Necessity or Eccentricity—Teaching Writing in a New Media Ecology

This article concerns how teachers of Mother-Tongue Education (MTE) and pupils in Swedish secondary schools look upon and relate to the keyboard and screen and pen and paper, respectively, for writing in the context of MTE. The results showed that both teachers and pupils found that the computer on one side and the pen and paper on the other circumscribed different writing processes. Paper and pen offered greater resistance when writing than a computer. It was concluded that writing on a computer had been culturally appropriated in the MTE and represented the frame for both teachers and students from which they assessed the advantages and disadvantages of each technology, but also that paper and pen added a value of necessity rather than eccentricity for the pupils, in contrast to the teachers, in order to meet the requirements concerning grammar, longhand, and orthography.

"[N]ew technology seems to be intimately connected with speed, faster processes, and higher textual productivity.... [P]aper and pen still seem to add a value of necessity together with digital technology rather than eccentricity in these MTE contexts." (Author, 881)