Papers by Dimitrios Koutsogiannis
Language Learning & Technology, 2004
L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature
There is a productive discussion concerning the use of videogames in (literacy) education, focusi... more There is a productive discussion concerning the use of videogames in (literacy) education, focusing on their unique pedagogic potentials and on their interconnection with contemporary developments in textual and semiotic issues. Our main aim is to extend this discussion towards a more critical post-videogaming perspective, in the sense that videogames have to be considered as part and parcel of the contemporary, complex socio-cultural and historical context. Therefore, we focus on highlighting indicative aspects of this complexity, and we adopt concepts from the field of critical sociolinguistics, such as scales, strategies, and orders of literacy. We analyze a combination of quantitative (1.185 questionnaires) and qualitative data (6 ethnographic case studies) originating from children 11-15 years old. Our analysis reveals that, although videogaming tends to be a common youth practice, the other important differences/inequalities permeating parenting strategies, school practices, ...
From a cultural perspective, it should not be surprising that technology has always played a key ... more From a cultural perspective, it should not be surprising that technology has always played a key role in co-shaping the development of the L1 subject. However, the technocultural nature of L1 is often forgotten due to the naturalization of the dominant technologies of literacy in each historical period, such as paper and pen in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and digital communication technologies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In this chapter, we argue that technology is inseparable from L1 as a set of utterances, practices, and discourses, which together construct L1 subject cultures around the globe. The chapter has three main aims. First, to describe the technocultural nature of L1 as a subject domain, connecting the past with the present, and arguing that the spirit of globalization, or even universalism, tends to frame the content, context and justification of L1 language teaching in the twenty-first century. Second, from a spatial perspective, to focus on how and why globally circulating terms, discourses and heuristics, related to digital media in teaching L1, are used as available global resources and repertoires to design local initiatives in three different educational ecologies: Australia, Denmark and Greece. Emphasis is given to highlighting how globally circulating discourses are not clear-cut scientific inventions but flexible resources that are recontextualized locally in different ways. Indicative examples are drawn from local teaching practices in each country. Finally, we move beyond a historical and spatial discourse analysis to ask questions about the ontologies and epistemologies of a technocultural rationale and/or reality in L1 education.
The School of Modern Greek Language is a multicultural academic environment, where for the last 4... more The School of Modern Greek Language is a multicultural academic environment, where for the last 40 years Modern Greek is being taught as a second language to variably originated and differently motivated adults. An action research which took place in August 2014 during an intensive academic (multi)literacies course attempts to describe the process of negotiating identities of these students, their investment in academic literacies and the imagined communities they see themselves in at the target language. The qualitative analysis of ethnographic data is based on a four-axis educational model that reveals the interaction of different imagined and existing ethno-cultural identities of the social actors. Thus, the educational process is regarded as co-construction of social variables, among which lie the instructors’ as well as the learners’ negotiating identities.
https://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/reflections-on-covid19/distance-learning , 2020
Abstarct
Due to the coronavirus epidemic, Greek educational system had to confront the challen... more Abstarct
Due to the coronavirus epidemic, Greek educational system had to confront the challenge to urgently move to distance learning. Primary and secondary school-teachers had to prepare teaching material and activities based on digital media, without any previous training in distance learning. In this local context, an online conference was organized (25-26 April 2020) focusing on e-learning. This conference, although organized in a short time, aroused great interest. It was attended by 35000 teachers from all over Greece and abroad (through You Tube Live Streaming and Facebook) and achieved wide media coverage. The present paper will concentrate on analyzing this event as a translocal nexus practice, where many elements of the current global, local and technological reality are intermingled. Some of the aspects that will be discussed are: how technology and the urgency of the issue contributed on shaping the notion of the conference and how ideologies about teaching and schooling as well as competing strategies as struggles of hegemony of many players in the educational game are encapsulated in this event. The personal diaries of the authors of this paper and data from formal educational policy texts are used.
Following the wider theoretical framework of social semiotics, it could be argued that the presen... more Following the wider theoretical framework of social semiotics, it could be argued that the present historical juncture and its diverse parameters, as well as the social protagonists' agency, are reflected in the construction of school time and space, whose significance has only recently been acknowledged in education. This paper approaches Greek classroom space not as a fixed container of human action and pedagogies but as a multimodal 'text', and explores its ongoing reconstructions through the discussion of an indicative example. Its analysis demonstrates the dynamic and constant interplay between classroom space and the discourses, strategies and identities of the social protagonists (teacher and students). An important observation emanating from our analysis is that in the pedagogic discourses employed by the teacher there is continual hybridization, co-articulated with student attempts to appropriate or distance themselves from institutional school discourse. This mixing of discourses helps interpret the constant fluidity and multiplicity of classroom space.
The connection of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) with literacy education has co... more The connection of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) with literacy education has completed an important life trajectory, in which a set of beliefs and scientific approaches has emerged. We are considering these various approaches found in the international literature as discourses (Ivanič, 2004; Koutsogiannis, 2011), according to the wider theoretical framework of social semiotics. Our paper has a dual aim; to concisely describe and delineate said global discourses and to investigate how these are recontextualized by two indicative local curricula, namely those of Finland and of the Australian State of Victoria. Our analysis indicates that the designers of each curriculum recontextualized (Bernstein, 1996) different options of international discourses within their curricula, constructing different realities with regard to the relationship between digital media and literacy education.
In most of the literature concerning children’s digital literacy practices it is claimed that the... more In most of the literature concerning children’s digital literacy practices it is claimed that there is a mismatch between children’s creative out-of-school use of digital media and the dreary literacy reality of school; the suggestion is that the school experience should be enriched following children’s out-of-school practices. In this chapter data from quantitative and qualitative research concerning translocal digital writing by Greek children is used to question this dominant thesis. The critique focuses on three issues: (1) on a clear trend for overgeneralization, based mainly on data from the English speaking world; (2) on the emphasis on vernacular literacies, underestimating the children’s full range of literacies, and, (3) on a significant silence with respect to the historical dimension in studying contemporary communication phenomena.
"Abstract: This paper focuses on the ways girls use digital environments, like Word, PowerPoint a... more "Abstract: This paper focuses on the ways girls use digital environments, like Word, PowerPoint and chatting programmes, for writing and communication purposes. By combining quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis and by adopting a critical discourse framework, we will explore the relationship between girls and new media, especially the ones related to digital writing, in terms of three interconnected variables. The first one is related to the role of the two most important socialisation institutions, home and school, at the present historical juncture, characterised by intense mobility and an expansion of traditional forms of literacy. The strategic choices of the girls’ families and their schools’ teaching practices contributed significantly to the formulation of their digital writing practices. The second variable is gender. Our data clearly show
that a substantial number of girls were more inclined than their male peers to use word-processing and presentation software, performing, thus, the school discourses of ‘diligent students’. The third key variable concerns the personality of the girls who filtered in their own unique ways their social experiences, overcame limitations, took initiatives and appropriated technologically-mediated writing media for personally meaningful ends that enhanced their school and/or entertainment Discourses."
Abstract
The home–school mismatch hypothesis has played an important part in sociocultural studi... more Abstract
The home–school mismatch hypothesis has played an important part in sociocultural studies of literacy and schooling since the 1970s. In this paper, we explore how this now classic literacy thesis has developed a new life in studies of digital media and electronic communications with regards to young people and schools, what we call the new home–school mismatch hypothesis or new literacy thesis. We report on two studies, one conducted in Australia and the other in Greece, that worked with 14–16-year-old young people to explore the relationships between their use of digital media in- and out-of-school. Our analysis suggests that the relationship between literacy and digital media use in and outside of school is more complex than is often presented in media commentary and in research and points to the need for more careful consideration of the relationship between school and out-of-school practice and knowledge.
More than thirty years have now passed since the first attempts to use computers in language teac... more More than thirty years have now passed since the first attempts to use computers in language teaching. These three decades have been so rich in academic questions and debate that there is justifiable confusion about exactly what change has occurred; it is particularly difficult to group and classify the various views expressed and, above all, to identify any areas that have been left uncovered. The purpose of this paper is to seek to classify the research and debate so far, and particularly to focus on areas which have received little or no attention from researchers. To make this clear, we use the metaphor of three concentric and interconnected circles.
This paper attempts to present a theoretical framework for researching the out-ofschool digital l... more This paper attempts to present a theoretical framework for researching the out-ofschool digital literacy practices of Greek adolescents. The broader aim, however, is to discuss the theoretical and methodological issues concerning research designs to investigate literacy practices in the globalisation era. Based on data representing local and global developments in a material region (Greece), it is suggested that it is necessary
to make use of historical and geographical dimensions as well as recent global developments.To capture the full complexity of the situation, a combination of key understandings from the New Literacy Studies tradition, recent social linguistic research and Critical Semiotic Analysis, used from a self-consciously political perspective, is suggested.
The paper deals with educational discourse concerning the recent Iraq war in an attempt to explor... more The paper deals with educational discourse concerning the recent Iraq war in an attempt to explore how broader political issues, such as the Iraq war, are materialised in everyday classroom practices. It analyses lesson plans, aimed to be used by US educators of primary and secondary schools, from
two Internet sites: one supporting the official position of US to go to war and the other taking a position against the war. The paper suggests that the lesson plans in the two sites constitute materialisations of two general approaches to education, the dominant and the critical, which do not simply adopt opposing
views concerning the war but which, most importantly, contribute to the construction of different pedagogic subjects: in one case, there is an attempt towards ‘compulsory patriotism’, whereas in the other an attempt towards a ‘compulsory’ challenging of the war. The ideals which are in fact recontextualised here are that of nation and justice, the pedagogisation of which seems
to raise much more questions than to provide answers.
![Research paper thumbnail of Koutsogiannis, D. & Mitsikopoulou, B. (2007). Greeklish and Greekness: Trends and Discourses of “Glocalness”. In Danet, B. and Herring, S. (eds). The Multilingual Internet. Language, Culture and Communication online (142-160). Oxford: Oxford University (see also: Journal of Mediated Communication Discourse, 9 (1) [http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/2054889/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Within the context of the new communication ecosystem, attitudes towards computer-mediated discou... more Within the context of the new communication ecosystem, attitudes towards computer-mediated discourse (CMD) practices have not been extensively investigated. This study explores social attitudes towards "Greeklish," a specific discursive phenomenon of CMD, which involves the use of the Latin alphabet in Greek online communication. It approaches Greeklish as a glocal social practice, and investigates attitudes towards Greeklish as they are represented in the Greek press. Three main trends are identified in the corpus. The first, a retrospective trend, views Greeklish as a serious threat to the Greek language; the second, prospective trend, approaches Greeklish as a transitory phenomenon which will soon become negligible due to technological advances; the third, resistive trend, points to the negative effects of globalization and relates Greeklish to other communication and sociocultural practices. Adopting a critical discourse-analytic perspective, this study attempts to map the discourses which permeate each one of these trends in order to reveal different, often heterogeneous and conflicting representations of Greeklish in Greek society at a specific historical moment.
ABSTRACT
The Internet as a worldwide literacy practice environment has created a new situation ... more ABSTRACT
The Internet as a worldwide literacy practice environment has created a new situation in communication, providing a new dynamic field for research. On the basis of the two articles under discussion, this commentary develops three main aspects of the Internet: as an informal learning environment for English as a second/foreign language; as a discursive space where identities are formed and social relationships are negotiated; and, as a space where the intermingling of the global and the local gives rise to hybrid language varieties. Taking into account that electronic environments are not neutral literacy practice environments but are involved in a complex nexus of power structures and relations that also need to be explored, this paper briefly addresses issues related to theoretical and methodological approaches for the study of language varieties in the Internet.
Critical techno-literacy and ‘weak’ languages
Abstract
Technological or digital literacy is a h... more Critical techno-literacy and ‘weak’ languages
Abstract
Technological or digital literacy is a high priority on today’s research and educational agenda. It is the natural sequel of the shift from page to screen and the dramatic changes in the communication landscape. Within this general direction in research we are seeing the gradual emergence of a more specific academic trend – one which continues the tradition of critical linguistics, critical literacy and critical pedagogy – approaching techno-literacy from a critical perspective. The work done so far in this area has sought to dismantle the myth of the computer as a neutral literacy practice medium and expose its intimate relationship with the economic, social and cultural context.
Despite the social and cultural sensitivity of the work done so far – qualities which should favour research in different languages and cultures – it is nevertheless remarkable that debate has been conducted almost exclusively among English-speaking countries and on English language.
The aim of this paper is to explore the content of critical techno-literacy from the perspective of a non-English-speaking society and a ‘weak’ language, such as Greek. It is our assertion that the content of critical techno-literacy in this instance must include, inter alia, the following areas: challenging the naturalisation of the electronic writing environments and treating them as cultural artefacts, highlighting the ways in which market modes extend their operation into Internet literacy practices, and cultivating a critical meta-knowledge for working in an English-speaking Internet.
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Papers by Dimitrios Koutsogiannis
Due to the coronavirus epidemic, Greek educational system had to confront the challenge to urgently move to distance learning. Primary and secondary school-teachers had to prepare teaching material and activities based on digital media, without any previous training in distance learning. In this local context, an online conference was organized (25-26 April 2020) focusing on e-learning. This conference, although organized in a short time, aroused great interest. It was attended by 35000 teachers from all over Greece and abroad (through You Tube Live Streaming and Facebook) and achieved wide media coverage. The present paper will concentrate on analyzing this event as a translocal nexus practice, where many elements of the current global, local and technological reality are intermingled. Some of the aspects that will be discussed are: how technology and the urgency of the issue contributed on shaping the notion of the conference and how ideologies about teaching and schooling as well as competing strategies as struggles of hegemony of many players in the educational game are encapsulated in this event. The personal diaries of the authors of this paper and data from formal educational policy texts are used.
that a substantial number of girls were more inclined than their male peers to use word-processing and presentation software, performing, thus, the school discourses of ‘diligent students’. The third key variable concerns the personality of the girls who filtered in their own unique ways their social experiences, overcame limitations, took initiatives and appropriated technologically-mediated writing media for personally meaningful ends that enhanced their school and/or entertainment Discourses."
The home–school mismatch hypothesis has played an important part in sociocultural studies of literacy and schooling since the 1970s. In this paper, we explore how this now classic literacy thesis has developed a new life in studies of digital media and electronic communications with regards to young people and schools, what we call the new home–school mismatch hypothesis or new literacy thesis. We report on two studies, one conducted in Australia and the other in Greece, that worked with 14–16-year-old young people to explore the relationships between their use of digital media in- and out-of-school. Our analysis suggests that the relationship between literacy and digital media use in and outside of school is more complex than is often presented in media commentary and in research and points to the need for more careful consideration of the relationship between school and out-of-school practice and knowledge.
to make use of historical and geographical dimensions as well as recent global developments.To capture the full complexity of the situation, a combination of key understandings from the New Literacy Studies tradition, recent social linguistic research and Critical Semiotic Analysis, used from a self-consciously political perspective, is suggested.
two Internet sites: one supporting the official position of US to go to war and the other taking a position against the war. The paper suggests that the lesson plans in the two sites constitute materialisations of two general approaches to education, the dominant and the critical, which do not simply adopt opposing
views concerning the war but which, most importantly, contribute to the construction of different pedagogic subjects: in one case, there is an attempt towards ‘compulsory patriotism’, whereas in the other an attempt towards a ‘compulsory’ challenging of the war. The ideals which are in fact recontextualised here are that of nation and justice, the pedagogisation of which seems
to raise much more questions than to provide answers.
The Internet as a worldwide literacy practice environment has created a new situation in communication, providing a new dynamic field for research. On the basis of the two articles under discussion, this commentary develops three main aspects of the Internet: as an informal learning environment for English as a second/foreign language; as a discursive space where identities are formed and social relationships are negotiated; and, as a space where the intermingling of the global and the local gives rise to hybrid language varieties. Taking into account that electronic environments are not neutral literacy practice environments but are involved in a complex nexus of power structures and relations that also need to be explored, this paper briefly addresses issues related to theoretical and methodological approaches for the study of language varieties in the Internet.
Abstract
Technological or digital literacy is a high priority on today’s research and educational agenda. It is the natural sequel of the shift from page to screen and the dramatic changes in the communication landscape. Within this general direction in research we are seeing the gradual emergence of a more specific academic trend – one which continues the tradition of critical linguistics, critical literacy and critical pedagogy – approaching techno-literacy from a critical perspective. The work done so far in this area has sought to dismantle the myth of the computer as a neutral literacy practice medium and expose its intimate relationship with the economic, social and cultural context.
Despite the social and cultural sensitivity of the work done so far – qualities which should favour research in different languages and cultures – it is nevertheless remarkable that debate has been conducted almost exclusively among English-speaking countries and on English language.
The aim of this paper is to explore the content of critical techno-literacy from the perspective of a non-English-speaking society and a ‘weak’ language, such as Greek. It is our assertion that the content of critical techno-literacy in this instance must include, inter alia, the following areas: challenging the naturalisation of the electronic writing environments and treating them as cultural artefacts, highlighting the ways in which market modes extend their operation into Internet literacy practices, and cultivating a critical meta-knowledge for working in an English-speaking Internet.
Due to the coronavirus epidemic, Greek educational system had to confront the challenge to urgently move to distance learning. Primary and secondary school-teachers had to prepare teaching material and activities based on digital media, without any previous training in distance learning. In this local context, an online conference was organized (25-26 April 2020) focusing on e-learning. This conference, although organized in a short time, aroused great interest. It was attended by 35000 teachers from all over Greece and abroad (through You Tube Live Streaming and Facebook) and achieved wide media coverage. The present paper will concentrate on analyzing this event as a translocal nexus practice, where many elements of the current global, local and technological reality are intermingled. Some of the aspects that will be discussed are: how technology and the urgency of the issue contributed on shaping the notion of the conference and how ideologies about teaching and schooling as well as competing strategies as struggles of hegemony of many players in the educational game are encapsulated in this event. The personal diaries of the authors of this paper and data from formal educational policy texts are used.
that a substantial number of girls were more inclined than their male peers to use word-processing and presentation software, performing, thus, the school discourses of ‘diligent students’. The third key variable concerns the personality of the girls who filtered in their own unique ways their social experiences, overcame limitations, took initiatives and appropriated technologically-mediated writing media for personally meaningful ends that enhanced their school and/or entertainment Discourses."
The home–school mismatch hypothesis has played an important part in sociocultural studies of literacy and schooling since the 1970s. In this paper, we explore how this now classic literacy thesis has developed a new life in studies of digital media and electronic communications with regards to young people and schools, what we call the new home–school mismatch hypothesis or new literacy thesis. We report on two studies, one conducted in Australia and the other in Greece, that worked with 14–16-year-old young people to explore the relationships between their use of digital media in- and out-of-school. Our analysis suggests that the relationship between literacy and digital media use in and outside of school is more complex than is often presented in media commentary and in research and points to the need for more careful consideration of the relationship between school and out-of-school practice and knowledge.
to make use of historical and geographical dimensions as well as recent global developments.To capture the full complexity of the situation, a combination of key understandings from the New Literacy Studies tradition, recent social linguistic research and Critical Semiotic Analysis, used from a self-consciously political perspective, is suggested.
two Internet sites: one supporting the official position of US to go to war and the other taking a position against the war. The paper suggests that the lesson plans in the two sites constitute materialisations of two general approaches to education, the dominant and the critical, which do not simply adopt opposing
views concerning the war but which, most importantly, contribute to the construction of different pedagogic subjects: in one case, there is an attempt towards ‘compulsory patriotism’, whereas in the other an attempt towards a ‘compulsory’ challenging of the war. The ideals which are in fact recontextualised here are that of nation and justice, the pedagogisation of which seems
to raise much more questions than to provide answers.
The Internet as a worldwide literacy practice environment has created a new situation in communication, providing a new dynamic field for research. On the basis of the two articles under discussion, this commentary develops three main aspects of the Internet: as an informal learning environment for English as a second/foreign language; as a discursive space where identities are formed and social relationships are negotiated; and, as a space where the intermingling of the global and the local gives rise to hybrid language varieties. Taking into account that electronic environments are not neutral literacy practice environments but are involved in a complex nexus of power structures and relations that also need to be explored, this paper briefly addresses issues related to theoretical and methodological approaches for the study of language varieties in the Internet.
Abstract
Technological or digital literacy is a high priority on today’s research and educational agenda. It is the natural sequel of the shift from page to screen and the dramatic changes in the communication landscape. Within this general direction in research we are seeing the gradual emergence of a more specific academic trend – one which continues the tradition of critical linguistics, critical literacy and critical pedagogy – approaching techno-literacy from a critical perspective. The work done so far in this area has sought to dismantle the myth of the computer as a neutral literacy practice medium and expose its intimate relationship with the economic, social and cultural context.
Despite the social and cultural sensitivity of the work done so far – qualities which should favour research in different languages and cultures – it is nevertheless remarkable that debate has been conducted almost exclusively among English-speaking countries and on English language.
The aim of this paper is to explore the content of critical techno-literacy from the perspective of a non-English-speaking society and a ‘weak’ language, such as Greek. It is our assertion that the content of critical techno-literacy in this instance must include, inter alia, the following areas: challenging the naturalisation of the electronic writing environments and treating them as cultural artefacts, highlighting the ways in which market modes extend their operation into Internet literacy practices, and cultivating a critical meta-knowledge for working in an English-speaking Internet.