Cracks in the Sidewalk: Looking Behind the Seamless Surfaces of Digital Schooling

Abstract

As the significance of digital devices and study materials in classrooms grows, traditional classroom spaces are renegotiated and constructed in novel ways. From a methodological point of view, we must now answer the question of how to do classroom research when the school moves out of the classroom. Through the development of two methodological approaches, the article searches for possibilities for research methods that are able to navigate the borderlands between school, home, public, and market spaces where the digitalization of education currently unfolds. The first methodological experiment involves tracing the entanglements of upper secondary school students mobile phone use by creating a closed Wi-Fi network inside the school and enabling the students to share their phone screens with researchers; the second involves following the COVID-19 distance school days of upper secondary school students with portable video cameras. By mapping the entanglements of digitally connected classrooms, we can gain insight into the marketization of public education and the growing influence of global digital platforms seeking to strengthen their foothold in schools. The chapter proposes approaching digitally connected classrooms as assemblages and developing methodologies that see technologies as practices. Through examples taken from our methodological experiments, we look behind the seamless surfaces of technology and the flashpoints that emerge. This leads us to the human and nonhuman cooperation required in digitally connected classrooms.