Punctuated Equilibrium—Digital Technology in Schools’ Teaching of the Mother Tongue (Swedish)

This article deals with how teachers and pupils in seventh to ninth grade in Sweden look upon and relate to the incorporation of new digital technology in mother tongue education (Swedish). The result shows that both the classification and framing of the subject is being challenged by new technology, but that the awareness of the impact seems to be limited. It is suggested that the development might now be approaching a stage where the gradual change, "evolution", that has taken place through all the invasive "forms of media" that have been added to the teaching environment, will now contribute to a punctuated equilibrium, which will hopefully lead to a new inner stability or homeostasis, in other words a paradigm shift. This, however, requires teachers to appropriate new technology as well as an awareness of its influence on the pedagogical discourse.

"Two conflicting pictures emerge in this investigation from both the teachers' and the pupils' statements regarding what will unfold in schools and in the teaching of Swedish when new technology is being used to an ever increasing extent. Both pupils and teachers seem to think that everything is going on as usual and in the same way as before, but for some time now by means of digital technology. Yet, in a more indirect way, it appears that great and radical changes are happening in teaching. The teachers themselves, however, do not really recognise that these changes are gradually influencing their practice, thinking, attitudes and roles, accumulated over time in a 'slow revolution'.... To achieve homeostasis in this new media ecology, new and conscious pedagogical and didactical strategies must be developed.... there are power relations between teachers and students when not only the teachers' technical competence is called into question, but also thereby their role as knowledge intermediaries." (Authors, 355-356)