Critical perspectives on youth digital media production: ‘voice’ and representation in educational contexts

This paper offers a critical discussion on voice and representation in youth digital media production in educational settings. The paper builds on existing calls from digital media and visual studies scholars to approach youth-made media with greater attention to context in production practices. In this discussion, the author addresses the importance of technological tools, media genres, settings, and program design in the construction of voice and representation for children and youth making digital media. The paper presents a case study derived from a three-year ethnographic research project and feminist intervention in one under-resourced school in Toronto, Canada. Through the examples presented in this paper, the author presents a critical discussion about the process and content of digital video created by girls making media in particular contexts, under distinct conditions.     

What was out of the frame? A dialogic look at youth media production in a cultural diversity and educational context in Chile

This article accounts for an experience of digital storytelling workshops with indigenous adolescents in Chile, and proposes a theoretical and methodological approach to analyze digital creations with a dialogic and ethnographic point of view. Based on this, it discusses the possibilities of digital media production as a strategy for the self-expression of children and adolescents, particularly immersed in unequal and ethnically diverse educational contexts. The specific case of two Mapuche girls reveals complex ways of organizing and positioning their voices, where ‘girl power’ and ‘post-girl power’ discourses are relevant, but not so their ethnicity. The results show that television, with its main audiovisual genres, styles and stereotypes, appears clearly on the teenagers’ creations, while the absence of Mapuche signs along the creation process and also into the digital stories seems to be related with two important features of the Chilean educational system: ethnic inequalities and its fierce attachment to neoliberalism.     

A future to voice? Continuing debates in feminist research with youth

This paper explores the concept of voice in relation to a research project, now in its developing stages, in which I examine how rural youth imagine their futures in the context of a career‐based learning programme called The Real Game. The paper enters into conversation with feminist post‐structural scholars of education in order to situate the problematic of voice within broader epistemological and ethical questions regarding representation and responsibility in research. Exploring the limits and possibilities of the proposed study, and of critical feminist ethnographies more broadly, the paper is divided into three sections: speech, representation, and ethics. Questions of voice serve as an entry point into a larger interrogation of the interrelations of theory, epistemology, and ethics in research practice. The study's specific focus on imagined futures provokes questions about how relations of time shape the production of youth subjectivities and feminist scholarship.     

‘Snapchat’, youth subjectivities and sexuality: disappearing media and the discourse of youth innocence

Research on youth subjectivities and disappearing media is still in its infancy. Ephemeral technologies such as Snapchat, Frankly and Wickr offer young people opportunities for discursive agency, harnessing teenage discourses of social positioning. These media facilitate social mobility in teen peer contexts by providing a medium for dynamic and shifting relationships. The transmission of digital images can enable a social flexibility that has a significant impact on youth subjectivities where discursively constructed relational identities are brokered through cyber technologies. We tackle the question ‘what discourses are evoked and produced in the discussion of disappearing social media?’ by exploring two parents’ accounts of their children’s use of this media. We also examine a discourse of innocence that surrounds teens’ use of social media and, in particular, ephemeral applications, by sexting and cyberbullying. We engage in the debate on the use of ephemeral social media to consider the discourses influencing youth subjectivities and the nature of networked publics.     

The methodological benefits of social media: “studying up” in Brazil in the Facebook age

While conducting research on the organizational cultures of elite nonprofit organizations in Rio de Janeiro, the author encountered many access issues identified in the current literature: in particular, difficulty in encountering research subjects due to the transitional nature of educational nonprofits and the role of secretaries and administrators as gatekeepers. This article explores two previously undeveloped methodological innovations utilized by the author to overcome these difficulties with regard to access: namely, the use of social media as a participant recruitment tool and the use of an organization's online marketing presence as an alternative data source.     

A social semiotic analysis of the discursive construction of teacher identity in the ‘book of rules and customs’ of the Australian Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

Up until the 1960s, Catholic schools throughout most of the English‐speaking world were dominated by members of religious teaching orders, including female religious. For over a century following their establishment in 1866, one of the most prominent female religious teaching orders in Australia was that of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The first part of this paper contextualises the emergence of this particular religious order in terms of the development of Catholic education internationally and in Australia, and the associated ‘religious formation’ of nuns as teachers. Part two is centered on the most significant text used to guide the ‘religious formation’ of members of this order both as religious and as teachers, namely, that of their ‘rules and customs’. Drawing on an analytic approach based on a theory of social semiotics, it analyses both the sets of practices and the textual mechanisms through which the identity of members of the order as teachers was constructed.     

Student use of social media: when should the university intervene?

The phenomenal growth in the use of social media in the past 10 years has dramatically and irreversibly changed the way individuals communicate and interact with one another. While there are undoubtedly many positives arising out of the use of social media, irresponsible or inappropriate use can have significant negative consequences. In the university setting, comments posted on widely accessible forums such as Facebook, and seen by other students or staff, can damage reputations, create personal distress and compromise academic integrity. So how should universities deal with this problem? This article describes the findings of a research project undertaken in 2011 to address this question. Given that many students would regard their Facebook pages and Facebook groups as their own private space, one of the key goals of the project was to establish appropriate limits for university interference in these matters. Another was to develop a categorisation model for dealing with inappropriate or irresponsible comments that have been detected or reported.     

Tracing teachers’ transformation of knowledge in social media

Social media represent an increasingly important vehicle for informal professional development amongst teachers, and provide an illuminating means of tracing their collective knowledge building. The study reported here examines six large Facebook groups, created by and for teachers in Sweden, to exchange information about the teaching of mathematics and Swedish. Analysis establishes that professional knowledge was made available in 86% of discussion threads, most commonly relating to Shulman’s categories of Knowledge of Learners, Curricular Knowledge, and Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Participants acknowledged opportunities for professional learning in 88% of such threads, and showed new understanding in 11%, particularly in longer threads.     

Reclaiming the students – coping with social media in 1:1 schools

There is a debate about the advantages and disadvantages of using social media in education. Drawing on interviews and surveys with students and teachers in three Swedish schools, this study finds that students as well as teachers find much of the students' social media use distractive to learning. We investigate this by means of an interpretative study of students' and teachers' experiences. We find that concerns relate to how social media use makes students less social, how weaker students are more likely to get distracted, how teachers lack strategies for tackling the problem and how the responsibility of the use is delegated to the students. We discuss how the distractive use of social media is made possible as a result of education policies requiring a higher degree of individual work, individual responsibility, and educational choices for students. Teachers and school leaders need to jointly reclaim the students and coping strategies for the distractive use are urgently needed.     

‘We’re from the generation that was raised on television’: a qualitative exploration of media imagery in elementary preservice teachers’ video production

In this article the authors present their analysis of preservice teachers’ video production. Twenty‐eight students in the first authors’ Social Foundations of the Elementary Curriculum course produced a 5‐ to 10‐minute video as the major assignment for the class, interviews were conducted with six of the seven video production groups and the videos were analyzed with regard to the interviews and theories of visual culture. The authors suggest that in the video products and in the production process the students exhibited a cultural logic of media imagery. The particular logics of audience and entertainment served as a concealed organizing principle for how the students thought about their videos and the processes involved in making them. Embedded in this logic was an overarching concern that their work occupy a public space, thus troubling the boundaries of consumption and production that frame how we consider the role media culture plays in the processes of human meaning‐making.     

Balancing power in communities of practice: An examination of increasing student voice through school-based youth–adult partnerships

This article examines how power imbalances influence the formation of student voice initiatives, which are defined as school-based youth–adult partnerships that consist of youth and adults contributing to decision making processes, learning from one another, and promoting change. Using the concept of community of practice as a lens, the paper examines the ways in which power influences the mutual engagement, shared repertoire, and joint enterprise of youth–adult partnerships. Specifically, the study finds that the following strategies can strengthen student voice initiatives: building meaningful roles based upon mutual responsibility and respect among all members; developing shared language and norms, and developing joint enterprises aimed at fostering voices that have previously been silenced from decision making and knowledge-building processes.

Twitter for teaching: Can social media be used to enhance the process of learning?

Can social media be used to enhance the process of learning by students in higher education? Social media have become widely adopted by students in their personal lives. However, the application of social media to teaching and learning remains to be fully explored. In this study, the use of the social media tool Twitter for teaching was considered. Undergraduate students in Business and Management (n = 252) were encouraged to use Twitter for communicating with their tutor and each other during a 12‐week course. Their involvement was evaluated using a survey considering amount of Twitter usage and students' attitudes and experiences. The data were analysed using factor analyses, which revealed a single usage construct and three attitudinal factors. Three findings emerged. Firstly, a positive correlation was found between amount of Twitter usage and student engagement in university‐associated activities including organising their social lives and sharing information. Secondly, course‐related tweeting was not related to interpersonal relationships between students and their tutor. Thirdly, Twitter usage did not impact class attendance. The results are salient for educational practitioners wishing to introduce social media into their teaching.     

A review of empirical studies of social media on language learners’ willingness to communicate

Education and Information Technologies - Many studies have explored educational and pedagogical affordances of social media, but few studies have investigated their impact on emotional and...     

Explaining social class inequalities in educational achievement in the UK: quantifying the contribution of social class differences in school ‘effectiveness’

There are large social class inequalities in educational achievement in the UK. This paper quantifies the contribution of one mechanism to the production of these inequalities: social class differences in school ‘effectiveness’, where ‘effectiveness’ refers to a school’s impact on pupils’ educational achievement (relative to other schools). It builds on the small number of existing studies, whilst overcoming a number of their limitations. It estimates the effectiveness of the (state) schools attended between ages 7/8 and 10/11 by a cohort of children born in the 1990s in Avon, a former county of England, and then compares the effectiveness of the schools attended by children from different social classes. It finds that ‘higher’ social class children attend more effective schools, on average, and that these social class differences in average school effectiveness between ages 7/8 and 10/11 account for 7% of social class differences in average educational achievement age 10/11. This is not a causal analysis, however.     

The student,the private and the professional role: Students’ social media use

Research has shown that students perceive a distinct divide between educational and private use of social media. The present study explores this divide by focusing on master students’ perception of roles when using social media in a higher education context. A qualitative method has been used, mainly comprising of analyses of home exams and interviews, which were conducted with students enrolled in the master’s course “Social media technologies”. Results support previous research stating that students perceived a distinct divide between educational and private use of social media, and furthermore provide a more detailed understanding of this divide. The results from the study also indicate that there is yet another type of use: social media as a tool for career-building purposes, or what is labeled as professional use. Implications of social media for use in higher education are described through the analysis of three roles as performed by the individual: the student role in educational settings, the professional role for career-building, and the private role.     

Developing the next generation of engaged youth: Inspire Aspire – Global Citizens in the Making

School-based character education (CE) programs provide an opportunity to increase the moral fortitude of adolescents. This study is a preliminary evaluation of Inspire Aspire, a CE program that was implemented with 13- to 14-year-olds in Scotland. A relational developmental systems meta-theoretical approach and person-centered analyses were employed to understand whether teacher implementation variability is associated with student outcomes. The study aimed to: assess variation in program implementation across teachers; assess student poster quality, which served as a youth outcome measure; and, assess the relationship between variations in program implementation and poster quality. Teachers who fully integrated Inspire Aspire with the broader curriculum (as opposed to using it as a standalone program) as well as teachers who made more modifications to Inspire Aspire tended to have students with higher quality posters. This finding stands in contrast to the common narrative regarding evidence-based programs that requires teachers to strictly adhere to program guidelines in order to maintain implementation fidelity.     

“GodMode is his video game name”: situating learning and identity in structures of social practice

In this paper, we report on the structural nexus of one youth??s gaming practices across contexts and over time. We utilize data from an ethnography of youth science and technology learning, as well as expertise development, across settings and developmental time. We use Ole Dreier??s theory of persons to understand how this youth is able to develop considerable gaming expertise. Additionally, we explicate the learning practices embedded in the structural nexus of this youth??s gaming and we examine associated issues of learning and identity. We problematize the lack of continuity between his formal schooling experiences and the structural nexus of his gaming practices as situated in a variety of other contexts and we reflect on the implications for the design of STEM gaming experiences in formal school environments.     

Making the most of the ‘micro’: revisiting the social shaping of micro-computing in UK schools

From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, schools micro-computing in the UK developed from being a niche ‘hobbyist’ activity to a prominent, officially mandated element of the national education system. Drawing on in-depth interviews with key actors of the time, this paper outlines the initial varied interpretations of schools micro-computing in the UK, identifying the social groups that were involved in pursuing these interpretations, and then considering which meanings and values gained dominance over others. This ‘social shaping’ analysis highlights the processes that underpinned the gradual stabilisation of the meaning(s) around the micro-computer in an educational context. The paper concludes by considering how the eventually dominant interpretations of schools micro-computing can be explained in terms of the technological frames of relevant social groups—not least the differing determinist assumptions of groups hoping to encourage the radical computer-led transformation of schools and schooling, as opposed to those seeking the continuation of established interests.