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Mapping the Social Learning Ecology of Support Around Adolescent Youth's Interest-Driven Pursuits

Sat, April 18, 2:45 to 4:15pm, Sheraton, Floor: Ballroom Level, Sheraton V

Abstract

Our work involves developing longitudinal case studies (Yin, 2003) of teenagers who participate in out-of-school programs provided by the Hive NYC Learning Network, a community of 57 institutions including museums, libraries, and community-based organizations in New York City. In Hive NYC programs, youth engage in digital media-based project work designed to cultivate 21st century literacies and empowered civic identities. Based on interviews and fieldwork spanning over a year, we developed the notion of a social learning ecology (SLE; Ching, Santo, Hoadley & Peppler, 2014), which we define as the assemblage of family adults, non-family adults and peers that provide material, instructional, emotional, brokering and institutional forms of support that are consequential to the initiation or sustainment of a youth’s interest-related pursuit(s). Here, we present a way to visualize a single youth’s SLE and discuss the potential utility of such maps for characterizing how supportive individuals in a young person’s milieu may contribute to the development of interest-driven pathways and trajectories.

For illustrative purposes, we describe how we developed the SLE map of one of our case study youth, Freélyn, an 18-year-old female of Dominican heritage who is interested in graphic design and filmmaking. Last October, we conducted two semi-structured interviews with her, eliciting stories around her efforts to pursue her interests (Ching, Santo, Hoadley, & Peppler, 2013). The Learning Ecology framework (Barron, 2004, 2006), which describes learning as a process involving a wide range of settings, practices, and resources, informed our protocol. Freélyn’s transcripts were coded for mentions of resource providers, types of support provided, primary settings of support provision, and provider relationship to Freélyn (i.e., family/non-family/adult/peer). A visual representation of this information was then created using Excel.

Freélyn’s map (Figure 1) displays the individuals that comprise her SLE and the categories and specific support roles provided by each person listed. Information about each provider, including descriptive title, primary setting, and relationship to Freélyn are also presented.

SLE maps also underscore other significant factors important for supporting interest-driven learning, such as:
• Family/Non-Family support – Freélyn’s support for her particular interest-driven activities seemed to come from individuals outside her family.
• Auxiliary support – For each support category, Freélyn had more than one individual to rely on (see also “density of support”; Barron et al., 2009).
• Multi-supportive relationships – The number of different types of support tied to each provider may reflect the quality of that youth-provider relationship (see also Moll, Amanti, Neff & González, 2001). Note that two individuals provide Freélyn with help across all five support categories.
• Diversity of sources –Freélyn’s resource providers were associated with her school, a Hive-affiliated program, and the skateboarder youth development organization where she interns. This diversity will likely contribute to the robustness of her SLE, especially over time.

Overall, SLE maps offer a methodological scaffold for understanding the social support component of youth engagement in interest-driven pursuits. Visualizing a young person’s SLE in this way, especially when paired with other qualitative and quantitative data, raise important issues concerning the kinds of supportive ecologies necessary for sustained interest-driven learning.

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