– new arenas

The web is a topical area that is currently explored in learning at large as well as within a language-learning context. Since social networking and participating in web-based activities are increasing exponentially with Web 2.0, this is a virtual place that encourages reflective produc-tive skills such as writing, speaking, sharing multimedia resources, but also reading and seeking information. Conditions for learning are being transformed as activities distinguished by a ‘performative nature’ (Säljö, 2009). The new arenas in virtual learning places such as, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, afford linguistic activities and uses of language other than those commonly focused on in education. Content can be shared and distributed in various virtual learning places; digital media texts can be manipulated, edited, and combined into new texts, and reaching a final linguistic product may be secondary. What is of importance is that interaction and participation in these virtual learning places are ground-ed in a bottom-up perspective, and take the collective contribution as a quality in itself (Bonderup Dohn, 2009), while educational approaches are more commonly based on a top-down perspective; teaching prac-tices design for language learner activities, and have certain objectives and learning outcomes to reach. To this image can be added notions of competence and linguistic skills, which are distinguished by having the individual learner in focus.

That new practises for language learning and teaching practices are at stake can also be seen in how other notions are applied to form a broader perspective on the use of languages in virtual learning places. The concept of ecology has been argued to contribute to teaching practices to rethink and reconsider notions of what language use, skills, and compe-tences are in virtual learning places, i.e., in contexts that do not depart from separating and assessing either linguistics competences or the use of language as such (Kramsch, 2008).

This does not only have an impact on everyday practices of language learning and language teaching, but also, on a broader scale, on how lin-guistic skills and competencies are seen. From a pedagogical perspective

it is crucial to consider carefully what these shifts in perspective mean from the point of view of education, and of specific interest for this paper is teacher education. Web 2.0 puts people together in new ways. What seems clear already is the need to explore some daily networked practices such as collaborative problem solving, the collective creation and sharing of texts and their potential role in the educational contexts, and reflect on what this implies for language teaching practices.

New media ecologies exemplified by Web 2.0 enable us to take other perspectives on the uses of English, in particular, uses that are not com-monly defined in terms of linguistic skills and competences. An ecolog-ical perspective on language in a virtual learning environment enhances rethinking about language education, as it aims to embrace the whole situation and environment in which English is being used (Kramsch, 2008). Taking an ecological perspective implies acknowledging language learning as ‘a messy field of study about a complex and messy reality’ (Van Lier, 2002, p. 144). Language education has a long academic tradition of breaking language learning ‘down into bits and pieces, and lining these up in some sort of order’ (2002, p. 159), an assumption Van Lier serious-ly questions. Canagarajah (2006) argues that we can think of language as context-transforming, and that a focus on language learning and language use today would benefit from taking the following notions into account as parts of the language parcel: language as hybrid, language/discourse as changing, and language as representational.

By adopting a holistic approach (Conole, 2008), the investigation of other dimensions of language use and language learning activities can appear as relevant. Going beyond the common framing of linguistic skills and competences also raises some concerns of importance for language learners’ use of English in digital media in their daily practices. To ad-dress this gap, Conole (2010) points to potential and actual use, and ar-gues that designing for learning is a necessary step towards understanding from a pedagogical perspective and, if possible, bridging the gap.

Of particular interest are if and how the language teacher students’

daily practices merge with the educational structures and designs for learning and using English, and how these activities are interrelated and linked to each other.

According to Conole (2010), we face educational dilemmas in

ed-ucation, which deserve time dedicated to pedagogical design. Results from previous studies have referred to the lack of teacher training as one contributing factor to the low rate of acceptance of digital media in ed-ucation. The image drawn, however, also displays other aspects of con-cern, e.g., the diversity among the students themselves. In more specific words, we cannot assume that the language teacher student¹⁵ group is homogenous, which in itself represents an educational and instructional dilemma.

For language learning this implies an increased focus on language use and the shift in mindset that participation is part of learning as well as acquisition, two metaphors both contributing to our understanding of learning (Sfard, 1998). A simplification of mindsets when being ac-tive in virtual places can be illustrated by ways of framing epistemology and learner participation. The first of two mindsets is characterised by notions of knowledge and knowing present in a hierarchical view of the world (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007). What we think of as expertise, com-petences, and authority are spread among individuals and institutions.

The second mindset takes place on the web, and is characterised by being decentralised. What in this virtual place are considered as competence, expertise, and authority, have become collective and shared. Authority is distributed among participants and social aspects are given value. What is communicated and created here is under constant change and devel-opment (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007). While education commonly takes mindset one as point of departure, virtual places in Web 2.0 invite to mindset two. Learning implies becoming a participant, belonging in a context and in a constant flux of doing, rather than acquiring something, having, and possessing. Learning is conceived as a process of becoming a member of a certain environment and part of sharing joint activity.

Research questions

That there is a shared concern for education from a governmental per-spective can be seen in recurrent national and international reports, which take various approaches to focal points on] dimensions of teaching

15 With language teacher students we mean students participating in language teacher education.

and learning, such as innovative implementation of ICT in European education.¹⁶ One critical dimension of addressing what is being argued as challenges for education points out that teacher education is vital. Today’s teacher training students will impact several generations to come. To tar-get what are considered to be teacher digital media competences, UNE-SCO (2011) describes close to twenty competences – and the interrela-tions among them -- argued to be necessary. A recurrent theme pointed out as being critical from an international as well as European perspective is that language education does not reflect the use of language among students in schools (Eurydice, 2011; Skolverket, 2011). The conclusion drawn is that schools, i.e., teachers, have to develop their pedagogical approach to digital media and use technologies to bridge learner activities mediated in various virtual spaces and with diverse digital media with activities at school.

The image outlined above is similar to that of Swedish language teacher students; there is a great discrepancy between what takes place in teacher education compared to out-of-school practices. Even though digital media and technologies are increasingly ubiquitous in almost ev-ery students’ daily life, digital media is leading an obscure life in language education. In their examination of controversies over e-learning in the university, Davidson and Widdowson (2010) discuss the ‘incoherence between the e-learning technologies currently adopted in the university and the ways in which our students actually use various technologies’ (p.

2). This discrepancy between students’ everyday online experiences and participation in various virtual places and what takes place in education is an area worth investigating further. Thus, the case study presented in this paper was guided by the following explorative research questions:

What are the language teacher students’ reflections on digi-tal media and technologies adopted in their daily practices?

How do the language teacher students account for acting,

16 Eurydice, European Commission (2011). Key data on learning and innovation through ICT at school in Europe 2011.

interacting, and communicating with digital media in ed-ucational practices in general and, specifically, in virtual learning places?

Analytical framing

The focus in this study was to examine relations between digital media and technologies used by English language teacher students in and out-side the university context. When investigating the students’ participa-tion in virtual places, the two concepts of bridging activities and shuttling (Thorne & Reinhardt, 2008; Thorne, 2009) were used as analytic tools applied in order to frame the possible shifts in interactions between daily practices as a language teacher student and as language teacher students in the educational university practice. Drawing on these two concepts, bridging activities and shuttling, implied finding a way of scrutinizing the interface between the in- and out-of-university practices.

According to Thorne (2009), bridging activities can be used to inves-tigate ‘students’ digital vernacular interests’ in collaboration with educa-tors with the shared aim of exploring ‘living language use’. Furthermore, this way of exploring communicative practices includes digital media and print literacies and departs from an ecological perspective on everyday language use, irrespective of place. In this approach, Thorne also points to future practices yet unknown.

This conceptual framework is grounded in the notion of multiliter-acies, New London Group, 1996. It concerns the shifting social practices and emerging literacies associated with digital media, focusing on teacher exploration of student-created digital texts originating in digital media.

Regarding the concept of multiliteracies, Thorne (2009) raises some crit-ical concerns in claiming that:

new media literacies remain largely unacknowledged within in-structed L2 contexts and curricula, or worse, are treated as stig-matized varieties that have no place in the classroom (p. 91) .

Furthermore, Thorne points to another problem in education, which is the lack of explicit and systematic goals to address the ‘mastery of high

frequency and high stakes mediated genres of communication’ (p. 91).

What is being argued here in explicit terms is that language use, and linguistic skills ‘other’ than those education acknowledges, comprise a serious problem that has to be recognized and addressed.

The other analytical tool, shuttling (Thorne, 2009), is a concept that illustrates when individuals move between ‘defined social-textual conven-tions and make strategic use of semiotic and narrative resources, some-times across and somesome-times within specific language genres (p. 87). In this, Thorne refers to Canagarajah (2006), and elaborates further on his concept of shuttling to argue that ‘writing is not merely constitutive; it is also performative, context-transforming, and acts as an affordance for the ongoing negotiation of voice and presentation of self’ (p. 87). Thus, com-municative participation in online virtual places is not a trivial activity.

In the analysis of the language teacher student activities in this pa-per, the concepts were applied as analytical tools to explore the students’

move between social media practices at university in virtual learning plac-es, and language use in their everyday use of social media.

Tensions and challenges

Implementing emergent web-based technologies into institutional con-texts is not unproblematic (cf. Bonderup Dohn, 2009; Lund; 2008), with examples such as open access and sustainability of content over time on the one hand, and assessment and assignments on the virtual learning places on the other hand. In fact, it is the ‘ego-less, time-less and never finished’ (Lamb, 2004) business of user interaction that is problematic and that fits existing institutional frames quite poorly. These are chal-lenges in need of debate and targeting in teaching and learning practices.

Thus collective online ownership causes both possibilities and problems for learners. As Erstad (2008; 2010) puts it, classroom media production, for example, may be seen as trajectories of remixing as students may bring with them their existing experience and abilities and are often motivat-ed to take the lead on instruction. The affordances of technology may, in other words, change the power structures of the learning situations.

Thorne (2010) suggests that learners may be immersed in intercultural communication ‘in the wild’ while teachers are educated to keep track of what is going on in the classroom. This points to a tension regarding