Pre-service teachers’ digital literacy practices: exploring contingency in identity and digital literacy in and out of educational contexts

Abstract

This paper highlights the significance of teacher identity to debates about the disconnect between digital literacies within and beyond school by exploring pre-service teachers’ perspectives on digital literacy practices in their personal and professional lives. It uses aspects of Giddens’ work on self-identity to frame an analysis that suggests firstly that individuals engage in digital literacies in ways that reflect and uphold context-specific identities, and secondly that the drive to sustain a consistent ‘narrative of self’ may be significant to individuals’ engagement with new technologies. This in turn highlights the contingency of digital experience, which may be framed by a fluctuating sense of appropriateness, legitimacy and risk. This makes a new contribution to understanding why skills, orientations and attitudes associated with digital literacies do (or do not) survive the transition to educational contexts and is particularly relevant at a time when policy and research have suggested that current educational practice is outmoded. The paper argues that, if progress is to be made in investigating and developing pedagogies that capitalise on the potential of new technologies, then greater consideration needs to be given to how teachers experience digital literacy practices across different domains of their lives.