Sovremennye Issledovaniâ Socialʹnyh Problem (Sep 2018)
DISCURSIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF «DIGITAL GENERATION» AND A NEW EDUCATION PARADIGM
Abstract
The paper analyzes the tendency to describe the relationship between subjects of the educational process in terms of “digital generation”, “digital natives” and “digital immigrants”. Since the early 2000s the tendency has stably functioned in the Russian educational discourse in spite of its strong criticism. The analysis of the representations of the “digital generation” demonstrates how the rhetoric of the conflict between students and teachers is implemented in postcolonial and marketing discursive practices. It is shown how these representations are used to justify the change of the education paradigm for the “digital generation”. The discursive representations of the “digital generation” are compared with the analysis of social practices in which the digital competence of Internet users is applied. The comparison allows proving that the representations of the “digital generation” are not grounded in the social practices while these representations impact the inflated self-assessment and low motivation of adolescents to form their digital competence. In conclusion, it is argued that a new education paradigm should be based on research that reveals the level of knowledge and skills required in digital competence in order to face the academic and professional aims of digital communication. Purpose. The article is devoted to the analysis the requirements for changing the education paradigm that are based on the discursive representations of the “digital generation”. Methodology. Methods of critical discourse analysis allow comparing the discursive representations of the “digital generation” in the scientific and media educational discourse and social practices revealed in an empirical research on the digital competence of the Russian Internet users. Discursive representations of the relations between students and teacher, reproduced in the scientific and media discourse in 2014–2017 were selected for the discursive analysis by keywords “digital generation”, “digital natives”, “immigrants”. Results. The contradictions between the representations of the “digital generation” in scientific and media educational discourses and a real level of digital competence of students are revealed. Practical implications. The results of the study prove that a new education paradigm is to be elaborated on the basis of empirical and theoretical research of social practices in which the digital competence is applied by the users for digital communication.
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