Digital teknologi, mobilitet og materialitet: Tekster og tekstuelle praksisser i bevægelse

In this introductory article, we focus on texts and textual practices in the school’s L1 subjects in the Nordic region – or what in the USA is called language arts. We identify and discuss transformation processes associated with digital technology, mobility, and materiality, three themes that we see as significant for understanding and investigating changes in texts and textual practices in the school’s first language subjects. We ask what opportunities and challenges digital technology, mobility and materiality can bring with them in research, and what these transformation processes mean for our didactic thinking about texts and textual practices in the school’s L1 subjects. The digital technologies are probably the thing that most significantly right now – not least con­sidering the rise of chatbots and other AI technologies – influences the textual practices in and out of school and thus also sets new agendas in first language teaching. Digital technology also has mobile and material dimensions that invite attention to how different texts and technologies circulate and form part of different constellations of people, artefacts and ideas that contribute to transforming textual practices and creating new social identities for the students as readers and scribes – and for their teachers. At the same time, human mobility also creates a need for new forms of communication, which are facilitated by the digital possibilities and open various forms of textual hybridity, which in turn leave material traces. With the article, we want to invite a joint Nordic exploration of current textual transformation processes in a didactic perspective, which can contribute to the further development of research and pedagogical practice in L1 education.