Abstract
The goal for learners to make successful use of information technology (IT) has become a staple of education policy and curriculum. The literature about how this can be achieved offers various conceptions of this goal, for example, skills, competence, literacy, fluency, capabilities, etc. When these concepts are reified as a taxonomy or model, they are presented in abstract forms distinct from the people who are supposed to attain them: in particular their attitudes and aspirations, which can change over time. This study, informed by Legitimation Code Theory’s (LCT) 'specialisation' concept (Maton, 2014), surveyed student nurses (n=310) in one United Kingdom university to find out what approach to learning they thought would leads success in IT. The survey asked participants to select from four different ‘specialisation’ codes for four different subjects and the responses were normalised. Each of the three year groups revealed a 'code shift', from a 'knowledge code' (ER+,SR-) in year 1, to a 'relativist code' (ER-,SR-) in year 2, to a 'knower code' (ER-,SR+) in year 3. The discussion offers some possible causes for these shifts and points to a possible contribution towards the field of digital literacies which has often depicted success in IT as a knowledge code, largely bypassing aspects of personality and intuition seen in the responses from year 3 students. Clearly further research would be needed to affirm and explicate these shifts.
Highlights
Full participation in an ‘information society’ would seem to require members of that society to be good with information technology (IT)
It is said that to participate in an ‘information society’, students, nurses included, need to graduate with the ability to make ‘effective and efficient’ use of IT (Quality Assurance Agency 2001, p. 5)
Rowlands et al (2008, p. 300) warn that it is not safe to assume that this will happen on its own by trial and error, even though students inhabit a context with substantial expectations and incentives to perform knowledge work that implicates IT (Goodyear 1999; van Dijk and van Deursen 2014, p. 112)
Summary
Full participation in an ‘information society’ would seem to require members of that society to be good with information technology (IT) (van Dijk and van Deursen 2014). In 2018, the United Kingdom’s Higher Education Subject Benchmark Statements are unchanged from 2001 in requiring nursing students to graduate with the ability to make ‘effective and efficient use of information and communication technology’ (Quality Assurance Agency 2001). Optimistic memes and myths around IT skills, such as ‘Digital Natives’ (Prensky 2001), may yet encourage curriculum planners to assume that students arrive at university equipped with adequate digital skills to cope with higher education; this is Technology (ALT), a UK-based professional and scholarly society and membership organisation.
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