During the last twenty years, technological development has been linked with substantial changes in economic, social and cultural structures around the world. In the European context, our concern about changing the dominant grammar (Tyack & Tobin, 1994) of Secondary school is also growing, in order to suit our educational system to the needs that those transformations bring about (OCDE, 2001; Hargreaves, 2003; Thomas & Brown, 2011; Ala Mutka, 2012).

If we think about the knowledge that young people need to participate actively in social life (Lanskhear i Knobel, 2003) the answer is far from the traditional curriculum of the majority of Secondary schools in Europe. Young people have a lot of information, tools and literacies that change the way they learn, but at the same time they need to develop qualities that are not always included in formal education (Gillen i Barton, 2010; Vivancos, 2008).

This research aims to understand which aspects influence the way that young people learn, and how they perceive their own learning networks and spaces. However, to analyze how they relate to knowledge and what the implications of ICT in the process are, I need to shift constantly from the inside to the outside of school, because learning “is happening all around us, everywhere, and it is powerful” (Thomas & Brown, 2011: 17).

Adapting Education to a diverse, uncertain and changing context requires an understanding of how learning process is changing. It is not possible to help new generations to face the opportunities but difficulties of their reality if we do not understand what are they concerned about and how they learn, in and out of school (Hernández & Tort, 2009).

There are many commonalities among current researchers in this field. Balanskat, Blamire & Kefala, 2006; Gillen & Barton, 2010; Alonso, 2011; Hernández, 2000; Angulo, Betanzo & López, 2003 emphasize the importance of learning by projects, through interdisciplinary proposals where the students make decisions and take responsibilities. This process leads to meaningful learning, which connects the experiences they have both in and out of school.

The specific aims that arise from this research problem are: to analyze the knowledge that promotes learning by projects; to understand the relations that students engage in with learning, both in and out of school; to analyze the role of ICT and multi-literacies during the learning processes in both contexts, and to pay attention to the visions and positioning of students towards their own learning. This PhD research is part of the project “Live and learn with new literacies in and out of Secondary school: contributions to reduce abandon, exclusion and scholar disaffection of young people” (EDU2011-24122).

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