Abstract
New literacies offer new spaces for literacy learning and teaching in schools and influence the social structures of the classroom community through the pupils’ possibilities for collaboration and communication. The social structures in education are often referred with the concept of hidden curriculum, because the social equities/inequities are indicated in hidden messages, for example in values, attitudes and beliefs. This study explored the hidden literacy curriculum in a Finnish first-grade classroom community experiencing a change of traditional literacy practices towards new literacies. We chose Bourdieu and Gee as our thinking companions because their theoretical concepts involving change and identity building enabled us to gain a better understanding of the phenomena. We followed the pupils’ and the parents’ ways of fitting to the change. It became evident that the teachers need to support the pupils as well as the parents and to use different tactics for making the change successful.
Highlights
The affordances (Gibson, 1977) of new technologies in learning have become the focus of interest in literacy research and in school development (e.g., Räisänen, 2015)
This study explored the hidden literacy curriculum in a Finnish first-grade classroom community experiencing a change of traditional literacy practices towards new literacies
The obstacles for change from the traditional teacher-directed practices towards pupil-centred and more emancipatory ones can be found in the difficulty to observe and to define the social structure in a classroom community because the way social equity/inequity is reproduced in the classroom is mostly indicated in hidden messages
Summary
The affordances (Gibson, 1977) of new technologies in learning have become the focus of interest in literacy research and in school development (e.g., Räisänen, 2015). The obstacles for change from the traditional teacher-directed practices towards pupil-centred and more emancipatory ones can be found in the difficulty to observe and to define the social structure in a classroom community because the way social equity/inequity is reproduced in the classroom is mostly indicated in hidden messages. These hidden messages are defined in educational contexts by the concept of hidden curriculum (see Bourdieu & Passeron, 2000; Cotton, Winter, & Bailey, 2013; Edwards, 2014). In order for change to succeed, it is essential to enhance the teachers’ awareness of the factors in the social structure—in the hidden curriculum (see Alsubaie, 2015; Cotton et al, 2013)
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