Bridging the Extended Classroom: Social, Technological and Institutional Challenges

Abstract

The research presented in this special issue of Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy is framed by an interest in the ways in which the future classroom is increasingly conceptualized as extending beyond school walls. There are two perspectives on characteristics of the extended classroom that are particularly relevant to this framing. First, as networking systems allow near ubiquitous access to vast amounts of knowledge sources, curriculum may be conceived as a spatializing process (Nespor, 2000), with learning and boundaries between school and outside world ‘performed’ based on what sources students find relevant to the setting (Säljö, 2010). This agentive view on learning, linked to a groundswell of alternative multimodal resources, challenges knowledge practices in schools that continue to emphasize writing and reproducing information mainly based on textbooks (Säljö, 2010). To explore the lay of this digital landscape within which classrooms are situated, three articles in this issue present museum-related learning research. This is because the field of museum learning research, often overlooked in the education sciences, has contributed important insights into the problem of alternative sources and structures for ‘informal learning’ contexts for more than twentyfive years (DeWitt & Storksdieck, 2008; Falk & Dierking, 1992; Mortensen & Smart, 2007). Museums have also led the way in the innovative use of web-based, interactive, and mobile technologies to bridge learning activities across multiple contexts, including school, home, museum and community settings (Hawkey, 2004; Johnson, Witchey, Smith, Levine, & Haywood, 2010; Naismith, Lonsdale, Vavoula, & Sharples, 2006; Pierroux, 2001).