Volume: 21  Number: 3  Page: 197–215  doi:10.2167/le747.0

Cheating Literacy: The Limitations of Simulated Classroom Discourse in Educational Software for Children

Marion Walton Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa

This paper presents a multimodal discourse analysis of children using ‘drill-and-practice’ literacy software at a primary school in the Western Cape, South Africa. The children's interactions with the software are analysed. The software has serious limitations which arise from the global political economy of the educational software industry. The package was structured around the UK National Curriculum's standardised literacy testing, and then adapted or ‘localised’ for use in South Africa. In the localisation process, details of content and language are customised, but the coded structure of the package (together with its educational assumptions) remains essentially unchanged. The children's interactions with the localised program are analysed as a simulation of classroom discourse. Despite the obvious limitations of the software, the study shows the children constructing their own contextual meanings from the rules of the package, and learning to interact with them as a rule-governed text. Their troubleshooting and cheating exploits are a source of pleasure to them, as they focus on the software's game-like economy of scores and marks.

Keywords: drill-and-practice literacy software, local, global, multimodal analysis

Copyright © 2007 M. Walton

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