School and writing instruction from a media ecological perspective
The theory formation of educational science pays little or no attention to the fact that technologies have great and extensive implications for what Bernstein (1996) calls content and framing in an educational discourse (Erixon 2010d). This lack of attention also applies to Bernstein’s theory formation. It is easy to disregard the fact that tools and hence different technologies are, and always have been, a part of the practice of teaching in schools, e.g. in the form of books, paper and pencils. This article is about the development of digital media technology (ICT) that is taking place in schools on a wide front and poses questions about how to understand this development and what it is that is really happening to the content and forms of teaching in schools while this development takes place. For this purpose a media ecological perspective is taken on media and communication. This perspective is based on the conception of media in terms of environments that exhort human beings to think and feel in different ways and hence also prescribe what they can do. The point of departure is that education as an institution and an idea emanates from written culture, and is therefore a function of it. In the article, which has a particular focus on the teaching of writing in schools, I use examples from previous and ongoing research projects on how educational practice is changing and how education as an institution is being challenged by new technology. The analysis shows that the new technology provides schools and teaching with a number of new values, and the pupils with new competences, while other values and competences that were associated with the older written culture are simultaneously being lost.