“I Surprised My Mom with My New Twitter Account”: Rethinking Normative Perspectives on Reading, Writing, and Disability in the Digital Era

Within primary school literacy instruction, implicit or more explicit normative assumptions regarding what are important reading and writing practices often drive curriculum. For example, there are expectations regarding ability to develop legible printing with a pencil, ‘book handling' practices, and knowledge of ‘traditional' literacy skills. Within contemporary classrooms, however, the ‘new tools' of mobile electronic devices (e.g. iPads, iPods) are increasingly occupying a more prominent place. For children who have learning differences and/or disabilities, the affordances of such devices can offer the promise of increased participation and access and may also provide added social capital to users via the possession of a trendy mobile tool. While there is growing recognition in schools and education systems that many children are entering school with new knowledge and skills through their everyday experiences at home with digital literacy and media, that these skills are valuable, and that the affordances of such devices can provide new opportunities and access for children who have disabilities or challenges, such new understandings are not always viewed as particularly important to school environments. Our paper will examine some of the shifts and incongruities that are emerging as digital tools alter aspects of reading and writing practice and instruction, particularly as they apply to children who have diverse educational abilities and challenges. We will use data from Canadian and Australian research on primary classroom experiences with multimodal texts, juxtaposed with the autobiographical examples that two of the authors have experienced as parents of children with disabilities. Research examples of how mobile electronic devices were successfully used in a classroom and ‘outside of school' contexts by children who experienced a variety of writing challenges due to disability will be used to examine the possibilities of ‘new tools' for diverse learners, challenges encountered in ‘leveling the playing field', and some unexpected consequences resulting from such endeavours. We will address the following questions: How might literacy educators successfully acknowledge and build from children's interactions with "literacy tools" outside of school, acknowledging that traditional notions of readiness are being disrupted by new digital tools? Which sorts of resilient normalizing practices seem to be problematic? And, how do children seem to be navigating their transitions to school literacy while exhibiting characteristics of Kress' (2005) "new dispositions"?