Digital labour and temporal priorities within a secondary school

Abstract

Digital devices and ubiquitous online access contribute to the nature and amount of digital labour conducted by school staff. Drawing on more than 40 interviews with staff at one Australian secondary school, the general nature of this digital labour is presented, then Clancy's notion of temporal autonomous spaces is introduced and applied to theorise why some teachers used digital technologies constantly in their teaching. The article highlights how some teachers invested their time in learning about and using digital technologies because it enhanced their sense of autonomy and increased their sense of freed time. It theorises how teachers who invest their time into developing their knowledge and effective use of digital technologies in their teaching practice do so because of the perceived benefits that temporal autonomous space brings. Therefore, their practice is sustained as a high temporal priority.