Reframing the Digital in Literacy: Youth, Arts, and Misperceptions

In a climate where our pedagogical practices are increasingly digitized across all levels of schooling and public pedagogies, this chapter draws on a study on the nature and scope of young people’s engagement with the ‘screen.’ Across two cities in Scotland and Canada, 30 youth took part in a participatory arts-based project guided by the question, to what extent do the digital practices of these young people reflect common assumptions about access and engagement to digital and global literacies? This chapter presents the findings of this study, shedding light on the complexity and diversity of digital engagement and the misconceptions of ‘screen-obsessed’ youth. The authors argue that by focusing on the ‘digital’ in education, we are working with an outdated perspective and, as a consequence, very often missing more urgent, relevant, and productive questions of educational space, ethics, safety, curriculum content, and engagement in an era where ‘offline’ is an historical and redundant concept.