Technological difficulties: a theoretical frame for understanding the non‐relativistic permanence of traditional print literacy in elementary education

Currently, definitions of ‘science’, ‘reading’, and ‘literacy’ in the US lend a seemingly non‐relativistic permanence to these terms, and render them resistant to critique. This paper offers a theoretical frame for critiquing this permanence, analysing why early‐literacy instruction is tightly tied to traditional forms of print literacy, focusing primarily on phonics and word‐recognition, in an age when new technologies, multi‐modal texts, and new literacies flourish. The theoretical framework uses Foucault’s notions of technologies of production, of sign systems, of power, and of the self. Four specific examples of early‐literacy programming are analysed in terms of Foucault’s technologies, producing an outline of reasoning about ‘best practices’ in early‐literacy instruction in the US. These ways of reasoning are investigated as relative, impermanent, and possibly open to change.