Researching Mechanisms of Change: Literacies for the Posthuman

This chapter examines some of the challenges of educational change in the context of current research into the new language and literacy practices developing around the use of new technologies in the classroom. The complex and often conflicting expectations of various educational stakeholders is expressed in the call for teachers to return to the systematic teaching of basic literacy skills, while concurrently learning about, and engaging students with, new information and communication technologies (ICT). The rationale behind the push for ICT in schools is examined through the lens of a critical methodology that foregrounds the need to know how knowledge is produced, and who benefits most from prevailing educational practices. Discrepancies, gaps, silences and tensions within and across educational discourses are discussed in the context of a recent study that demonstrates how changing language practices can destabilise concepts such as literacy, knowledge, and information, and result in new understandings of what it means to be human in the Information Age. Foucauldian Genealogical Discourse Analysis and Constructivist Grounded Theory are also presented as compatible methods for examining how language and other signifying practices figure not only as stabilising elements of socio-cultural processes but also as mechanisms of change.