ABSTRACT
Walk into a contemporary classroom, and at first sight, teaching and learning spaces do not look radically different than they did a century ago. One might see desks in rows, a teacher’s desk at the front or back of the room, chalkboards, textbooks on shelves and posters on the wall. Yet, hidden within these familiar, time-honoured spatial patterns are more complex material and immaterial circulations of networks. This complexity can be theorised through the notions of mobility and Actor Network Theory (Latour, 1993), which enables us to see how ideologies, discourses, and epistemologies come together in learning settings. In this chapter, Actor Network Theory is applied to discuss a two-year international study on using tablet devices during literacy teaching. We will demonstrate how tablets may act as mobile devices bridging the literacy learning space between the local classroom and trans-local networks. The generic term ‘tablet’ will be used throughout the chapter except in instances when we refer to the specific device used in the research project, which is an iPad.
