Teaching Digital Literacies: Knowledges, Practices, and Resources in Second Language Writing

Abstract

Especially in the university second language writing (SLW) classroom, teachers face increasing demands to incorporate digital multimodal tools, yet there is limited scholarship focused on supporting SLW teachers who endeavor to do so. This suggests a need for technology-oriented professional development which fosters SLW teacher knowledge and supports the practical and critical application of digital tools in the language classroom (Anderson, Atkins, Ball, Millar, Selfe, & Selfe, 2006). The Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) theory, developed by Mishra and Koehler (2005, 2006), provides an integrated, contextually situated, empirically developed model which represents core knowledge bases requisite to teaching with technology (Voogt, Fisser, Pareja Roblin, Tondeur, & van Braak, 2013). TPACK, which is aligned with the principles of language teacher cognition (LTC) (Borg, 2006) and social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1987), attends not only to the core constructs of language teacher knowledge (content, pedagogy, and technology) but to all possible interactions between them. Furthermore, Hinrichsen and Coombs’ (2014) framework of critical digital literacy offers a roadmap for integrating technology into the curriculum. The three studies of this dissertation extend the existing scholarship on language teacher knowledge and critical digital literacy in the SLW curriculum. Employing a grounded theory approach, semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, teacher reflections, instructional artefacts, and textbook content were analyzed. Through a multiple case study, conducted during a digital reflective portfolio module, Article one explored existing SLW teacher knowledge. Article two investigated how teacher knowledge developed in response to a corpus-based pedagogy professional development initiative. Finally, Article three analyzed the construction of technology-focused discourses in a popular university composition textbook. Taken together, the findings from these three studies suggest that SLW teacher cognition is a complex and emergent system and that, despite an emphasis on digital literacy as a social and critical praxis in current literacy education scholarship, technology is presented in a predominantly functional, rather than critical, manner in a common university composition textbook. The implications of this research are twofold. First, teachers need ongoing, individualized support and training to develop not only their knowledge but also their confidence in using technology in the classroom. Also, the pitfalls of a functional approach to teaching digital composition could be circumvented by creating a composition textbook or other form of instructional materials which adhere to a critical digital literacies framework.