E-Textile Artifacts as Laminates of Personal, Peer, and Academic Values

• In Event: Science Artifacts as Boundary Objects: Designs That Cross Social Settings

Abstract

Purpose
By design, electronic textiles (e-textiles) sit between the domains of engineering, computing and crafting: circuits with LEDs are sewn with conductive thread and programmed to blink, fade, or interact with sensors (Buechley & Eisenberg, 2008). This gives e-textiles the potential to act as boundary objects: interpreted as fashion statements or markers of achievements in engineering and computer sciences depending on the setting. We analyze students’ e-textile artifacts and interviews from a series of workshops with high school students to demonstrate how the personal design and genre-crossing nature of such artifacts are key in their ability to mediate between personal legitimacy and broader identification with engineering and programming.
Theoretical Framework
Building on the ways artifacts mediate local activity (e.g. Vygotsky, 1978), we draw on Holland and Leander’s (2004) metaphor of lamination to understand how layers of personal, peer, and academic values are co-present yet inter-related in youths’ e-textiles.
Methods
Data come from experiences and designs of 40+ high school students taking part in one of four workshops, documenting the process of creating of e-textiles artifacts through photographs (hourly), field notes, videos, and interviews. We analyzed final products, design processes, and intents behind decisions that shaped creations. Coding across the projects plus case histories of development illuminate the symbolic significance of projects for various audiences, including individual students, classmates, and school staff.
Results
We found that e-textiles projects acted as laminates of personal interests, positive reception with peers, academic achievement, and, occasionally, signs of membership in an online tech community. For instance, many youth embedded popular media symbols into designs that they intended to wear to “change up my style” (Jaylee). This expressed personal interests in a public way that friends recognized as “cool.” At the same time, e-textiles also served as symbols of technical achievement. Expressions like, “I feel all techie and stuff…I feel like an expert” (Kyra), were common upon realizations of successful circuitry design and programming (e.g. LEDs blinking as desired). However, tensions often exhibited between youths’ desired designs and the affordances of the technology. This meant that some students subverted their interests for a working project or failed to finish a project that was too technically complex.
Social performances added additional opportunities for e-textile projects to act as boundary objects. As researchers, we brokered such performances by displaying youths’ e-textiles at a table during lunch, allowing the broader school community to see them. Classmates and teachers commented on how “cool” projects were and asked how they worked, again allowing youth to explain the circuitry and programming in a competent academic performance while also interpreting them as attractive.
Significance
Students’ e-textiles projects crossed personal and scientific domains as hoped, bolstering students’ “techie” identities. However, opportunities for the project to act as boundary objects outside of the workshop (as at the school lunch display) were few, limiting their potential power. This points to the need to broker e-textiles and other science artifacts across settings, especially when students do not act as brokers themselves.

Authors

• Deborah A. Fields, Utah State University

• Kristin Anne Searle, University of Pennsylvania

• Yasmin B. Kafai, University of Pennsylvania