Ethical Frames: A Qualitative Study of Networked Device Use in Two High School ELA Classrooms

This dissertation addresses a gap in empirical research on the way reading and writing on networked devices intervene in the social dynamics of secondary classrooms. Though many studies have investigated how networked devices shape the literacy practices and social norms of online writing spaces, few have investigated the impact of networked devices on the social norms of the classroom. At the same time, the scholarly discourse on the role of networked devices in classrooms is highly polarized, with some scholars suggesting that literacy curriculum must change to meet the demands of the 21st century (Prensky, 2001; Gee, 2017; Jenkins et al., 2009), while others argue that schools have gone too far in accommodating technology, losing something vital to the project of education in the process (Carr, 2010; Bauerlein, 2010; Turkle, 2011). Researchers who attempt a more balanced interpretation have located their studies in extra-curricular spaces (boyd, 2014; Itō, 2010) which are not subject to the peculiar social demands of the classroom (Jackson, 1968; Cuban, 1986). Drawing on interviews with 24 students and 3 teachers in two small, suburban, public high schools, this qualitative study asks how networked devices matter to students and teachers who use them daily in both personal and academic spaces. The study investigates the ways in which public and policy discourses contribute to the practices and perspectives of students and teachers as they negotiate the role of networked devices in English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms, developing personal norms for what constitutes acceptable uses of cell phones, tablets, and laptops and making decisions about what aspects of digital literacies belong to the ELA curriculum. Two findings arose from analysis of the data: 1) Students make deliberate choices in deciding when to read and write on networked devices during class for non-class purposes and 2) The various policy documents meant to guide technology integration and digital literacy instruction represent multiple overlapping activity systems whose goals don’t always align. The findings of this study suggest that the current body of research and policies would benefit from attending more closely to important relational dimensions of device use, including how students and use networked devices to maintain their ethical commitments through reading and writing and how policy documents implicitly position students and teachers in relation to different goals for containing or connecting the classroom network. Building on a recent turn to an examination of the ethical relations implicit in writing and programming (Duffy, 2017; Brown: 2015), this study proposes ethical frames as a conceptual vocabulary for how students decide to engage with various audience types: the self, known others, school, and society. Guided by ethical frames, students manage and maintain relationships in the coextensive visible and virtual networks in the classroom and teachers implement, reject, or adapt policies that reflect the ethical frames they believe most suited to their local contexts.PhDEnglish & EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145849/1/scriba_1.pd