Beyond Technology: Children's Learning in the Age of Digital Culture

Children & Society

"David Buckingham has written an uncommonly thoughtful cross-national study of an emerging “digital divide” between children’s and youth’s experience in and out of school. Understanding well the hidden structures that shape technology and schooling in a market-driven society, he unlocks persistent puzzles about technology use in school and home that most champions and critics ignore. This engaging study deserves a broad readership among policy makers, educators, media officials, and parents concerned about the current digital generation and their experiences with ICT in schools."

Larry Cuban, Stanford University

"David Buckingham adeptly illustrates how the nexus between media technologies, markets, schooling, government policies and the young is becoming increasingly intricate, imbalanced and volatile. He also forcefully demonstrates that the educational and metaphorical rhetoric that pervades this assemblage has been progressively inflated and perverse. Drawing on his deep knowledge of diverse media forms and of young people’s engagements with them, both in and out of school, Buckingham proposes a form of “digital media literacy”. This takes the field beyond its delusions and exclusions towards an approach with the potential to address the cultural complexities and affective intensities involved in teaching youthful digital travellers."

Jane Kenway, Monash University