Title: Deficit discourses within the digital divide
Abstract: There has been long and sustained attention paid to the ways in which deficit discourses about children and families from low socio-economic backgrounds have affected literacy teaching and literacy achievement. In this article, I describe the infiltration of these same discourses into academic work about the 'digital divide'. The 'digital divide' has become a shorthand term to describe unequal access to new technologies. Access can be determined by factors such as geographical location or socioeconomic status. This article is based on a review of literature that reports on educational research related to resolving digital divide issues. In some of these accounts of low socioeconomic children's uses of digital technologies in the home and school, home digital practices are described as inferior, 'non-educational', and lesser than the digital practices used in schools. This article applies lessons learned by literacy educators from the work of Shirley Brice Heath, Peter Freebody and Barbara Comber, and other researchers who have attempted to disrupt deficit discourses about home literacy practices.'
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 9
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