Category 3 responses and digressions: Using technology to transform literacy instruction (to become or not to become)

A third set of responses to the question "Why bother with technology in literacy instruction?" entails viewing technology as an especially effective means of transforming typical modes of teaching and learning toward more positive outcomes. For example, I might argue that providing easy access to the World Wide Web in classrooms might encourage teachers and students to rely less on textbook-centered activities and rote learning of content in isolation, which in turn might facilitate richer discussions of text and more critical reading. Or a curriculum director might become convinced that having teachers use a variety of computer-based writing tools may promote the principles of process writing among language arts teachers in a district. Likewise, a teacher might introduce students to e-mail to increase opportunities for reading and writing for authentic, meaningful purposes. Or a teacher might have students create hypermedia documents to foster more collaborative writing. Such goals imply more than a perfunctory use of computer-based activities that are viewed only as supplementing conventional instruction (a distinction Papert, 1993, makes using Piaget's concepts of "assimilation" versus "accommodation").

This category raises some complex issues and ambivalent research findings that must be highlighted to appreciate its significance. First, there has been a strong belief among many educators that computer technology has unprecedented potential to transform longstanding organizational patterns and instructional approaches in schools (Cuban, 1993; Haas & Neuwirth, 1994; Newman, 1990; Papert, 1993; Sheingold, 1991). Yet, there is little evidence that technology is having any widespread effect in transforming instruction (e.g., Means, 1994; Means et al., 1993). Papert, 1993 has explained this lack of transformation by arguing that a computer is fundamentally a subversive device in schools and that schools react like "a living organism defending itself against a foreign body" (p. 40). He points out that this phenomenon is not an overt campaign against technology but simply the consequence of seemingly benign actions such as placing all of a school's computers in a single room where students and teachers may have access to them for no more than an hour a week (see Neilsen, in press, for an example of how technology can be overtly subversive of authority in schools).

One point is clear: technology itself is neutral (Cochran-Smith, Kahn, & Paris, 1990; Mehan, 1989; Weir, 1989; Zorfass & Remz, 1992). Even the most innovative software application is not likely to transform instruction if its purpose is not understood and if it is not implemented in a manner consistent with the pedagogical transformations it was designed to facilitate. An important corollary to this premise is that computers are not inherently better suited to one approach to literacy instruction over another. For example, I think the rhetorical question asked by my colleague Linda DeGroff (1990) several years ago in an article entitled "Is There a Place for Computers in Whole Language Classrooms?" said more about how computers had most often been used until that point (i.e., for drill and practice of isolated skills) than about computers themselves. As Arthur Ellis (1974) said many years ago, "the computer is a machine that can become a machine." What it does and how it is used, therefore, reflects our imaginations as guided by our values and philosophical stances (see also Miller & Burnett, 1987).

A rich base of qualitative research speaks to these issues, much of which has been conducted in the area of literacy instruction in the elementary school. For example, one of the most carefully designed and extensively researched uses of technology aimed at transforming literacy instruction has been the QUILL project initiated and researched primarily by Chip Bruce and his colleagues (Bruce & Rubin, 1993). QUILL was designed specifically to promote process writing and reading for meaningful purposes in the upper elementary grades, but a major finding across several years and classrooms was that teachers adapted the QUILL activities to fit their more conventional ideas about reading and writing: "rather than the new technology radically reshaping the learning environment, the computers themselves were shaped to fit the already established patterns" (Michaels & Bruce, 1989, p. 12). Similarly, Miller and Olson (1994) found that a first-grade teacher who was enthusiastic about integrating technology into her language arts curriculum advanced her own pedagogical goals for writing when implementing various story writing software into her classroom. Over time, the researchers documented how her use of the software enhanced her instruction but did not move her in new directions despite the possibilities offered by the software

Interestingly, computer-based activities designed to further more traditional instructional goals may also be implemented in ways that shift the emphasis toward more progressive ideas about literacy. For example, Labbo, Murray, & Phillips (1996) document how one primary-grade teacher was motivated by her literature-based philosophy to modify the use of IBM's Writing to Read program.

However, there is some evidence that under the right conditions technology can be integrated into literacy instruction in ways that positively transform teaching and learning away from conventional modes of instruction. For example, in my own work (Reinking & Watkins, 1996), we found evidence that involving teachers and students in creating multimedia book reviews to replace conventional book reports transformed instruction for some but not all teachers in several schools and classrooms. A foundation for the transformation seemed to be that in all cases during this activity, which was perceived by teachers and students as a special instructional event, typical patterns of social interactions were altered. That finding is common among studies examining the effects of using computers in instruction (Sheingold, 1991). Teachers became less directive; there was much more peer interaction and collaboration; and students often took on a different persona when interacting with their peers (e.g., some low achieving students became the experts in the computer lab).

However, other factors seemed critical in explaining why some teachers in our 2-year study extended the technology and the new perspectives it offered into other areas of their instruction. These factors included the active involvement and leadership of a teacher who assumes the role of technology expert in the school; supportive, collaborative colleagues and administrators who work in an environment that encourages independent thinking and flexibility in meeting instructional needs; and sufficient access to needed hardware and technological support.

Another major research effort that provides insight into how technology can positively transform literacy activities is Garner and Gillingham's (1996) study of how six teachers at various grade levels in different schools around the U.S. integrated e-mail and the Internet into their teaching. Several common findings emerged across the six sites. First, access to e-mail and the World Wide Web created a positive social environment in which students and teachers gravitated toward telling stories, often drawing on their own experiences. In several instances this telling of stories through the medium of e-mail broke down cultural stereotypes by facilitating contact among diverse groups of students. Second, for the teachers and students in these classes the technology became "more or less invisible." That is, it became an unremarkable tool because it was fully integrated into the daily instruction. Finally, they point out that the teachers in each of these sites shared common characteristics: "They are not very didactic or teacher-centered in their instruction, they link student interest to subject-matter learning, they view technology as a means rather than an end, and they believe that all of their students can succeed...most of all they each...seek alternatives to current practice" (p. 135).

My vision of how computers might transform literacy in classrooms and beyond is captured by a quote from Sylvia Weir (1989), who writes, "The kind of teaching and learning I am concerned with treats the computer as an adjunct to socially mediated learning, as part of a context, a constellation of children with children at the computer, of teachers with children with computers" (p. 61). In this sense the computer is much more than a new device for displaying textual information or for teaching children how to read and write. It is instead a revolutionary new vehicle for textual communication that, if fully appreciated for its own merits unencumbered by lingering biases for print, can act as catalyst to bring people closer together in a democratic and relentlessly conditional pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and enjoyment. To realize this potential, we will be best served by setting our imaginations free from seeing a computer as a machine that lacks the warmth and security of a book, seeing it instead as a technological alternative providing almost unlimited potential to operationalize the humanistic values that fuel our noblest conceptions of literacy. It will be easier to acquire this perspective as technological advances make computers as portable and user friendly as books are today and as we become more familiar with the alternative ways of reading and writing with them. Hypertext is but one, albeit powerful, construct that captures the possibilities of this new era in literacy, and this hypertext-inspired series of digressions is but a crude imitation of things to come.

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Return to Digressions 4.

Continue to Final Digressions.

Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted May 1997
Published by the International Reading Association, Inc.   ISSN 1096-1232