Any bodies out there? : Educating the posthuman

This study investigates the relationship between literacy, information and communication technologies (ICT), and pedagogy. As literacy and ICT are currently promoted as key elements of educational reform (Knobel & Lankshear, 1997; O'Rourke, 2003) this research examines the effects of new literacies, which are developing around digital technologies (Lankshear & Knobel, 1998), on pre-service teachers' pedagogies. The research acknowledges the cultural and political context in which new technologies are embedded (Wajcman, 1991), and theorises the epistemological and ontological implications of new patterns of practice, purpose and production in education (Lankshear, Peters & Knobel, 2000). The thesis is informed by feminist, poststructuralist and posthuman theories, which problematise the presumed neutrality of language and technology, and provide a new lens through which issues of agency, identity, access and equity in education can be examined. A qualitative, combined methods approach, incorporating constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz 2000, 2006) and Foucauldian discourse analysis (Carabine, 2001; Foucault, 1972), examines how knowledge about new technologies for teaching and learning is produced and to what effect. Analysis focuses predominantly on preservice teachers' discussions of their experiences with computers in the classroom and their reflections on an ICT case study. The findings discuss the relationship between literacy, technology and pedagogy in terms of the ways in which ICT literacies in education establish new networks of power, which undermine pre-service teachers' efforts to develop critical and inclusive pedagogies. The thesis argues that new language practices around computer use signify epistemic shifts (Kress, 2000) that redefine concepts such as human potential and progress through a rewriting of the boundaries between bodies and technologies. Accordingly, the findings provide an account of the complex and contradictory teaching identities constructed at the nexus of contesting knowledge frameworks, as pre-service teachers find themselves accountable for the discrepancies between the ideals and realities of ICT in education.