Deconstructing Digital Natives

[Michael Thomas]

Published this week

Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology and the New Literacies (2011). London & New York: Routledge. Edited by Michael Thomas, University of Central Lancashire, UK. http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415889964/

There have been many attempts to define the generation of students who emerged with the Web and new digital technologies in the early 1990s. The term "digital native" refers to the generation born after 1980, which has grown up in a world where digital technologies and the internet are a normal part of everyday life. Young people belonging to this generation are therefore supposed to be "native" to the digital lifestyle, always connected to the internet and comfortable with a range of cutting-edge technologies.

Deconstructing Digital Natives offers the most balanced, research-based view of this group to date. Existing studies of digital natives lack application to specific disciplines or conditions, ignoring the differences of educational fields and gender. How, and how much, are learners changing in the digital age? How can a more pluralistic understanding of these learners be developed? Contributors to this volume produce an international overview of developments in digital literacy among today’s young learners, offering innovative ways to steer a productive path between traditional narratives that offer only complete acceptance or total dismissal of digital natives.

From the Back Cover

Deconstructing Digital Natives uses multiple analytic/descriptive lenses to bring the mercurial lives, literacies, and learning of digital youth into sharp focus. This comprehensive compilation of studies by noted, international scholars provides the most compelling understandings to date of how global youth engage in meaning making, personal representation, and social participation enabled by new media. These rich, research-based discussions also deconstruct myths, assumptions, and either/or projections about digital youth promoted both by disciples and dissenters of increasingly immersive digital technologies. 

Professor Jabari Mahiri, Graduate School of Education, University of California, USA

 

Dr Michael Thomas BA (Hons) M.Ed. MBA Ph.D.

School of Languages and International Studies

University of Central Lancashire

Preston PR1 2HE

United Kingdom

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