Glimpses of dialogue: transitional practices in digitalised classrooms

Abstract

This socio-culturally informed qualitative study examines digitalised classrooms in Norwegian secondary schools, with a focus on the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) and dialogic aspects of literacy practices. In the article, we foreground two cases: one on the use of digital mind maps and one on a writing process with online response. These cases display productive results of the tensions between old practices and new technology in that they open up spaces for dialogic interaction. This experience calls for a deeper historical contextualisation, and in the article we refer to different time scales: First, the restricted time scale of practices observed in the local school contexts over an academic year; second, the somewhat wider perspective of 20–30 years of educational research addressing technological innovation; and third, the extensive time scale of cultural history, with an analogy to the slow move from orality to literacy in ancient Greece. On this basis we suggest the term ‘transitional practices’ as an appropriate reference to all of these three time scales. Against this background, the glimpses of dialogue observed are seen as promising precursors of future development, but also as vulnerable plant shoots that may very well shrivel and die if they are not supported.