In recent years, there has been widespread interest in the implementation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in schools. While most efforts have been directed to studying their introduction in teaching and learning as tools to facilitate the access, management, and processing of information, empirical investigation has not yet paid proper attention to the specific ways ICT foster and support social interaction and community involvement. Adopting a community approach, this PhD dissertation focuses on the incorporation of ICT, and particularly the internet, into the organization and everyday functioning of classrooms and schools in a broad sense, including students’ and teachers’ interactions, patterns of collaboration amongst the teaching staff, school administration, and the opening of the school to families, other professionals, and the local community. To do so, the dissertation is based on a compilation of research papers developed as part of the “Schooling in the network society: The internet in primary and secondary education” and “Integration of the internet in Spanish school education: The current situation and prospects” projects.The dissertation is divided into three major sections. The first section serves as a general introduction to these papers and presents an overview of the context in which the research has been carried out. This is followed by a critical discussion of the high expectations that have been placed on ICT and the enthusiastic claims that have been made about their role in transforming education and schooling. This discussion leads to the development of a theoretical framework based on the theory of social capital and the digital inequality approach with which to study whether and in what ways the incorporation of the internet supports and enhances community building into students’, teachers’ and principals’ everyday activity in classrooms and schools. A literature review provides the necessary background from which the main aims and the research questions are drawn. On the one hand, it summarises the research conducted over the last decades in the field of school development and change that links social and community aspects to educational success and, particularly, takes into consideration the body of studies that has addressed the school as a community, the classroom as a community, and the school in the community. On the other hand, the literature review examines the research conducted in the field of internet studies and, drawing from social studies of technology, characterises it as an emerging field that encourages a renewed interest in the relationships between technological innovation and society and, specifically, addresses the social and cultural implications of the incorporation of the internet into everyday life. Next, the methodology used in the research is described in detail and, finally, the section ends with a brief presentation of the papers included in the dissertation.The second section contains the papers that make up this dissertation. The last section serves as a general discussion of the research that integrates the results presented in the papers. Beginning with an overview of the main findings, this discussion relates them to the issues addressed in the general introduction, describes their limitations, and suggests further lines of inquiry. Additionally, this discussion explores the implications of the community approach developed to study the incorporation of the internet in classrooms and schools, offers some practical recommendations and, finally, draws a number of conclusions. Ultimately, this research reveals that the Catalan education system is a sparsely connected system where the introduction of the internet does not appear to spark a substantial revolution in the established community-oriented practices, as well as one that plays a secondary role in the promotion of the digital inclusion of children and young people in the Catalan society.
The Impact of Virtual Communities on Cultural Identity