Interactive learning environments such as videogames may facilitate learning through engagement. However, not all kinds of engagement are relevant to learning in formal education; much depends on the use of pedagogical approaches and videogames in the classroom. This study investigates a curricular unit in an upper secondary class using the commercial videogame The Walking Dead to teach ethical theories in a citizenship course. We focus on how the teacher’s design of the lesson facilitated students’ disciplinary engagement and find that productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) principles, together with dialogic interactions, extended students’ engagement beyond gameplay and helped them understand the meaning of the theoretical content. Based on our findings, we propose a set of recommendations concerning educational design for teaching and learning with commercial videogames.

This paper reports on teacher practices in tablet-based Finnish one-to-one computing classrooms in grades 7–9. The aim of this study was to increase the understanding of teacher practices by illustrating and analysing the relations of power and control in Finnish teachers’ one-to-one computing classrooms. The study applied methods based on classroom observations, photographs and audio recordings of the teachers’ communication. Within the context of this study, the results indicate two theoretically distinct, but varying, forms of teaching practice. These teaching practices demonstrate contrasts with regard to how the classroom spaces were organised, including one-to-one computing, as well as the teacher-enacted communication with students. Based on how power and control either was retained by the teachers or distributed to the students, this paper highlight how different meanings were constructed in student learning.

This article focuses on the leisure-time center (LTC) as an arena for developing critical digital literacy. The main research question concerns how Swedish leisure-time teachers (LT teachers) work to promote critical digital literacy. In addition to this, the article directs attention to one specific aspect of critical digital literacy, namely, critical understanding of Internet advertising. The second research question thus concerns how LT teachers approach Internet advertising in the LTC, and whether their approaches to advertising encourage a critical understanding. The study is based on 20 in-depth interviews with Swedish LT teachers, and Buckingham’s (2015) conceptual framework for critical digital literacy is used to analyze and discuss the data. The results reveal a broad range of approaches and practices, from not promoting critical digital literacy at all, to planned learning activities and spontaneous discussions that encouraged critical reflections about digital media. The participants concentrated on source criticism, photo manipulation, and discussions with children about their digital media usage. There were also different approaches to Internet advertising, from not addressing this issue to critical reflections regarding the role of advertising. The participants also described uncritical ways of relating to Internet advertising, such as approaching advertising as a form of entertainment. The article discusses the implications of these results for policy, teacher education, and future research.

In the age of digitalization, Digital and Media Literacy (DML) has gained increasing attention in European compulsory education, blending insights and experiences from the media education and digital literacy domains. Teacher education, starting from pre-service education, is central for the actual integration of DML education in classroom practice. This article discusses the case study of a two-credit introductory course to DML education for pre-service pre-primary and primary school teachers in Switzerland. The course, partially co-designed with its participants, intentionally explored many topics (as opposed to the in-depth analysis of a few) and focused on hands-on experimentation and reflection. The data collected with a pre/post survey and follow-up interviews offer insights on the evolution of pre-service teachers’ approach to DML, on their perceived role as teachers in this domain, on self-efficacy, and on potential enablers and obstacles to implementing DML activities in class. The case study suggests that, despite the limited space in the curriculum and resources available, even a short course can make a difference and enable teachers to integrate DML in their profession.

This article presents part of the results of an international research project that aims to map teenagers’ (12–18 years old) transmedia skills. Within a theoretical framework grounded in the concepts of “transmedia literacy” and “transmedia skills”, the research team carried out international fieldwork based on short-term ethnography, an appropriate data-collection methodology that allowed us to answer the central question: What are young people doing with media? We identified more than 200 main and specific skills that were used to make a map of adolescents’ transmedia skills, which is included in this article. The research also revealed that young people’s skills have certain highs and lows, giving rise to a “topography” that includes teenagers with advanced media skills – for example, skills related to technological, aesthetic and ideological uses of content – and also those with less developed skills. The research reveals a very complex panorama that belies both the mythology of the “digital native” and that of the “digital dummy”, and invites us to go deeper in future research.

The Internet has become an important literacy environment, even for children. Therefore, building the foundations for their critical engagement with online information should start when they first enter school. One way to start is to help children build an understanding about the complexities of the Internet environment. The present study aimed at increasing our knowledge about children’s understanding of the Internet as a technical and social environment. It also explored how children perceive the trustworthiness of online information. The participants included 30 children aged 7–9 years. The children were interviewed and the data was analysed using content analysis. We share the results from the following perspectives: 1) children’s understanding of the Internet as a complex environment; 2) children’s perceptions of the benefits and risks of the Internet; and 3) children’s perceptions of the trustworthiness of online information. The implications of developing instruction to educate critical readers are discussed.