Secondary school students online: examining traces of schooled literacy in teenager’s online writing

Abstract

This paper explores the impact that schooled literacies have on teenagers’ online communication, and shows that their online writing is sensitive to their school learning processes and identities. This study consists of an analysis of the Facebook profiles and blogs of four boys who were leaders of a school clique in an urban secondary school in Barcelona (Spain). The analysis focuses on a set of 40 screen-shots captured from their online activity, wherein school social life and learning were central themes to their exchanges. The analysis draws on the concept of “dominant” and “vernacular” literacies (Barton and Hamilton 1998) to look at spontaneous “third spaces” (Gutiérrez et al. 1999; Moje et al. 2004) that connect the core curriculum with the students’ online peer-writing. It focuses on how students make sense of disciplined academic learning across time and space boundaries. It includes, therefore, a questioning of the widespread social and academic prejudice according to which school and online literacies compete in the lives of students.