Enabling exemplary teaching : a framework of student engagement for students from low socio-economic backgrounds with implications for technology and literacy practices

Engaging students in effective technology use and literacy learning is an ongoing challenge, particularly for students who are impacted by poverty. Exemplary teaching and teachers’ pedagogical choices play a critical role in addressing this challenge. This paper illustrates the practices of teachers, identified to be exemplary in engaging students in low socio-economic status (SES) locations, with a focus on their use of technology and associated literacy practices. The data is drawn from a large-scale study of the practices of 28 exemplary teachers in low SES primary and secondary schools in New South Wales, Australia. Using the Fair Go student engagement framework, we illustrate the ways these teachers used high cognitive, high affective and high operative strategies with technology to build students’ discipline and literacy knowledge, to scaffold their learning and to create a nurturing environment for literacy learning. Technology-literacy markers are presented as a pedagogical guide that draws on exemplary practice by teachers in a range of low SES settings. The analysis presented also provides forward-thinking input to governments and policymakers for re-conceptualizing educational technology for students in these contexts.