Category Archives: Participatory culture & learning

Brainstorm

  By laurelfelt | September 22, 2011 - 11:24 pm | , , , , ,
Leave a comment

It was sunny in Los Angeles, 12 noon, and I’d just eaten a wedge of cheese. But still. I was cold. I was tired. And I was hungry.

While the prospect of going home and taking a nap enticed me, especially after I got lost looking for Ollin Cafe, then arrived only to find that it’d been transformed into a Mexican bakery, I pushed on. I found another coffeeshop (run by a Ghanian man whose grant for a non-profit African culture youth program I offered to edit) and read about pedagogy. When Don had to close his shop early, I again stifled the impulse to close shop myself and instead relocated to Starbucks.

There, at a crusty table co-occupied by antisocial, screen-glued men, inspiration began to flow… I don’t know that this will actually BECOME my dissertation. Most likely, the final product will barely resemble this outline. Nonetheless, I think I’m onto something here. And boy, do I feel proud…

NOTE: The formatting below is improper — not indented as it should be. If you’d like to see it in its hierarchical glory, click on the hyperlink above.
————————————————–
Dissertation: Strategic curricular approaches to social change interventions

I. Introduction
A. Hook: Allegorical anecdote
B. Thesis: Social change interventions, whether explicitly educational or otherwise, should employ strategies that are versatile/adaptable and address the whole person; such strategies include: creating a culture of participatory learning, and adopting means and ends oriented towards primary skills development.
C. Overview of paper

II. Review of lit/theoretical background
A. Participation and play
1. Participation
2. Play
B. Primary skill set
1. Asset appreciation (AA)
2. Social and emotional learning (SEL)
3. New media literacies (NML)
4. Narrative
C. Domestic education interventions
1. Current challenges
i. lack of funding
ii. test scores: low and invalid
iii. health/safety challenges
iv. cultural shifts
2. Prevailing perspectives
i. it’s lazy teachers’ fault
ii. it’s non-standardized curriculum’s fault
iii. it’s marginalized students’ fault
iv. it’s lack of technology’s fault
3. Programs/solutions
i. Status quo or even regressive: NCLB
ii. Status quo or ancillary or inadequate: Charter & pilot schools
iii. Innovative: Foundation initiatives (e.g., MacArthur’s YouMedia); Independent entities (e.g., Globaloria); University partnerships (e.g., USC’s Hybrid High or Pathfinder)
D. International social change interventions
1. Current challenges
i. lack of funding
ii. volatility: things keep changing
iii. complexity: things are intertwined
iv. idiosyncrasies: things are particular to context
2. Prevailing perspectives
i. top-down
ii. bottom-up
3. Programs/solutions
i. Status quo or even regressive: Externally produced, highly structured, “add water and stir” programs
ii. Status quo or ancillary or inadequate: Programs that allow for token or modest modification by recipients
iii. Innovative: Positive deviance; Participatory/community-oriented development

III. Argument
A. Definitions
1. Participatory learning
i. culture/norms of context: describes basic community functioning, the ways that we treat one another, the rights and responsibilities that community members have in that space — to receive feedback, access roles, pursue passions, etc;
ii. activities of learner: describes the ways that the learner engages with the curriculum — avidly, with perseverance, enriching participation/performance with dialogue
iii. theoretical origins: participatory culture; digital media & learning; educational theory
2. Primary skills
i. mode/means: use a skill-oriented activity as vehicle for exploring content; for example, learn photography through social awareness and appropriation
ii. objective/ends: proficiency in these skills is a goal of the program (whether this is the sole or priority goal can vary; arguably, richer and more efficient if it is not the sole goal)
iii. theoretical origins: arts integration; positive deviance; asset-based community development; appreciative inquiry; human development/resilience
B. The Case for Participatory Learning
1. we live in a dynamic world of constant change
2. learning how to learn, and making that experience community-supported and interest/passion-driven, is infinitely valuable
C. The Case for Primary Skills
1. owning modifiable knowledge-skills-practices efficiently prepares us for diverse contexts (regardless of whether these contexts are volatile)
2. treating the whole person is most effective
3. AA, SEL, NML, Narrative = fundamental (Community, culture, work, meaning)

III. Methods
A. Summer Sandbox
1. Participants
2. Materials
3. Design
4. Procedure
B. Sunukaddu
1. Participants
2. Materials
3. Design
4. Procedure
C. Explore Locally, Excel Digitally
1. Participants
2. Materials
3. Design
4. Procedure
D. Playing Outside the Box
1. Participants
2. Materials
3. Design
4. Procedure

IV. Results
A. Participatory Learning Case Study: Summer Sandbox
1. Program description
2. Participants’ gains
B. Skills-based Case Study: Sunukaddu
1. Program description
2. Participants’ gains
C. Hybrid: Explore Locally, Excel Digitally
1. Program description
2. Participants’ gains
D. Hybrid: Playing Outside the Box (encompassing Play On Workshops)
1. Program description
2. Participants’ gains

V. Discussion
A. Gains in context
1. Program challenges
2. Comparisons to other programs
3. Small sample size
4. Critique of assessment tools
C. Context: Informal vs. formal learning environments, Educational interventions vs. other social change endeavors
D. Audience: Practicing teachers vs. preservice teachers vs. administrators vs. parents vs. students
E. Culture: Outsider consultants, preaching to the choir?

VI. Conclusion
A. Review
B. Other potential areas of research

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

  By laurelfelt | September 9, 2011 - 10:39 am | ,
Leave a comment

Cross-cultural Workshops in Participatory Learning

From my own living room to Mumbai’s World Trade Center, from a conference of international scholars to a series of hands-on workshops with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) teachers, Summer 2011 tackled the themes of participatory learning and digital youth from multiple angles.

My summer was book-ended with my qualifying examinations (writing from May 13-May 23, defending on August 25). My areas of scholarship examined the theoretical elements and associated practices required for productive educational interventions: participation and play; narrative; empathy; and positive deviance.

Immediately upon finishing my papers, I jetted to Boston for the 61st Annual International Communication Association Annual Conference. Highlights included participating in the intellectually stimulating, networking-rich preconference “Media, child health, and wellbeing: Setting the research agenda,” supporting the elevation of the Children, Adolescents, and the Media Special Interest Group to Division status, and interacting with the diverse attendees — junior and senior scholars, industry professionals, domestic and foreign, from big cities and small towns.

I also had the opportunity to live in Mumbai, India, for a month, co-teaching the hands-on, inquiry-rich Expanding Minds Program. In the morning, five- to seven-year-olds and, in the afternoon, seven- to nine-year-olds engaged with peers and open-ended materials to play, think, and build. Each week’s participants investigated a different theme: ancient art; toy engineering; and the science of flight. We documented students’ learning and engaged in lively discussions about the relative value of process vs. product. Cultural similarities and differences were also a site of discovery and reflection.

For a month, I also worked on Project New Media Literacy’s/Participatory Learning and You!’s Summer Sandbox. Our central goal is identifying and creating educational practices that will prepare teachers and students to become full and active participants in the new digital culture. I co-taught two week-long sessions in participatory learning, introducing LAUSD teachers to: the meaning of participatory culture; the characteristics of participatory learning; means of incorporating tools and toys as inspiration and bridges into lesson-planning and learning experiences; various ways to encounter and master technology; and specific technologies conducive to participatory learning. We gathered data via fieldnotes, participants’ products, and video documentation, and will continue to work with certain teachers during the school year.

Throughout the summer, I also submitted drafts of a book chapter entitled “Our Voice: Public Health and Youths’ Communication for Social Change in Senegal,” which will be published in forthcoming volume African Childhoods: Survival, Education, and Peace-building in the Youngest Continent. This chapter explains the educational intervention/research I conducted last summer in Dakar, Senegal.

I blogged about my experiences at laurelfelt.org/blog. Comments welcome!

Literacy

  By laurelfelt | August 28, 2011 - 3:49 pm | , , ,
Leave a comment

This story misses the story. I don’t have access to the original research so I’m unsure as to whether the reporter is spinning an oft-told, irresponsible tale — “Kids these days are lazy and stupid!” — or the investigators employed an inadequate data collection tool.

Here’s what happened: The UK’s National Literacy Trust asked 18,000 seven- to 16-year-olds about their out-of-school reading habits. The article basically argued that children are not reading very much, and concluded with the British secretary of education’s opinion that children need to read more books — specifically, 50 per year.

I like books. I think they’re neat. But they’re not the only “game” in town.

Offering literacy experiences alongside books are: newspapers, magazines, blogs, forums, corporate websites, ads, social media profiles, games, TV, mainstream films, indy films, amateur films, radio, podcasts, comics, manga, fan fiction, ebooks, SMS texts, etc, etc, etc. Arguably, the sheer amount of text — and texts — in young people’s environment has exploded. So too has the amount of time they spend doing literacy: decoding, meaning making, and creating. We need to value the reading of multiple texts, for each has its own nature, and engaging in the experience of reading these texts has merit, both practical and theoretical.

According to the article:

“The research also found that the older the children are, the less likely they are to read. The 14- to 16-year-olds were 11 times more likely than the seven- to 11-year-olds to say they had not read a book in the last month.

Half said they read emails and websites at least once a month. Only just over a quarter – 27% – flick through comics.”

I take issue with the ambiguities and hidden assumptions here. Are older kids really less likely to READ, or just to read the products enumerated by the researchers? Are they less likely to read YouTube videos, Facebook profiles, or text messages? Are they less likely to read school-related non-fiction, such as textbooks or online sources (whose credibility may or may not be sterling (another issue entirely))? I think not. In these domains, older children’s participation dwarfs that of younger children’s. And while the older kids reported reading fewer books, it is entirely possible that, in terms of word count or cognitive challenge, they read the equivalent (or more!) via other platforms. It is also possible that these older kids, hoping to seem cool, under-reported their book-reading; the opposite is also possible, that the younger kids, eager to please/impress the researchers, over-reported their book-reading. Even without conscious manipulation, the accuracy of monthly estimations is poor for any demographic — people are just bad at remembering. For seven to 16-year-olds, you’ve got to figure that they’re even worse.

As for emails vs. websites vs. comics — who cares? Only a few decades ago, children’s comic book reading inspired moral panics. And now its (purported) diminution is also alarming? Which one is it? And is it even occurring at all? When the researchers say “comics,” do the kids understand this to mean online and offline, professional and amateur, anime, manga, and graphic novel? As for websites — what does it even mean to read a website? What kind of website? The language is too imprecise to even take on. Finally, emails. Many youths report that emails are seldom sent among their cohort, just as senior citizens claim low rates of text messaging amongst their peers. So, does this “low” (compared to what?) figure of email reading merely reflect the modest number of emails circulated? What is the value of this context-less data?

I know this much is true: To overlook multiple texts and the role they play in young people’s lives, and then conclude that children aren’t reading, is intellectually irresponsible. To fail to support children’s literacy skills around these texts is professionally irresponsible.

Our task is twofold, “local” and “global.” First, readers of all stripes should grapple together with the unique affordances of each text/literacy experience, helping one another to become savvier vis-a-vis specific sites. Some sample considerations: “Here’s what you should consider when you read a Wikipedia post.” “What does this podcast’s very existence tell us about its author?” “What do you know about the anime hero’s world by looking at the art in the background?”

Second, readers (and those who seek to teach and assess them) should focus on the underlying, universal skills required and developed by engaging with texts, such as: comprehending, synthesizing, and responding. They should also seize upon the perspective-taking that naturally occurs when readers connect with stories/storytellers, and help readers to improve their proficiency therein. Better ability to perspective-take will not only enrich individuals’ enjoyment of literature, but it will boost their efficacy as communicators and their capacity for sensitive social negotiation.

As the tide of texts surges, I don’t want to lose the book baby in all of this bathwater. But neither do I want to zero in on the baby and ignore the fact that she’s swimming in a sea of possibility…

Timing

  By laurelfelt | August 10, 2011 - 10:44 pm | , , ,
Leave a comment

The clock and the calendar.

Are they the toughs, the bruiser henchmen, harassing on behalf of Big Bossman Life? Are they the It Couple, dominating our reality, occupying our fantasy, engaging our discourse? Do they deserve to be less — the lighting fixtures that came with the apartment? Simply the horsepower that each engine’s got?

At 1:55 am, Mom texted from Ireland that she and Dad could feel their 6-hour jetlag. 6 am, snooze. 6:09, snooze. 6:14… At 6:37 am, Vanessa texted that if she arrived after 7:30 am, I should ask Jackie for the keys. At 7:55 am, only three teachers had arrived. We started at 8:19 am, even though we’d planned to begin at 8. We decided at 10 am, which had been the session’s original stopping point, that we should continue until noon. At noon, Vanessa announced that our lunch break would be 30 minutes (originally 60 minutes, reduced at our 10 am powwow to 45, so where had she gotten 30?). After 40 minutes had passed, we decided to give it 60. The next activity took 15 minutes to explain — an unforeseen expenditure — and participants were to complete the bulk of the activity in 35 minutes, then present in the final 10. That didn’t happen.

As they collaborated to integrate various tools and toys into a new lesson plan for their discipline, I scuttled around the kitchen, covering food before it spoiled, cleaning to avoid staying (too) late. I didn’t address the revisions due on Monday.

I scheduled a conference call. If I can’t talk before 5, and Pat can’t Skype before 6, and Erin can’t talk after 6:30, and Pat is on vacation next week, and we have to know by next Friday, then when do we talk, observe, and do, since I’ll be driving to and from campus 30 minutes each way M-Th for appointments of 50-120 minutes daily (a fact I learned Monday night), as well as prepping for these obligations, and so cannot dedicate this time to the project?

In the car, Vanessa and I re-designed activities and time slots. If they start at 8:15, and each gives a five-minute overview, and we account for transition time, and then they give three 20-minute presentations, and then there’s a break and flex time for things going wrong, then we’ll have an hour before lunch…

I talked to Jenn, who uncannily brought our conversation to a close at precisely the right minute. I called Erin, who began talking about the week. “It’s 6:03,” I said. “Should I call Pat?” We talked past the appointed cut-off, discussing the nature of the commitment in terms of task and time, constructing a deadline by which to communicate.

Calling back Gramma (who had left a message while I’d been on the other line), I stepped outside to switch my laundry (well past the wash cycle’s culmination) at the exact same moment (7:19 pm) that the FedEx man wandered up, looking for apartment number-less me. What are the odds?

Gramma wished me a safe trip to New York, although I’m not leaving for another two weeks. She told me to ask Mom (Gramma would ask her herself but hasn’t the means since she’s “stuck in the 18th century”) whether Mom’s picked up an Irish brogue yet (Mom has been in-country for less than 24 hours). Finally, Gramma recommended that I let my hair return to its native state. Don’t you like curly hair? “Sure I do, Gramma. But it’s been 20 years. It’s time for a change.”

Malcolm Gladwell made much of hockey players’ birthdays. They’re self-fulfilling prophecies, you know. Tonight is Suzanne’s 30th. His is over the weekend. I am 31 and a half.

So many things to count; respectively: six months, a week and a half, 3 days, 30%.

10:43 pm. So much for going to sleep early.

Pilgrims

  By laurelfelt | July 21, 2011 - 10:30 am | ,
Leave a comment

Our plot points may differ but our story is the same: the incomprehensible is attributable to the Other, the Eternal, the Holy, the Unknowable… and so we’d best pay our respects.

From Hindus to Jews to Catholics to Muslims, all of whose houses of worship I visited in the past three days, this is the meaning that I’ve derived. Incidentally, meaning-making is another commonality that binds us all, this storytelling drive that provokes the fabrication of our superficially dissimilar, conceptually similar accounts in the first place.

On Sunday, I contemplated the ancient carvings of Hindu gods and illustrated miniatures of spiritual tales cached within the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalay(formerly known as the Prince of Wales Museum). I walked alone from Kenneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue to St. Thomas Cathedral, the streets between and rooms within nearly deserted on this predominantly Hindu/Muslim nation’s day of rest. That evening, the clanging of a Hindu temple’s bell disturbed my small talk with a stranger – an Iranian lawyer/PhD, liberal Muslim, would-be cassanova, who said that he and most of his countrymen had no beef with Israel.

On Monday, I trekked across a monsoon-swept footbridge to the Haji Ali Mosque, where the fallen prophet’s body legendarily washed up following his pilgrimage to Mecca. There, a Muslim woman accepted my donation for young, non-Muslim cancer patients and took it upon herself to escort me into the mosque. She handed me a rose petal, the eating of which, she said, would cure all that ails me. I shook her hand goodbye and revealed my religious heritage, drawing her laughter and remark that Jews and Muslims don’t often work together. “But we all care about children,” I said. From there, I puddle-plowed to Mahalaxmi Temple, a gem whose depth, breadth, norms, and geography I hadn’t yet grasped when I had first visited four weeks earlier. Once again, I looked upon Ganesh, remover of obstacles, god of new beginnings, and thought about all that had transpired in the past month, the prayers that had been answered, the issues that still preyed.

Imbued with adventure, I splashed on to unearth shrines of a different nature — first a children’s toy/crafts store, then an expansive corporate bookstore. Omens? Affirmations?

On Tuesday, I stumbled across another church, a few more mosques, another temple. So many spaces, in such close proximity, all established for similar purposes. Rising up from, towering above the commercial, there was the spiritual. I don’t mean to set up a false dichotomy – the spiritual is often commercialized and/or otherwise tied to mercenary matters. After all, the temple’s new roof won’t pay for itself, and dealing with infidels requires resources, doesn’t it? But my argument of universality remains intact. Across people and time, despite other competing interests, there has been this preoccupation with what it all means and how to stay safe. Similarly, religions and religious adherents have always indulged in morally questionable activities, often in the name of their faith, from fraud to violence – last week’s (allegedly) Muslim-designed terror against this Hindu city attests to that. Our common depravity irrefutably supports our humanity.

Monday night, an Indian Catholic woman named Rose offered me a photograph of an Indian-based Mother Mary statue. Something had just told her, she said, to get that photo copied. Her eyes widened and she pumped my hand with excitement when I answered her query about my religious identity. She told me about visiting a synagogue and Chabad House, participating in a Passover seder, talking with a rebbe. Rose asked that, when I’m back in the States, I light a candle for her passionately desired visit to Israel. I agreed, thinking about how to slide that into my (lapsed) religious practice, into a wider religion that doesn’t really light candles like that. Rose was under the impression that it does –she’d lit a menorah candle once, she disclosed proudly.

I climbed the steps to our eighth floor apartment, to send up my tofu/green pepper/basil offering to the deities of nutrition and drink in Mad Men‘s depiction of 1960’s American WASPs’ struggles with right and wrong.

We are all seekers. Always have been, always will be.