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Setting the Scene: Digital Teaching and Learning in English Language Education Revisiting Digital Education: Dialogues and Dynamics in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning
ОглавлениеChristiane Lütge and Thorsten Merse
“We need to make better use of technology to make our education systems more innovative, relevant and prepared for the digital age.”
Mariya Gabriel, EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth; interview statement, 10 February 2020
Source: https://www.themayor.eu/de/eu-commissioner-mariya-gabriel-the-future-of-europe-is-everyones-future
“In countries where […] we expect free Wi-Fi with our coffee, why shouldn’t we have it in our schools? Right? Why wouldn’t we have it available for our children’s education?”
Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, extract from a speech delivered at Mooresville Middle School, North Carolina, 6 June 2013
“[Today’s students] can’t remember the time they were not wi-fi connected. They don’t distinguish between talking to their friends face-to-face or talking on-line, doing schoolwork in class or a coffee shop or from home. Students today don’t learn how to use technology; they use technology to learn.”
Albena Spasova, CEE Multi-Country Education Lead at Microsoft; interview statement, 22 July 2020
“As educators we need to adapt to a rapidly changing world immersed in technology. But adapting involves much more than just purchasing the latest application and getting students to use it. […] how can we integrate particular technologies in a pedagogically sound way?”
Sophia Mavridi, Coordinator of the Special Interest Group “Learning Technologies” (LT SIG) by the International Associaton of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL)
Source: https://ltsig.iatefl.org/welcome/welcome/
“Mich macht es wahnsinnig stolz auf meine Kolleg*innen und Lehrkräfte, dass jetzt diese positive Dynamik entstanden ist und diese digitale ‘Mood’, dieses Wollen und Machen, dass man aus dieser Krise etwas herausfindet, was einen wirklich weiterbringt.”
Englischlehrerin Nina Toller (@ninatoller, Twitter) via “Marktplatzplauderei”, a Podcast by lehrermarktplatz.de; episode #6 “Homeschooling Special”, 6 April 2020
Source: https://marktplatzplauderei.podigee.io/page/3
digital education: points of entryAll of the statements collected here are united by the joint concern of bringing digital innovations to education in pedagogically meaningful ways. They work together to construct a multi-faceted dialogue on the challenges and potentials of digital education, ranging from the perspectives of political decision-making to the very concrete experience of skilled English teachers. Also, they provide insights into a process that is – above everything else – characterized by its dynamic features. Up and down this interrelated chain, an exciting field of professional development and reflection opens up that has teachers and educational stakeholders engage with the topics and concerns encapsulated in the statements above:
Has the everydayness of living in digital environments – or of enjoying free Wi-Fi with one’s coffee – also turned into an everydayness of schools having access to digital technologies and to good connectivity as a pathway into the digital world? Certainly, the availability of digital technology in schools and classrooms is a prerequisite of digital education – and a challenge that teachers cannot solve on their own as they are relying on concrete implementations issued by educational politics.
What do the promises of digital education hold in store to make 21st century teaching and learning more relevant and innovative – and geared towards the digital age? Here, the critical challenge is not to use digital technologies for digital technologies’ sake – but to employ and adjust technology in ways that are conducive to learning within and beyond a specific school subject.
How can teachers be prepared for taking up the new dynamics of digital education and embracing ‘the digital mood’ of our times – be it in exceptional situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic requiring complete digital turns for schooling, or be it as a broader professional trajectory of digitalizing education? While this should not entail a manic and uncritically enthusiastic race to ever-new digital trends, it does call upon teachers to keep their fingers on the pulse of digital developments as part of their continuous professional growth. Only then can they make informed decisions about which ‘digital trends’ do make sense in the teaching and learning opportunities they implement every day.
Against the background of these considerations, it should have become clear that the turn towards ‘the digital’ is no longer an exotic add-on to education that teachers can either embrace or avoid. It has become a quintessential component of education today – and hence of teachers’ professional lives. Yet while it is easy to claim at large that digitalization is here to stay, what must follow are concrete and productive transfers that connect digital developments with the specific demands and typical features of subjects as they are taught at schools. The purpose of this edited volume is to offer this necessary specificity for English language education, and to show how the digital turn can change and update this subject if it is in the hands of skilled English teachers.
digitization, digitalization, digital transformationWe would like to point out that terminology is often not precise and consistent when it comes to defining ‘the digital’. In German, the term Digitalisierung embraces what two different concepts refer to in English: digitization and digitalization. The distinction is not necessarily always clear-cut and in fact both terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Generally, one can refer to digitization as creating a digital version of physical items (e.g. paper documents, text, photographs, sounds etc.), thus converting analogue content into a digital format. On the other hand, digitalization may also comprise aspects of digitization but in our understanding transcends this notion and additionally addresses processes and interactions or digital practices of various kinds. Furthermore, the term digital transformation is often used so as to point out the transformative potential of digitalization. Creation and innovation may be major concepts surrounding digital transformation. Especially with a view to education, we feel that this concept may be prone to distract attention from a possibly more technical interpretation of the digitization/digitalization terminology. In this volume we and our authors refer to all of these different concepts and try to illustrate how we situate them in their respective contexts.
dynamic and dialogic featuresAs editors, we have designed this edited volume as a work and study book that pre- and in-service English teachers can engage with to find guidance and orientation on digital teaching and learning in English language education. It is intended to offer teachers a tool for development and reflection – to rethink and reshape their educational practices in light of digital advancements, to grapple with their attitudes towards ‘the digital’, and to develop a critical mind-set for identifying productive connection points between two merging worlds, that of English language teaching, and that of digital education.
With these ends in mind, this work and study book employs two guiding principles. It addresses both the dialogic and dynamic features of digitality and digital education. Together with our expert authors, we are striving to enter into a continuous dialogue with you as our readers. The theoretical foundations, educational ideas and reflection impulses we present in our contributions are meant to talk to you: to instill a sense of curiosity in you that helps to challenge and question yourself as an educator, and to offer you space for adding new mosaic pieces to your professional repertoire as an English teacher. We also wish to point out the dynamic character inherent to all processes surrounding digital teaching and learning. In a digital world that is changing fast and constantly, there cannot be one single path towards digital education. New teaching and learning opportunities are frequently emerging, and they need to be integrated flexibly into English language education. Also, the connection points between digital opportunities and key concerns of English language education are not forever fixed. Therefore, what it means to teach language, what it means to learn about culture, and what it means to engage with texts always needs to be adapted to new digital contexts and developments. The implication here – and this might strangely be running counter to the notion of a book as a self-contained product – is that this edited volume can actually not be considered a finished or closed piece of work, but the starting point to an open-ended process that is called ‘digital education’.
Furthermore, this edited volume is not conceptualized as a ‘recipe book’ telling you how digital education should work – but as a dynamic and dialogic tool showing you how digital education could work.
Revisit the initial statements of this introductory chapter and enter into a dialogue with them: What messages and values do they entail? In what ways do you agree or disagree with these people’s viewpoints? What would you respond to them if you could have a real conversation with them?
Now browse the internet to find more statements on digital education, e.g. by politicians, teachers or researchers. Use a variety of sources, e.g. blogs, professional websites, podcasts, or Twitter, and try to collect diverse viewpoints, including controversial ones. Discuss the statements you found, e.g. with other student teachers at university or with professional colleagues at school.
contextualizing digital transformationsTo provide a bigger picture on digital education – and to contextualize this edited volume further – it needs to be acknowledged that fast digital changes and ubiquitous digital transformations deeply affect all strands of society. If you ventured into a comparison between the current days of the 21st century – and any point in time ten, twenty, or even fifty years ago – significant differences and shifts would become remarkably present that have to do with the advent and rise of new digital media, applications and technologies. For example, think about the changing patterns in the way people communicate with each other. Direct face-to-face communication now is but one variant of communication since people can also make use of messaging services, video calls, or social media comments to engage in digital exchanges, be they synchronous or asynchronous, be they with one interlocutor or large groups. Also think about the diverse digital resources people are now drawing on for aesthetic, creative – and also economic – (self-)expression. With language and images being available by the touch of a button and the swiping of a screen (to be slightly reductionist), digital tools and platforms such as YouTube or Instagram make it easier than ever for individuals to convey ideas, messages, or goods through posts and videos that can be consumed anywhere anytime, provided that there is a mobile connection and a fully-charged battery. In a similar vein, profound digital developments influence the way people participate in their social, cultural, civic and work lives – ranging from organizing everyday duties such as shopping and driving to launching political and environmental activism, or from articulating and forming opinions online to organizing work meetings in one shared digital space when global disruptions and crises require this. Such fast and far-reaching developments affect society at large, and might lead to very personal reactions on how digital developments are perceived by the individual.
Stop and think: What is your viewpoint on the increasing digitalization of society at large, and your personal lifeworlds in particular? In what cases do you welcome and benefit from digital opportunities and technologies, or in what instances would you be more cautious, critical and skeptical? Provide examples and reasons to underline your viewpoints.
subject-specific issuesSignificant digital changes – and their accompanying consequences – also do not stop short of English language education. As a key dimension of education at school, also the subject of English as a Foreign Language is increasingly challenged to reconfigure and rethink its fields of engagement in light of digital changes and transformations currently underway. To understand how digital changes and advancements may influence English language education, a more fine-grained view at key areas of this subject can yield valuable starting points for reflection:
Language: Think about how access to digital media has increased opportunities for contacts with the English language, e.g. when learners read blogs to find information and opinions on travelling, watch YouTube tutorials to learn about baking or fashion, or follow their celebrities on Instragram or TikTok. Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum (2013: 7–8) remind us that traditional language competences such as reading and listening are still an absolute necessity to engage with the language experienced in digital worlds, but that digital media can proliferate inventive ways of exploring and developing language in learning processes when teachers deliberately integrate digital resources. Additionally, think about digital options for language practice and enhancement, e.g. when using annotations in e-readers, retrieving word fields from wiki entries, or using apps for vocabulary and grammar revision.
Communication: Reflect on how digital tools have affected the way people – and this includes today’s learners of English – communicate, interact and connect with each other in these digitally networked times. To offer only a few ideas, this can include building an online identity and connecting with others in social networks, creating private messaging spaces for talking to friends and family, posting comments on YouTube and Twitter, or sharing updates in one’s newsfeed. In short, learners have many new options to make meaning – and this does not only involve using language for writing and speaking, but experimenting with other communication modes such as images, video, and sound.
Culture: Undoubtedly, digital media facilitate access to Anglophone cultures, and hence, support processes of intercultural and global learning. For the classroom, consider how otherwise geographically distant cultures can be experienced more immediately in a world shrunk by digital media. In such a ‘global village’, learners can use digital channels such as Twitter, Instagram or news sites to remain in touch with current and dynamic sociocultural developments, e.g. food and sport trends, youth and anti-racism movements, activism against homophobia and sexism, or political debates and controversies. Also, with many digital media becoming more interactive and participatory, learners can increasingly establish relationships with peers across cultures to negotiate and exchange worldviews. At the same time, however, learners and teachers should also adopt a more cautious view: Not all cultural information found online is necessarily trustworthy and might therefore need critical questioning and evaluating, and intercultural exchanges can also harden prejudice and stereotypes without pedagogical guidance (cf. Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum 2013: 22, 35).
Texts: Texts have always been a mainstay of English language education, so think about how the growth of digital media and the internet proliferates the text types available for teaching and learning. The many video genres on YouTube, for example, allow learners to voice genuine responses or creative self-expressions (especially if teachers also embrace the productive side of such texts besides working with them receptively). Also, the world of literature has exciting new dimensions to offer when it goes digital. Original interactive fiction can draw learners into innovative aesthetic experiences, virtual realities enable thorough immersion into storyworlds, or learners can view stage adaptations of plays by streaming the productions coming from the New York Broadway or the London Globe Theatre. On a more pragmatic level, digital texts can also supplement the more traditional coursebook that might gradually become outdated during its life cycle.
subject matter and technologyWhat we believe is important to note here is that these perspectives and innovations do not center in themselves on technological issues (e.g. how to operate a mobile device), but that they do affect the very content of the subject of English as a philological discipline. This mirrors one of the introductory statements collected above, namely that students’ education today is not only about learning how to use technology, but about using technology to learn. Therefore, digital perspectives on English language education are not limited to the question of using the latest technology. It affects language education at a deeper level concerning the way we wish to learn and communicate with each other, find pathways into expressing ourselves and our voices through language and other means, and engage in the cultural and digital worlds that surround us. You will find that all of the impulses placed above – concerning language, communication, culture, and texts – will be intensified and exemplified throughout this book for you to discover and explore.
Undoubtedly, the diversification of digital practices that become possible in teaching and learning English also lead to more complex repertoires of choice that teachers need to navigate. Teachers are increasingly challenged to integrate digital resources into the flow of their lesson, prepare digital learning options for independent study phases, choose suitable tools and apps, and make apt matches when layering their learning objectives into digital scenarios. To alleviate this potential feeling of being overburdened or overpowered, we suggest three ideas to navigate this challenge.
digital awarenessFirst, try to identify contact points and similarities between your current teaching modes and their digital counterparts. This way, you can become aware of and appreciate the valuable work you are doing every day in your classrooms (even if it is completely offline and non-digital), and gradually develop a greater consciousness of digital opportunities that can mirror or enhance your regular approaches and routines. With this in mind, teachers can move from creating cursory and provisional digital learning experiences in an experimental fashion to deeper and more consistent digital learning designs.
Finding digital counterparts
For example, oral in-class reflection or activation activities that normally happen in the classroom plenary (and which might not give all learners the chance to contribute) can be alternated with polling tools such as Mentimeter where learners type contributions into a tablet or smartphone, which can then be displayed on a screen in real-time visualizations. This gives everyone the chance to contribute, and learners and the teacher can further engage with the responses they see on display.
digital continuumSecond, digital teaching and learning is not an either-or question between ‘no digitalization’ and ‘full digitalization’. We suggest that teachers think of digital education as a continuum where the amount or density of digital resources used is a matter of degree, while there cannot be a normative rule that determines exactly the right dosage. While teachers are moving along such a continuum, it is a helpful mental framework to think of digital education as digital-assisted education, or media-assisted, mobile-assisted or computer-assisted learning, to use alternative terms. In this context, Schmidt and Strasser point out that “the emphasis should not be solely on the tool itself” when integrating digital technology and multimedia in contemporary classrooms, “but rather on how these tools can be methodologically exploited in order to achieve a learning goal” (2018: 218). If the focus is on how digital resources can best assist teachers and learners to achieve their objectives, the digital continuum can be brought to life, e.g. by alternating practice and instruction through digital tools, setting research tasks for asynchronous working phases at home, or moving to full-fledged online synchronous teaching in more drastic situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The following box serves as a first reminder on how digital media can assist fulfilling typical educational functions.
Digital media and educational functions
Practice: Using digital tools to rehearse grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation.
Information: Using digital sources to research, collect and evaluate new information and knowledge, or discover topical issues.
Communication: Using digital tools to communicate and interact with people (e.g. other learners, teachers, or people from other countries).
Presentation: Using digital tools so that learners can display results and products of their work, or teachers can introduce and explain new content.
Collaboration: Using digital environments that faciliate learners working together on a shared outcome.
Reflection: This aspect means that digital media themselves become a subject of reflection, supporting learners in critically reconsidering the roles and effects of media in their own lifeworlds and in society (e.g. when filtering knowledge and information only confirms, but never challenges one’s worldviews, leading to people living in their own ‘filter bubbles’ or ‘echo chambers’).
(cf. Schmidt & Strasser 2018)
myth of a homogeneous digital competenceThird, we encourage in-service and student teachers not to be discouraged by an alleged digital divide which posits that “the younger generation is more technologically adept than its elders” (Dudeney, Hockly & Pegrum 2013: 10). This is reflected in the term ‘digital natives’ (ibid.) used to describe younger people who are growing up with ever-new technological advancements, and hence, seem to naturally absorb all digital skills necessary to navigate digital worlds. On the opposing end, such a problematic assumption positions teachers, say, as digital newcomers who do not have a similar command of digital technologies and skills. Together with Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum, we want to trouble this digital divide. On one level, “a homogeneous, digitally able generation is a myth” (2013: 10) and digital mindsets, interests, uses and skills also vary among young people. On another level, many teachers do possess comprehensive digital repertoires – and if they do not, they can always develop these in their own continuous life-long learning. The most important issue, however, is that just because young people might be more technologically adept does not automatically mean that they know how to use digital resources for educational purposes and their own learning. Here, of course, skilled teachers come into play to use their pedagogical expertise and point out to learners the value of digital tools for learning. Again, this stresses the need for constant dialogue and for an awareness of the dynamic learning potentials inherent to digital technologies and resources.
“Children and young adults are growing up in a world where digital technologies are ubiquitous. They do not and cannot know any different. This does not mean, however, that they are naturally equipped with the right skills to effectively and conscientiously use digital technologies” (Redecker 2017: 12). Discuss this statement and identify what younger learners still need to learn even though they are growing up in a digital world.
digital flexibilityAll impulses and ideas offered above served the purpose of tuning you in to the trajectories of this work and study book: connecting digital teaching and learning with English language education in dialogic and dynamic ways. This requires what we would like to term digital flexibility. In educational settings this should encompass reflectivity and a general awareness for the necessity to adapt to rapidly changing conditions for learning and teaching languages.
With this introduction, you have begun engaging in critical and productive reflections, discussions and considerations – and many pathways will have opened up that need deeper exploration and discovery. All contributions collected in this edited volume will now carry this initial engagement of yours further and offer manifold digital perspectives on teaching and learning English as a foreign language. To frame your reflective engagement, we would like to alert you to some specific interactive features of this book:
features of this bookWarm-up: Each contribution begins with a set of impulses that are meant to introduce you to the topics in question, to activate your prior knowledge, and to build up your expectations to the content that is to come.
Engagement icons and box elements: Throughout each article, you will find additional elements that offer definitions, further information, reflection points, exercises, and checklists.
Follow-up and reflection: All authors end their article with a set of further tasks and questions for you to continue the dialogue with other students or teachers, to engage in deeper reflective activities, or to find ideas for your own research.
Commented suggestions for further reading: Each article is rounded off with recommendations for research and practice-oriented publications that you can use to carry your interest in a topic further.
To provide a structure for your dynamic and dialogic engagement with the work and study book at hand, we put forward a division into two main thematic sections, each filled with corresponding chapters.
structure and content of this bookThe first section presents and interrogates the Digital Dynamics of Language Learning and Professional Development. The authors contributing to this section agree on the potential that digital innovations hold in store for the language development of learners, and they locate the usefulness of these innovations within the professional growth and expertise of English teachers. Christiane Lütge, Thorsten Merse and Xiaoli Su open this section with the very fundamental question of what it means for English language educators to be digitally competent. To address this question, they present the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators and explain its orientational function for teachers who are seeking to integrate digital competence into their professional repertoire. Their contribution continues to provide reflection opportunities by means of an empirical study that was conducted with pre-service teachers on their competences and attitudes in the context of digital education. In the second contribution, Susanne Heinz explores the design of mobile learning scenarios with digital tools. She provides timely insights into current research to develop definitions and theoretical frameworks associated with mobile language learning. A practice-oriented discussion of teaching principles addresses two key questions: How can mobile learning be best implemented in the classroom, and what is the role of the teacher in mobile language learning scenarios? With this, she leads into presenting concrete mobile learning scenarios that foster language learning competences. The following article by Thomas Strasser zooms in on artificial intelligence (AI) as a cutting-edge and increasingly evident phenomenon in digital English language teaching and learning. By also employing a critical lens, he teases out the potentials and implications, but also the uncertainties and imperfections that are associated with AI. He presents concrete digital applications and educational examples employing artificial intelligence in order to reflect on principles such as deep learning, feedback, and the role of the teacher. He concludes with a reflection on fostering digital literacies vis-à-vis AI. Maria Eisenmann uses the fourth contribution to this book to connect the large-scale challenge of differentiation with the potentials of digital technologies and resources to achieve more differentiated and invidualized teaching and learning. She sketches out how to frame learning processes digitally so that they become more cooperative, self-directed and student-centered. Practical issues explored in this article include adaptable and adaptive software, blended learning and flipped classrooms, Web 2.0 tools, virtual and artificial realities as well as gamification. The last contribution to the first section comes from Annika Kolb, who takes on the specific perspective of digital teaching and learning in the primary EFL classroom. She presents convincing reasons to advocate the use of digital media in primary education, where the turn towards the digital often meets controversy. It will become clear that digital media can contribute immensely to developing communicative, cultural and media-related competences at primary level, in particular when the linguistic competences of young EFL learners are still limited. Concrete examples for the classroom as well as a reflection of frequent challenges of media usage round off Kolb’s insights into the digital dynamics of primary EFL education.
The second section of this edited volume offers intensive and reflective Digital Dialogues in Cultural Learning and Teaching with Texts. The articles collected here speak to each other to shed light on digital innovations in English education that are associated with cultural and global learning, issues of identity, and the move from traditional print literature to digital textualities. The design of these articles is inherently dialogic in that they connect and update established fields of EFL theory with digital perspectives. In the sixth article of this book, Grit Alter seeks to diversify cultural learning in the digital age. She takes a detailed look at how digitalization increasingly changes social and cultural contexts, and how digital and social media as spaces of interaction, entertainment and information reposition users to ‘produsers’ of cultural content. She further explores cultural practices associated with participatory and digital cultures, and suggests a timely concept of digital-cultural competences by expanding on Byram’s influential model of intercultural competences. In the contribution that follows, Stefanie Fuchs engages deeply with the issue of ‘doing identity’ and ‘doing gender’ in digital spaces. She argues that the digital world has become a central space for performing identities, and provides compelling reasons why this development is also relevant for English language education. She then couples her theoretical overviews with detailed teaching ideas that harness the value of digital media for learners to approach identity-related aspects. Theresa Summer continues and expands on these trajectories by addressing how learners can be supported to become competent citizens in a world marked by digital and global interconnections. Her focus lies on presenting current models of digital competence and global competence with a view to unifying both strands into a framework of digital-global competence that she calls DigCompGlobal. A lesson sequence focusing on the topic of sustainability illustrates how digital and global competence can be promoted in practice. In the next article, Christian Ludwig offers surprising insights into teaching traditional print-based literature with digital media for the benefit of engaging learners in literary experience. He presents a range of literary genres and concrete examples of literary texts, and how digital tools and the participatory web culture can serve to tease out their literary potentials. He concludes with a re-evaluation of available concepts of literary competences in light of digital media. Finally, this section is rounded off with a contribution by Christiane Lütge, Thorsten Merse and Michelle Stannard, who engage with the diversity of digital textualities found in learners’ digital lifeworlds. They begin with a reflection of what counts as ‘text’, and present multimodality and interactivity as central features of digital textualities. They continue to scrutinize social media, digital literatures and virtual realities as examples of digital textualities, and evaluate their implications for classroom practices that tie in with the social and communicative practices typical of digital media.
This work and study book concludes with an outlook on how to get started with digital teaching and learning in English language education. For this purpose, Claudia Mustroph condenses the classroom implications and reflective endeavors of this book into a practical view on how to foster principal learning goals of ELT in a digital manner. She also addresses important requirements for digital education with regard to the teacher, the infrastructure in school, and curricula. This article is helpful for teachers to match digital activities appropriately with their teaching context, including low-tech and no-tech environments.
Before you dive fully into the diverse articles of this edited volume, we are proud to present an exclusive interview with Nicky Hockly that we conducted after a guest lecture on digital literacies she delivered at the University of Munich (LMU). Nicky Hockly is an esteemed global expert on digital education in English Language Teaching, and the Director of Pedagogy of The Consultants-E. She is an international plenary speaker, and regularly trains teachers all over the world. Nicky Hockly has written several prize-winning methodology books about new technologies in language teaching. Her most recent books are Focus on Learning Technologies (2016) and ETPedia Technology (2017). She is also widely known for her collaboration with Mark Pegrum and Gavin Dudeney on conceptualizing and researching digital literacies. In the interview, she spoke about their work on digital literacies, retraced historic developments in digital education, and reflected on the digital changes currently underway in language education.
