The Current School and Youth Cultures as Potentially Conflicting Lerning Contexts

Author(s):

Juana M. Sancho-Gil(presenting / submitting)Ornellas Adriana(presenting)Maria Domingo-Coscollola

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

19. Ethnography

Format:

Paper

Session Information

19 SES 03, Digital Practices and Young People Networking

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-23

17:15-18:45

Room:

NM-G215

Chair:

Juana M. Sancho-Gil

Contribution

Today educational systems, aimed to provide mass compulsory schooling, have their roots in the Enlightenment ideas and the construction of the nation-state concept. In the same way church schools taught basic literacy skills and above all to be good Christians, the main aim of national schools systems (the first one implemented in Prussia in the late 18th century) was to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. The reason was, on the one hand, the politicians’ belief that education was necessary to ensure political and social order and, on the order, the need to create more soldiers and more obedient citizens (Kagan, Ozment, & Turner, 2007).

For authors Sawyer (2008, p. 2), educational systems took different paths, but eventually converged on essentially the same model of schooling. When this model generalised in the 20th century, scientists knew little how people learn. When schools started to become the large bureaucratic institutions that we know today, there was no sustained study of how people learn. As a result, this model of schooling was based on common-sense assumptions that had never been tested scientifically; mainly: (a) Knowledge is a collection of facts about the world and procedures for how to solve problems. (b)The goal of schooling is to get these facts and procedures into the student’s head. (c) Teachers know these facts and procedures, and their job is to transmit them to students. (d) Simpler facts and procedures should be learned first, followed by progressively more complex facts and procedures. (e) The way to determine the success of schooling is to test students to see how many of these facts and procedures they have acquired.

All over these years, approaches to learning seemed to be based in the notion of individuals as tabulae rasae, by not only denying human nature (Pinker, 2002) but also human culture.

We can approach culture from an anthropological perspective as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" (Tylor, 1871, p. 1). A cultural studies one, “A system of shared beliefs, values, customs/rituals, behaviors and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning" (Hall, 2002, p. 76). From a sociological point of view, we can also take into account Bourdieu's theory of practice which allows for seeing power as culturally and symbolically created and re-legitimised through interplay of agency and structure. These processes mainly take place through what he calls ‘habitus’ or socialised norms or tendencies that guide behaviour and thinking. Habitus, which is not fixed and permanent, is created through a social, rather than individual processes leading to patterns that are enduring and transferable from one context to another, but that also shift in relation to specific contexts and over time.

From the above arguments we are able to make four main claims: (1) School systems have created a rather rooted and naturalised culture that is proving to be highly resistant to change (Sarason, 1990; Fibkins, 2015). (2) It is a growing interest in exploring learning cultures and the need to deeply transform the institutional culture of school (Senge, Cambron-McCabe, Lucas, Smith & Dutton, 2000; James & Biesta, 2007). Thomas & Brown, 2011). (3) There is increasing interest in youth cultures and their learning potential (Buckingham, 2008; Itō et al., 2009). (4) The rising students’ disengagement and critic to education confront policy-makers and educators with the need of taking into account student cultures (Martin & Halperin, 2006; Yonezawa, Jones & Joselowsky, 2009).

Method

This paper shows part of the result the research project “Living and learning with new literacies in and outside secondary school: Contributions to reducing drop-out, exclusion and disaffection among youth (MINECO- EDU2011-24122), in which we explored if there is a gap or otherwise between what the school believes that learning is and how young people learn outside school when they build digital trading communities with colleagues and use new literacies. The data was gathered in five ethnographic case studies carried out in five secondary schools. The innovative character of our approach lied in the decision to “train” students as ethnographers so that they could collect and analyse the required data together (Domingo, Sánchez & Sancho, 2014). In line with the objectives of the project and the interest of the young people, we developed five collaborative ethnographic studies, collected in ten ethnographic accounts – five written by the students and five by the research team. Although each group could produce its objectives and questions, all of them focused on the exploration of these queries. - How and with what do we communicate, express ourselves and learn inside and outside the school? - What connections, disconnections, complementarities or distances are there between learning inside and outside the school? In relation to the methods of collecting information, each school team (made up of secondary school students, schoolteachers and university researchers) decided on and learnt the techniques that would enable them to progress in the ethnographic study. In brief, these would consist of observations and self-observations, field logbooks, audio-visual documentation (photography, video, music, etc.), interviews and group discussion. Our research was not intended to be “about” young students, but “with" young students (Hernández, 2011). This process has been implemented from a reflexive perspective (Macbeth, 2001). Here, we assumed a “bricoleur” position (Kincheloe & Berry, 2004) that implies that relationships are built using fragments – by creating an assemblage, weaving threads, enjoining parts – in an artisan fashion. We understand the methodology as a relationship that places special attention on how to contact and work with the young people involved in the research; and how to make this process compatible with the needs of a collaborative project. Our presentation will focus on characterising the informal and formal students’ cultures of learning, discussing the potential arising conflicts that could enhance (o difficult) school learning, and identifying the challenges for schools that aim to meet today students’ learning needs.

Expected Outcomes

For most teachers “teaching is telling, learning is listening, and knowledge is what is in books” (Cuban 1993: 27) and digital technologies are mostly used to show information and making exercises. Students are mostly viewed as recipients of information, with little recognised agency, creativity and initiative, although they acknowledge the school as a culture trying to foster respect, coexistence, relationships with authority, self-control, responsibility... The thirty five students participating in the project considered themselves as part of several informal learning cultures –apart from their family. In these cultures, the range of used languages and modes of expression and communication considerably increases. Nevertheless, the most important difference with school is their role as learners. Out of school young people show a much higher degree of agency, decision-making, creativity, and initiative. They easily go through analogical and digital spaces, meeting different people and participating in different kinds of communities (off and online). In this context they see themselves more as prosumers (García & Valdivia, 2014) than consumers, although they recognise to ‘consume’ information, many times without the knowledge and the skills needed to select, prioritize, and interpret it. Our research highlights the growing distance between the formal and informal learning cultures. While schools seem to find high difficulties in understanding the new students’ learning landscapes and remain rooted in the institutional inertia, students are surrounded by an unprecedented display of learning cultures (for the good or for the bad). As a consequence, on the one hand, students give less and less important to formal education (beyond accreditation), but on the other, most of them lack the needed knowledge and skill to make the most of the information and experiences provided by the informal learning cultures. In this context, schools are facing the big challenge of regain their crucial role in youth’s learning.

References

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press. Buckingham, D. (2008). (Ed.). Youth, identity, and digital media. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press. Domingo-Coscollola, M., Sánchez-Valero, J. A., & Sancho-Gil, J. M. (2014). Researching on and with Young People: Collaborating and Educating. Comunicar, 42(21), 157-164. doi: 10.3916/C42-2014-15 Fibkins, W. L. (2015). Graveyard of School Reform: Why the Resistance to Change and New Ideas. Landham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. García, C. & Valdivia, A. (2014). Media Prosumers. Participatory Culture of Audiences and Media Responsibility. Comunicar, 43(22), 10-13. doi: 10.3916/C43-2014-a2 Hall, G. (2002). Culture in Bits: The Monstrous Future of Theory. London: Continuum. Itō, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., Boyd, D., Cody, R., Herr-Stephenson, B.,... Tripp, L. (2009). Hanging out, messing around, and geeking out: Kids living and learning with new media. Boston: MIT Press. Kagan, K., Ozment, S., & Turner, F. M. (2007). Western Heritage: Since 1300. AP Edition. Pearson Education, Inc. Macbeth, D. (2001). On “reflexivity” in qualitative research: Two readings, and a third. Qualitative Inquiry, 7(1), 35-68. doi: 10.1177/107780040100700103 Martin, N., & Halperin, S. (2006). Whatever it takes. How twelve communities are reconnecting Out-of-School youth. American Youth Policy Forum. Retrieved from http://www.aypf.org/publications/WhateverItTakes/WITfull.pdf Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Viking. Sarason, S. B (1990). The predictable failure of educational reform: Can we change course before it's too late?. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Sawyer, K. R. (2008). Optimising Learning Implications of Learning Sciences Research. Paris: OECD. Senge, P., Cambron-McCabe, N., Lucas, T., Smith, B., & Dutton, J. (2000). Schools that learn: A fifth discipline fieldbook for educators, parents, and everyone who cares about education. New York: Doubleday. Sun, S. (2008). Organizational Cultures and Its trends. International Journal of Business Management, 12(3), 137-141. Thomas, D. & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, Ky: CreateSpace? Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. London: John Murray Yonezawa , S., Jones, M. & Joselowsky, F. (2009). Youth engagement in high schools: Developing a multidimensional, critical approach to improving engagement for all students. Journal of Educational Change, 10(2), 191-209. doi: 10.1007/s10833-009-9106-1

Author Information

Juana M. Sancho-Gil (presenting / submitting)

University of Barcelona, Spain

Ornellas Adriana (presenting)

Universitat Oberta de Barcelona

Maria Domingo-Coscollola

Universitat Internacional de Catalunya

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