In the last four years, we have been researching on how five groups on young people were representing their learning experiences inside and outside secondary schools (Domingo, Sánchez, & Sancho, 2014). Five multi-sited ethnographies (Falzon, 2009) that moved through school, home, and virtual environments (Hine, 2005) where developed by five groups made up of high, medium and low performance students.
The topic of learning in and out of school has a long tradition in the educational research, particularly around phenomena such as the arising of digital divide (Itō, Sonja, Bittanti, et. al., 2009).), the new literacies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) and the necessity of coping with the diversity of learners’ cultural contexts and backgrounds (Banks, et alt., 2007). The novelty of our proposal was to invite to those young people to participate in the ethnographic research by doing their own ethnographic cases.
The motivation to develop this research was to understand how young people learn in multi-sited environments and to offer possible pedagogical alternatives to the apparent disconnection between their formal and non-formal learning practices. This could contribute, we expect, to reduce young people school disaffection and the amount of students who do not continue their studies beyond compulsory education (currently in Spain 22.7%, and at the EU 11%).
Our initial hypothesis was that there is a gap, a disconnection, between what the secondary school considers as learning (mainly listening, doing exercises and reporting in the exam) and how young people learn outside the school using different media and literacies (mainly spontaneous, not regulated and concern with their interests). To explore this hypothesis, and being in a position of offering alternatives to secondary education, we have studied how young people learn inside and outside school. And we decided to do this with them and not on them (Hernández, 2011) in order to better explore and understand elements shaping the way young people learn and how they perceive and experience their own learning networks and environments.
We carried out the research in five secondary schools, placed in the rural and the metropolitan area of Barcelona. In each of them, we invited a group of between six and eleven students in their last year of compulsory education (15-16 years old) to engage in a collaborative ethnography with two university researchers, to inquire into “learning in and outside secondary school with multiple literacies and digital technologies”. We shared with them the decision-making and responsibility to implement a participatory and ethnographic learning process (McCartan, Schubotz & Murphy, 2012). They wrote their own texts, brought their own images and even elaborated their own conclusions, always guided by us when they asked for support.
During this period, we took field notes, pictures, did observations and raised conversations both, with students and teachers. We converted these sources into field diaries. These diaries, the insights coming from the research group meetings at the University, and the youth reports on their ethnographic experiences, were the bases to write interpretative ethnographic reports (Denzin, 1997).
To write these five reports our basic questions were. (1) How learning experiences inside and outside school are related through youth social practices and their personal and cultural agendas? (2) How do these experiences affect secondary school learning structures in relation to students’ engagement, diversity, and the use of digital technology and the notion of literacy?
