Using a theoretical framework combining complex systems theory with sociocultural theory and the theory of multimodal communication, this presentation shows how the new online technologies are having a disruptive effect on the traditional language classroom and discusses the implications of this phase shift for teachers, institutions, policy makers and researchers.
The new digital media have been changing education but the question remains if these changes have been transformative (Säljö, 1999; Wertsch, 2002). While technology is embedded in students’ lives today, there is an assumption by many educators that its use is inconsequential, an assumption that has been critiqued (e.g. Levy, 2000; Hampel, 2003; Thorne, 2003) but that persists. To gage the significance of the changes that language learning and teaching has undergone over the past decades as a result of the introduction of new online technologies I will draw on complex systems theory as a useful heuristic for framing my analytic approach, one that conceptualizes the language classroom (in the widest sense) as an ecosystem consisting of different interacting parts (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). Alongside this, sociocultural theory of learning will help to examine language learning as a social process which has to do with how people appropriate and master tools (including language and technology) in a given culture. And to take account of the fact that technology-supported meaning-making is increasingly multimodal, I am also using the theory of multimodal communication (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001; Jewitt, 2014). I will present the traditional language classroom as a complex system which has been disrupted by online technologies (Hampel, in press). Focusing on three attractors (i.e. communication modes, interaction patterns, and the positioning of the language learner in relation to the world), recent research will provide evidence for the disruptive effect of the new media on traditional language learning approaches and settings and for the resulting phase shift that is reshaping language education today. I will end by highlighting the implications of this phase shift for teachers, institutions, policy makers and researchers, who need to ensure that language learners can realize the potential of new technologies and encourage a new learning ecology.
