Young people, new technologies and learning at home: taking context seriously

Abstract

The paper presents findings from a large-scale mixed methods study of young people’s uses of new technologies at home to address a number of key conceptual issues in understanding the home as context for learning. First it is argued that young people’s engagement with new technologies is fundamentally bound up with their own identity. It then goes on to explore the nature of learning in the home, arguing that simply to characterise it as ‘informal’ is simplistic and misleading. By the application of Bernstein’s ideas on the classification and framing of knowledge, the paper argues that using ICTs at home can support learning that may be formal, informal, quasi-formal or incidental. The final part of the paper identifies some of the ‘informal learning practices’ that are available to young people when learning enters the home in this way. These informal learning practices, it is argued, increase their sense of agency in relation to their learning and therefore potentially make learning a richer and more fulfilling experience.

Keywords:

• new technologies
• learning at home
• informal learning

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the other members of the Learning and their Context team, especially Jenny Good, Sue Cranmer and Rebecca Eynon, for their contribution to the research reported in this paper. We would also like to thank all our colleagues at Becta who worked with us closely on this project, especially Adrian Higginbotham.

Notes

1. By ‘home’ we are referring to the domestic contexts where young people live; each ‘home’ necessarily has its own unique set of social and digital resources. Of course we have to recognise that as a context for engaging with ICTs, the notion of ‘home’ is not straightforward. Many of the young people whom we met in this project had more than one ‘home’ when parents were separated. And young people in residential care or in student accommodation inhabited very different sorts of homes. While homes do therefore differ substantially, because they are primarily domestic settings, they can be seen as very different from school, university or work as contexts for engaging with ICTs.

2. Becta—the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency—was, until 2010 the government agency leading the national drive to ensure the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning. However, on taking office in May 2010, the UK Coalition Government announced that Becta would close as part of their commitment to reducing public spending.

3. Unfortunately, the final year of the study was only partially completed because of the closure of Becta.

4. Within our study we necessarily met many young people who did not have access to this range of digital resources at home. Such groups were a particular interest in the second year of our research but are not a focus of this particular paper.

5. Interestingly, Bernstein’s ideas have seldom been used in the analysis of learning with new technologies, though the work of Singh (1995) and Menchik (2004) provide examples of its potential.

6. Following our discussion above, we characterise these practices as ‘informal’ because they are under the control of the learners themselves rather than an external agent such as a teacher or lecturer.