Tools and Times: Beyond the Technology Native/Immigrant Binary

Abstract

This chapter takes a close look at what happened during a period in which assumptions about digital natives, the drive to innovate, and pressure to limit literacy teaching to ‘the basics’ converged with the identities, histories, experiences, and aspirations of future teachers. Assemblage analysis, with attention to multi-temporalities and multimodalities, is used to investigate this complex time and what it produced. The case concerns a curriculum shift which broadened the concept of writing to text design and production, and which opened a space for digital and multimedia creation. Analysis of how a cohort of teacher trainees—presumed digital natives—responded to the expanded menu of possibilities reveals complex and shifting positions. It highlights the importance of the neglected dimensions of embodiment, emotion, and social context in the conditions of text production, impacting on students’ relationships to tools, whether digital or material.