Session Information
99 ERC SES 03 K, ICT in Education and Training
Paper Session
Contribution
Different non-formal educational institutions in Germany provide afternoon activities, school holiday programs or extracurricular activities in schools that revolve around the usage of digital technologies such as 3D-printing, basic coding with microcomputers, gaming or photography/image editing. “DILABoration”, a joint German research project, aims at identifying conditions under which such non-formal educational arrangements create opportunities for participation and education specifically for marginalised youth. Drawing on the approach as well as the data from “DILABoration”, this dissertation project focuses on the question how processes of subject positioning and subjectivation unfold via addressing practices within these educational arrangements and in relation to digitality.
Following the increase of digital media use in recent years, new specific forms of culture, interaction and expression have emerged, pointing to a “culture of digitality” (Stalder 2016, 12-13). Digital technologies have become relevant for processes of subjectivation and orientation (Jörissen / Marotzki 2009). However, specific forms of subjectivity are considered legitimate or illegitimate within a discourse on digitality (Allert et al. 2017, 223, 13). In accordance with this, research has pointed to the social reproduction of inequalities via digital media access (first-level digital inequality) and digital media use (second level digital inequality; Hargittai 2002), based on existing levels of social and cultural and economic capital (Rudolph 2019; Iske / Kutscher 2020).
Therefore, marginalized youth require opportunities to appropriate practices of digital media use in ways that are valuable within their everyday lives. Non-formal educational arrangements may be specifically valuable in creating these opportunities (Fujii et al. 2021). Here, non-formal educational arrangements are understood as organisationally framed educational contexts outside of formal education, characterised by voluntary participation, lower levels of standardisation and lack of relevance to formal educational certification (Rohlfs 2012, 37).
Within formal educational contexts, conservative structures of educational practices have been shown to persist despite the inclusion of technological innovations (Thiersch / Wolf 2021). This emphasises the question, whether contingencies related to the involvement of digital technologies in educational practices unfold more easily or differently in less standardised, non-formal contexts. Moreover, marginalised youth may be enabled to appropriate digital media practices in ways that relate to their everyday lives within these contexts, if respective supportive structures are provided (Fujii et al., 2021). At the same time, normative ideas of ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ media use are inscribed all social interactions in a digitalised society and are reproduced in non-formal educational contexts as well. This may further increase marginalisation if not reflected upon appropriately (ibid. 43; Dawson 2014).
Method
In this dissertation project, potentials and limitations of non-formal digitalised educational arrangements with regard to inequalities are investigated through the lens of subject positionings unfolding in practice. Subject positions emerge within social relations and in relation to normativity, which can be captured through the lens of recognition theory (Reh / Ricken 2012, 40). By operationalising recognition as addressing practices, embodied and discursive acts provide insight to the emergence of subject positions in practice (ibid., 42). Therefore, in this dissertation project, non-formal educational arrangements are understood as situations with specific elements and relations (Clarke 2021), in which shared practice and subject positionings unfold in different ways. Routinised interaction with artefacts, normative expectations of the usage of artefacts and the usage context of artefacts are recognised as constitutive dimensions of this (Rabenstein 2018, 24 f.). By applying this lens, the material and discursive dimension of digitality (Allert / Asmussen / Richter 2017, 13) within non-formal digitalised educational arrangements can be focused. In order to investigate this, focused ethnographies (Knoblauch 2001), including participant observations and (some) video recordings, have been conducted in different educational arrangements provided by two non-formal educational institutions in 2022 and 2023. One institution is an independent non-profit organisation which provides different digital education programmes independently and in cooperation with other organisations (e.g. schools) in a “marginalised” district in a German city. The second institution is a youth club in a different German city, funded within the state youth welfare system and specialising in digital education. Participation in both organisations is free of charge. The arrangements focused in this project differ with respect to elements such as number of participants, roles of participants, activities, locations, involved (digital) artefacts and spatial conditions. The data is collected and analysed in an iterative process, informed by Grounded Theory Methodology (Corbin / Strauss 2015). Data analysis is conducted through sequence analysis and coding (Breidenstein 2020). Practice theory (Schatzki 2008) as well as addressing practices (Reh / Ricken 2012) are applied as sensitising concepts in this process. Moreover, Situational Analysis (Clarke 2021) is applied in order to take human as well as non-human entities and their affordances and relations within different educational arrangements into account through mapping. This analysis aims at decoding addressing practices within specific educational situations and the processes of subjectivation resulting from this.
Expected Outcomes
This dissertation project is still in progress. So far, case descriptions and situational maps of different educational arrangements have been developed. Selected sequences haven been analysed and coded openly. Different angles have been developed for further analysis. Going forward, these angles will be applied by browsing through the material again. The sensitising concept of addressing practices will be applied more strongly, aiming at developing an understanding of the concept in relation to the empirical material. The aim is to identify different conditions of non-formal digitalised educational arrangements and addressing practices within them, resulting in different processes of subject positionings. In order to understand the involvement of digitality and related notions of normativity in these arrangements and processes, the role of digital technologies will be focused on a material and discursive level. This approach is expected to provide insight into how processes of subjectivation and orientation in relation to digitality may be facilitated or inhibited for young participants in these kinds of arrangements. The approach is limited with regard to individual processes of subjectivation, which involve unobservable, internal dimensions (Reh / Ricken 2012, 44). At the Emerging Researchers’ Conference, the research interest and the theoretical framework of this dissertation will be presented. In relation to core sequences from the empirical material, potentialities and limitations of applying “addressing practices” as a theoretical lens will be discussed. The presentation aims at discussing and reviewing this approach with other emerging researchers as well as more experienced researches in similar fields.
References
Allert, H., Asmussen, M., & Richter, C. (2017). Digitalität und Selbst: Einleitung. In H. Allert, M. Asmussen, & C. Richter (Eds.), Digitalität und Selbst: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf Subjektivierungs- und Bildungsprozesse (pp. 9–23). Transcript. Breidenstein, G., Hirschauer, S., Kalthoff, H., & Nieswand, B. (2020). Ethnografie: Die Praxis der Feldforschung (Thrid Edition). UVK Verlag. Clarke, A. E. (2021). From Grounded Theory to Situational Analysis. In J. M. Morse (Eds.), Developing grounded theory: The second generation revisited (Second Edition, pp. 223–266). Routledge. Corbin, J. M., & Strauss, A. L. (2015). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (Fourth edition). SAGE. Dawson, E. (2014). Equity in informal science education: Developing an access and equity framework for science museums and science centres. Studies in Science Education, 50(2), 209–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057267.2014.957558 Fujii, M. S., Kutscher, N., & Niermann, K.-M. (2021). Grenzen pädagogischen Handelns: Medienbildung zwischen Anerkennung und Handlungsbefähigung. In J. Wahl, I. Schell-Kiehl, & T. Damberger (Eds.), Pädagogik, Soziale Arbeit und Digitalität: = Education, social work and digitality. Beltz Juventa. Hargittai, E. (2002). Second-Level Digital Divide: Differences in People’s Online Skills. First Monday, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v7i4.942 Iske, S., Kutscher, N. (2020). Digitale Ungleichheiten im Kontext Sozialer Arbeit. In: Kutscher, Nadia/Ley, Thomas/Seelmeyer, Udo/Siller, Friederike/Tillmann, Angela/Zorn, Isabel (Eds.): Handbuch Soziale Arbeit und Digitalisierung (pp. 115–124). Beltz Juventa. Jörissen, B., & Marotzki, W. (2009). Medienbildung - eine Einführung: Theorie - Methoden - Analysen. Klinkhardt. Knoblauch, H. (2005). Focused Ethnography. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol 6, No 3: The State of the Art of Qualitative Research in Europe. https://doi.org/10.17169/FQS-6.3.20 Rabenstein, K. (2017). Wie schaffen Dinge Unterschiede? In A. Tervooren & R. Kreitz (Eds.), Dinge und Raum in der qualitativen Bildungs- und Biographieforschung (pp. 15–35). Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv8xnfwg Reh, S., & Ricken, N. (2012). Das Konzept der Adressierung. In I. Miethe & H.-R. Müller (Eds.), Qualitative Bildungsforschung und Bildungstheorie (pp. 35–56). Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvd7w919 Rohlfs, C. (2011). Ein neuer Bildungsbegriff? In C. Rohlfs, Bildungseinstellungen (pp. 33–54). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-92811-1_3 Rudolph, S. (2019). Digitale Medien, Partizipation und Ungleichheit: Eine Studie zum sozialen Gebrauch des Internets. Springer VS. Schatzki, T. R. (2008). Social practices: A Wittgensteinian approach to human activity and the social. Cambridge University Press. Stalder, F. (2016). Kultur der Digitalität. Suhrkamp. Thiersch, S., & Wolf, E. (2023). Digitale Dinge im schulischen Unterricht. In C. Leineweber, M. Waldmann, & M. Wunder (Eds.), Materialität – Digitalisierung – Bildung. Verlag Julius Klinkhardt.
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