Digital literacy practices and their layered multiplicity

Success in educational programmes often depends on learners being able to negotiate and manage a variety of digital literacy practices commensurate with the literacy demands of their course. This paper reports on preliminary findings of a multi-method PhD study which examines the digital literacy practices arising when an adult learner in a UK college completes writing assignments for her course. It explores whether she uses digital tools agentively and decisively in her personal life, in order to transform her classroom practice. Data show that mobilising personal digital literacy practices into classroom-based literacy events allows learners to successfully make the link between their own everyday digital literacy practices and the requirements of their course. It is argued that a “social practice” approach to digital literacies, along with actor-network theory sensibilities, allows researchers to observe the sensitivity of classroom-based digital literacy events to the layered multiplicity of their contexts.