Digital instructional materials in English Language Teaching (ELT): Insights from upper secondary Italian education

The adoption of remote education during the first pandemic wave in 2020 increased the attention devoted to the use of technologies in teaching and learning across different contexts. In Italy, concerns arose due to the significant educational loss resulting from the interplay of pedagogical, technological, and social factors (Ferri et al., 2020). The efforts undertaken by teachers to sustain this rapid and massive digital turn were frustrated by utility-oriented investments in digitalization (Gui & Gerosa, 2019), which, in the past, had focused on improving technological equipment rather than providing comprehensive and equally accessible methodological training to all teachers. As a response to their perceived unpreparedness, teacher training favored a ‘how-to’ approach and reinforced an already prevailing deterministic orientation towards techno-solutionism (Nordstrom, 2018; Gui, 2019). In the attempt to respond to the narratives promoting a toolcentric view of materials in ELT, the research adopted an ethical positioning capable of questioning the way we construct and produce knowledge digitally. At the same time, and as the research progressed, the limitations imposed by the prevailing research tradition, which locates materials at the periphery of inquiry, became evident. In light of the inherently complex relationship between pedagogy and technology, this dissertation focuses on the role of digital instructional materials in English Language Teaching (ELT) from the perspective of high school teachers in Italy. The goal of this research was to explore how teachers use digital instructional materials, combining an investigation of their reported pedagogical practices with an analysis of a sample of digital materials freely available online. Doing so, the research aided (a) the contextualization of teachers’ experiences, and (b) promoted an increased understanding of the theoretical underpinnings to digital instructional materials use in ELT. The research design implemented a mixed methods sequential explanatory model, incorporating qualitative and quantitative data collected through preliminary and follow-up interviews, a cross-sectional questionnaire and a case study analyzing digital materials. Informed by state-of-the-art research on materials use (Guerrettaz et al., 2021), the present research thus established a point of contact with the posthumanist sociomaterial orientation which, interwoven with the findings of the research, suggested a re-conceptualization of digital instructional materials as material-discursive practices.