icurricula, ipedagogies and outmoded ideologies: literacy teaching and learning in the digital era

In this paper, I draw on a number of research projects conducted in England in a consideration of the possibilities for and challenges to the development of appropriate literacy curricula and pedagogy in the digital era. Following intensive interest over the last decade in the changing nature of literacy due to technological advances, there are national and local initiatives to transform the literacy curricula offered by early years settings and primary schools in order to respond appropriately to the contemporary communicative landscape. These developments have led to a number of innovative and exciting projects that have impacted upon children’s motivation, engagement and attainment, in addition to reenergising a generation of teachers who have experienced unprecedented levels of change in educational policy. However, such developments are not without challenges and this paper, in addition to highlighting key achievements, outlines the barriers faced by early years educators and teachers as they strive to push forward the digital literacy agenda in the face of neoliberal educational reform, recurrent moral panics and the increasingly divergent movement of the tectonic plates of home and school. I consider the ways in which the recent developments in England resonate (or not) with similar patterns of curricula and pedagogical change in an international context.