Josep M Mominó

Putting Digital Literacy in Practice: How Schools Contribute to Digital Inclusion in the Network Society

In the sociology of childhood and youth, children have been conceptualized as passive subjects on hold, still in the process of becoming—rather than in an effective state of being. In effect, children have been conceptualized as the subjects rather than the objects of the research process. This influence got carried over to digital divide research. The latest thinking in the field has started to define and understand children and young people as heterogeneous, nonpassive, autonomous, diverse, and versatile agents actively appropriating the Internet in meaningful contexts of their everyday lives. This article seeks to move the discourse forward via four parallel binary logistic regressions that assess diverse and socially mediated opportunities needed to learn basic digital skills from a representative sample of 6,602 primary and secondary students from 350 schools and high schools in Catalonia, Spain. Our research shows that the school appears to be playing a secondary role, as compared with children and young peoples social practice in heterogenic contexts of everyday life, not only for Internet training but also for providing opportunities to develop and master basic digital skills.

Quality schooling in the Network Society: a community approach through the everyday use of the internet

Beginning with a discussion of the latest findings in the information and communication technologies (ICT) and educational improvement field, this article develops a comprehensive strategy to analyse online community building. Far from offering a utopian or dystopian vision, we study the contribution of ICT appropriation as a tool for collaboration, participation, and co-responsibility in the everyday functioning of classrooms and schools. To do so, we examine and discuss school policies, expectations, and the current rate of internet use among administrators, teachers, and students from a representative sample of 350 schools in Catalonia (Spain). Our results show a sparsely connected education system, in which the integration of ICT does not appear to trigger a substantial revolution in established schooling practices. Our concluding statements defend the importance of ICT in education as the ultimate means of interaction that may enable community building to improve the processes of managing, teaching, and being educated in the Network Society.