Digital mindsets: Teachers’ technology use in personal life and teaching

Over the last few years there have been important calls for new literacies to become an integral part of language education. Yet traditional approaches to technology continue to persist in many contexts. Although the role of teachers in this problem has been acknowledged, little is known about how teachers ’ everyday digital literacy practices influence teaching with technologies. Informed by Literacy Studies, the paper reports the findings from a larger qualitative study and explores the relationship between technology use in personal and professional domains of three language teachers. The study found that the participants ’ digital mindsets, comprising assumptions about affordances of digital technologies, shaped the ways in which the participants used digital technologies within and beyond classrooms. New literacies required creative and elaborated assumptions about affordances; however, these understandings had different significance for the participants. The article explains why teaching new literacies continues to be challenging and suggests implications for teachers ’ professional learning and education and language pedagogy. Language(s) Learned in this study: English, Chinese