Pedagogical link-making with digital technology in science classrooms: new perspectives on connected learning

Abstract

Digital technologies, particularly networked technologies, are changing the way we communicate with others and interact with information. Dialogic Theory helps us to understand the new ways in which students and teachers are making meaning with networked technologies, for instance by drawing our attention to the concept of 'dialogic space'. This chapter explores how discursive practices in classrooms are shaped by teachers and students within this dialogic space, by looking at the ways in which networked technologies impact on pedagogical link making in science lessons. We redefine and challenge existing theoretical ideas to construct an interpretative framework that helps us to understand how networked technologies reshape classroom discourse and the teaching learning process. Examples are taken from several research projects over a number of years in two different countries (UK and Catalonia), supporting the feasibility of using our framework in different contexts. Our results show that networked technologies empower students’ voices in the educational dialogic space, blur the space and time limits of school and out of school learning, and move the focus of teaching practices towards a competence-based approach, to enable students to establish meaningful knowledge-building links in a wide, digital, dialogic network.