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Considers the world‐wide emergence of “educational superhighway” policies: government programmes aiming to connect school systems to the Internet ‐ and explores their relevance to education. By examining the key actors and motives behind educational Internet initiatives the paper argues that such policies are primarily economically not educationally driven. The implications of this are then considered in the light of increasing global information priorities.

This chapter is the result of an interest in the professional and research literature exploring the intersection between education and digital technology. Decades of research and press have largely focused on the ways in which particular devices might be productively used in the K-12 classroom. Educational radio, educational television, the computer, and more recently the tablet have all been framed as being valuable for supporting student learning. Critics such as Neil Selwyn have argued that research in educational technology needs to focus less on supporting particular devices and more on the nature of social interactions that are mediated, constrained, and enabled by various technological affordances.

This chapter reviews four theoretical frameworks in terms of their approach the social nature of the use of technology in education.

The chapter introduces a number of conceptual frameworks that are helpful for considering the social implications of using digital technologies to support the needs of diverse learners in a teacher education classroom.

Scholars, especially who are also teacher educators can consider using and developing frameworks that are more robust for thinking about digital learning in education.

The value in this chapter lies in the critical conceptions explored and interrogated. The author demonstrates the complexity of teacher knowledge overlaid with technology.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and promote a realistic understanding of young people and digital technology with a view to supporting information professionals in playing useful and meaningful roles in supporting current generations of young people. In particular the paper aims to offer a critical perspective on popular and political understandings of young people and digital technologies – characterised by notions of “digital natives”, the “net generation” and other commonsense portrayals of expert young technology users. The paper seeks to consider the accuracy of such descriptions in reflecting young people's actual uses of digital technology and digital information.

The paper provides a comprehensive review of the recent published literatures on young people and digital technology in information sciences, education studies and media/communication studies.

The findings show that young people's engagements with digital technologies are varied and often unspectacular – in stark contrast to popular portrayals of the digital native. As such, the paper highlights a misplaced technological and biological determinism that underpins current portrayals of children, young people and digital technology.

The paper challenges the popular assumption that current generations of children and young people are innate, talented users of digital technologies. Having presented a more realistic basis for approaching generational differences in technology use, the paper explores the functions and roles that information professionals can be expected to play in supporting young people in the digital age.

Although we now know much about children's use of information and communications technologies, researchers have yet to consider adequately the roles that children play in shaping adults' computer use. Via household survey data from a randomised sample of 1,001 adults and in‐depth interview data from 100 of these initial respondents, this paper explores the meditating roles of children in: the purchasing/acquisition of computers by adults; adults' access to computers; the level and nature of adults' use (and non‐use) of computers; how adults learn to use computers; and how adults are supported when using computers. The paper concludes that while children play a variety of roles in adults' (non)adoption and (non)use of computers this influence is often tempered by a range of other factors and, indeed, should not be overstated. For example, while children appear to be a significant “official” factor in parents' and grandparents' adoption of computers they were rarely the sole reason for adults investing time and money in ICT – with a range of other self‐orientated reasons usually in attendance. In terms of adults' access to and use of ICT, the demands of children to use computers were a mitigating but not always dominant factor to be considered by parents. Similarly, children appear to play a peripheral role in supporting adults' use of ICT. The paper concludes by considering how the role of children in adults' use of ICT would appear to be often more symbolic than practical;, e.g. as an official justification for buying/adopting a computer rather than as a strong and sustained guiding force.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate how young people are using school‐based sources of sex and relationships education (SRE) to obtain information and advice.

The paper shows how anonymous self‐completion questionnaires were administered to young people aged between 12 and 19 years in three secondary school and six out‐of‐school youth settings (n=401). Follow‐up focus group interviews were conducted with 12 groups of young people from the school and out‐of‐school settings (n=57).

The paper finds that school lessons were the most frequent source of sex and relationships information for many young people. Lessons were reported to be most useful for students who were male, younger and more educationally engaged. School lessons were widely criticised by young people as predominantly focusing on biological aspects of sex and relationships and lacking a discursive or participatory element. Young people perceived a diminishing commitment to SRE by teachers as they progressed into later years.

The paper examines a predominantly working‐class sample of young people from one urban area of South Wales.

On the basis of the data analysis in this paper a number of suggestions are made regarding the nature of future school provision of SRE.

This paper raises awareness and highlights issues surrounding the role of schools, teachers and school nurses in sex and relationships education.

This chapter explores children’s agency in using mobile technologies at home and in school. Supporting children’s agency has been offered as a rationale for adopting personalised education worldwide. Children’s agency is also drawn upon as a justification for children’s use of personal mobile devices. This chapter considers children’s agency in light of the personalised education in one UK primary school and the children’s use of mobile technologies at school and at home. The findings are based on eight days of observations of classroom practice and interviews with six case study children in the Year 6 classroom. In sessions that were supported with mobile technologies, children’s learning was personalised to each child, but constrained by the amount of time that the activity lasted and that the technology was available for. Based on children’s accounts, their use of mobile technologies at home was constrained by their parents’ restrictions and monitoring practices. The chapter discusses the reality of children’s agency in light of adults’ mediation and children’s actual experiences of personalised learning.