makes a clear distinction between learning processes and exam situations in which the learner is expected to demonstrate individual competence, isolated from social or material assistance. In Ruth’s case, the resolution is found in reintroducing historical practices. Thus, we see how history and cultural traditions that are built into objects might “bite back” (Engeström, 2011b, p.17), making objects resistant to change. In contrast, the following quote shows how Ingrid, in her search for tasks that have more ecological validity, feels restricted by existing exam types. When speaking of how her blog projects differ from many other school blogs, she was questioned as follows: I: Do you have the impression that this [writing blog]… kick starts other processes as compared to a situation in which the task wasn’t given as a blog task? © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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Ing: Yes, because they are asked, “What do you think?”, right? Not just, “What does it say here, or what is this about?”, but “What do you think — what kind of value did you get from reading this text?” I often give them these kinds of questions [...] I have got responses from several classes that those school… typical school tasks… are not very fun to adapt to blogging [...] There is something about the subjective voice a blog has. A good blog usually always has a subjective voice so that you feel... that you get an idea of the person behind the text. […] I believe they document writing competence through writing blogs, even if many Norwegian teachers probably don’t agree with that, because this is not within the more traditional genres, such as articles, essays, and novels, that we review all the time and that they [the students] will encounter during an exam. Like Tony, Ingrid evokes a personal account of how she develops tasks in an attempt to resolve a critical conflict. She argues with some of her colleagues about how competence can be fostered through writing blogs, “even if many Norwegian teachers probably don’t agree with that.” While Ruth considers exams with just pencil and paper to be “realistic,” we have seen that Ingrid considers the use of technologies during assignments to be relevant because students have access to such tools in their daily lives and will use them when they start to work. However, the following quote from Ingrid and Michelle’s talk confirms that even though teachers might engage in exploring the affordances of technologies that stimulate new ways of developing competence, the exam still asks students to document individual and traditional subject knowledge. Ing: There is still a gap between group processes, collective ways of working that are possible to cultivate through, e.g., Web 2.0 tools, and traditional way of assessing [...], and that gap is problematic. And I realize that I am dragged into exam-oriented thinking because I know that both I and the students will pay if we don’t […]” Here, the tertiary contradiction between existing and future practices is explicitly linked to the affordances of social media. Still, strong historical and institutional forces seem to prevent her from achieving expansive development. The linguistic cue, “And I realize that I am dragged into exam oriented thinking,” points to a conflict with personal and emotional overtones. It also shows how difficult it is for teachers to be individual carriers of innovation without sufficient political and institutional support.

Discussion Analytical categories The interviewed teachers hold various views of both learning and knowledge, and consequently, they suggest or employ different strategies related to assessment. As we have shown through the excerpts, teachers such as Katherine, Ruth, Ann, and Therese speak of learning as acquiring factual content that should be tested on an individual basis, isolated from social or material assistance. Traditional assessment practices, as a historically developed object, seem to guide these assumptions. The advantage of such a view is that testing and controlling student learning becomes a manageable job and that the teacher role of providing knowledge seems immediately meaningful. For analytical purposes, we call informants promoting such approaches “knowledge providers.” Alternative reflections and responses to the situation are shown in the quotes from Tony, Ingrid, and Michelle. They represent teachers whose response to the tense situation is developing meaningful practices and tasks, treating knowledge and learning as emerging in personally engaging, social, and often collaborative processes. They are in a process of constructing a future object. For analytical purposes, informants promoting such strategies are labeled “searchers.” © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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What characterizes the assessment interests, challenges, proposed solutions, and strategies of these two groups is summarized in Table 2 below: Table 2. Perspectives and strategies of knowledge providers and searchers Knowledge providers

Searchers

Assessment interest • Accountability. Controlling individual learning outcomes

• Affordances. Monitoring and supporting individual and collective learning processes

Challenging issues • Availability of digital tools at exams

• Exam types still stifle experimentation

• Students not being mature enough for reflection and responsible use of technology

• Opening for students’ personal engagement and reflections in assessment practices

• Unproductive copy-and-paste strategies

• Lack of common standards for responses to students’ cut-and-paste practices • Reduced learning outcomes, negligence of • Colleagues maintaining role as knowledge factual knowledge providers • Colleagues giving uncritical support of changing practices

Proposed solutions • Re-establish exams without access to technologies in order to control and account for students’ learning

• Open up for exams with unlimited access to digital resources in order to take advantage of material and social assistance

• Re-acknowledge students’ fact orientation • Develop reflection-oriented tasks and ability to recall factual knowledge • Include distributed environments

Strategies applied

Historically oriented regressive approach. Identify dilemmas and conflicts. Submitting to existing and authoritative practices in order to resolve a tense situation. Placing problems with educational authorities (and to some extent, with colleagues) out of their own reach.

Future-oriented, transformational approach, but mostly on an individual level. Identify critical conflicts. Placing problems with educational authorities (and to some extent, with colleagues), but mainly within their own reach by searching for solutions and for things to make sense on a personal level.

We are aware that categorizing informants in this manner implies simplification and reductionism (Kvernbekk, 2005). The categories have been developed for analytical purposes based on the notion that patterns help us see “what goes with what” and that contrasting, as well as comparing, is a “pervasive tactic that sharpens understanding” (Kvale & Brinkman, 2008, p.234).

Guided by fundamental assumptions about learning and knowledge The excerpts discussed in the previous section indicate that traditionally valid assessment practices designed for accountability - measuring individual cognitive capacity - do not seem to transfer well into currently emerging technology-rich contexts. Hence, the evolving challenges call for responses that are “in tension with the long-established social practices of the settled work settings” (Daniels, © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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Edwards, Engeström, Gallagher, & Ludvigsen, 2009, p.1). In other words, we observe a situation that reflects tensions between the object of activity in an existing and an emerging version of the activity system – a tertiary contradiction. Table 2 shows how teachers respond and relate very differently to this contradiction. The characteristics of “knowledge providers” and “searchers” suggest that these groups take different cultural and historical points of departure when they engage in constructing or re-constructing the object of activity. They seem guided by different assumptions of learning and knowledge. This seems to resonate with Overbay et al. (2010) who found that constructivist commitments among teachers influenced their use of technologies (cf. review section). For this reason, different assessment interests emerge making teachers identify challenges from different positions and propose almost contrary solutions to such challenges. By adopting more or less expansive or regressive strategies, they come to engage in developing divergent objects of activity.

The emergence of divergent objects According to Engeström (1987), expansive learning manifests itself as changes in the object of the shared activity of learners. However, while historical and future objects continuously develop (and will, consequently never reach a ‘final state’), more immediate and personal situational objects appear as instantiations of longitudinal processes. Such divergent, situational objects might prompt teachers to develop different practices and generate different interests, perspectives on challenges, solutions, and strategies, as summarized in Table 2. As they struggle, the teachers engage in a continuous process of constructing the object. This construction is modeled in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Divergent situational objects The middle triangle represents the current unresolved situation, and the broken arrow represents tensions as knowledge providers and searchers engage in different strategies. The figure illustrates how some of the underlying contradictions seem to impact existing assessment practices. While one strategy of solving the problem is seeking to reverse and conserve practices that have proven to be controllable and therefore dependable over time, a contrary strategy is seeking to develop new practices that make sense in light of the digital world that students encounter. In the words of Engeström and Sannino, “developmentally significant contradictions cannot be effectively dealt with merely by combining and balancing competing priorities” (2011, p. 371). How, then, can teachers be assisted in such situations? For example, joining networks working on “the © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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edge of competence” and fostering a culture of questioning established practices is seen as increasingly important for institutional development (Hakkarainen, Palonen, Paavola, & Lethinen, 2004). Without organizing collective forums for discussing and developing meaningful assessment practices, educational institutions seem to underuse the potential for expansive learning and professional advancement in the collective zone of proximal development. This resonates with Roth & Lee: Learning occurs whenever a novel practice, artifact, tool, or division of labor at the level of the individual or group within an activity system constitutes a new possibility for others (as a resource, a form of action to be emulated), leading to an increase in generalized action possibilities and therefore to collective (organizational, societal, cultural) learning. (Roth & Lee, 2007, p.205) Institutional culture and educational policies might impact the teachers’ more or less expansive strategies. For new objects of activity to evolve, such objects must be recognized and worked on collaboratively across several levels: classrooms (micro), institutions (meso), and educational policies (macro) (Engeström, 1987). Individuals or teacher communities cannot only make fundamental decisions concerning the activities of learning and assessment if they are to be sustainable. Although the considerations and concerns shared in the interviews are articulated through individual voices, there are deep institutional and cultural overtones. The voices of the teachers are saturated with institutional concerns that materialize by referring to guidelines, concepts of valid knowledge, colleagues’ adaptation to technology-rich practices, and an unequivocal concern for what is best for the learners. Consequently, such utterances should not merely be read as illustrations or examples of a phenomenon under development but as empirical carriers of the possible transformation of the activity system of assessment. They are not statistically generalizable, but they are arguably analytically generalizable, because the results generated by one situation, grounded in the analysis of similarities to and differences from the others, could guide or give input for analyzing similar situations (Kvale, 1996).

Conclusion Our study was guided by the research question: ‘What are some of the strategies teachers develop in order to meet challenges emerging from students having access to computers when responding to tasks?’ Our data and analysis show that teachers adopt very different strategies. These are aligned with fundamental assumptions about learning and knowledge. The findings corroborate recent research on how views of learning and assessment practices seem intimately intertwined (Black & William, 2006). Moreover, Engeström’s notion (1987) of tertiary contradiction has helped us understand how diverse and even contradictory strategies emerge among teachers dealing with assessment in technology-rich environments. We have sought to make such strategies and the tensions that drive them visible by using Engeström and Sannino’s (2011) analytical categories. The emergence of divergent strategies and situational objects has made us aware of the relevance of engaging teachers in discussions of their reasons for either holding on to traditional ways of assessing student learning or moving on in a search for new models of assessment. While McFarlane (2003) claims that conventional ways of performing assessment seem to disturb and delay the development of technology-mediated learning practices, we also argue that giving access to technology during assessment is not sufficient if the intention is to bring about innovative and productive technology-enhanced learning. We need to address deeper notions of learning, along © UNIVERSITETSFORLAGET, NORDIC JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LITERACY, VOL 8, 2013, NR 04

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with institutional impact and policymaking, to understand how a transformation of the current activity system of schooling can be aligned with learning in the networked society. Teacher experiences with assessment in technology-rich environments are quite new, and our knowledge is still too fragile to make broader claims and guidelines for further didactical development. Before contradictions can be resolved by practical, collective, and transformative actions, there is a need to further examine which fundamental assumptions it would make sense to rest tomorrow’s assessment practices on. A shared understanding will better prepare teachers, researches and policymakers to go collectively beyond current assessment practices and explore assessment practices designed for our digital age.

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In 2012, The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training piloted a project with full Internet access for students during all parts of the national exam. The pilot was successful, and the project will be scaled up in 2013.


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