Appropriations of digital technology in the classroom: resistance and identification

Author(s)

Davi Faria De Conti

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
• Defense date: 2017-02-09

Examining board members

Carmen Zink Bolonhini; Rafael de Almeida Evangelista; Maria Gabriela Caffarena Celani; Glaucia da Silva Brito; Sergio Augusto Freire de Souza

• Advisor: Marco Antonio Garcia de Carvalho; Carmen Zink Bolonhini

Abstract

This thesis' theme is the ways in which Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is appropriated by the subjects of formal education in Brazil. It's research problem is the conjugation of digital devices to traditional teaching and learning practices (that have as a goal the transmission of knowledge) observed in formal K-12 schools in Brazil. Our objective is to identify and analyze the appropriations of ICT practiced by the subjects of K-12 education. In order to develop our research, we established the roles played by the subjects of education in these dynamics and observed the ways in which the representations of digital technology, school, the teacher and the students determine these appropriations. We focused on qualitative methods to understand the symbolic underpinnings of the current discourse on education and technology. Our regard is based on the concepts of Subject, Discursive Formation and Conditions of Production of the Materialistic Discourse Analysis that we perform, that draws from Pêcheux and Foucault. We propose a dynamic approach to the classroom and its subjects, considering not only its structural determinations, but also its particularities as an event. We chose ten public schools located in Campinas, São Paulo to form our analysis material. As a way of clarifying the conditions of production of the facts of language we analyze, we worked with quantitative data drawn from the 2015 National School Census and other documents made available by the educational institution to better position our research in face of the structural conditions of the visited schools. In these institutions, our research borrowed ethnographic proceedings such as observations and semi-structured interviews, as per Agar (1980) and Nunan (1997). The most significant parts of our material were treated as indicative of a scenario in which different positions-subject determine distinct expectations toward the uses of ICTs in the classroom, but in which there is also room for surprise, for dis-identification, for displacements. As a conclusion, we were able to describe the ways in which the representations of new technologies and of the subjects of education, coupled to crystallized traditional learning habits, participate as micro-physical elements of institutional dynamics in which the uses of ICT are settled in articulation with traditional schooling. We concluded, in broad lines, that the teacher frequently dodges institutional directives through Ad Hoc appropriations of ICT, while the students also use them differently than expected, many times in clandestine ways. These are practices of resistance to the workings of traditional education that, many times, take place through the identification with widespread software like social networks and applications. These results allow us to discuss the fragmentation of institutional practices in regard to the use of digital technology in the classroom, giving sustenance to a reflection on which appropriations could produce the desired developments in formal education (AU)