Social and Spatial Mentoring in the Digital Atelier

• In Event: 35.062 - Connected Learning in Chicago Public Schools

Abstract

A core component of the Convergence Academies model is the (re)design, construction, and use of a physical space within each school designated as a digital atelier. In the Convergence Academies whole-school reform initiative, the digital atelier is intended to be “a marriage of formal and informal learning within the culture and space of what we call school. It is a place for convergence that asks us to re-imagine learning spaces as fun, playful, and engaging” (Archeworks, 2014, p. 16). This paper reports on a case study that includes both the process of collaborative design and construction of one digital atelier in an urban public high school in Chicago as well as subsequent interaction and learning within the atelier. Students attending the high school are identified as approximately 90% low income; 61% African American; 26% Latino; 8% White; and 5% Asian, Native American, or Multiracial/Multiethnic.
While researchers have considered the effects of the physical and spatial design of schools on teaching and learning (e.g., Cleveland, 2009; McGregor, 2004; Nespor, 1997), an analysis of collaborative design, learning, and interaction in a hybrid, connected learning space (i.e., the digital atelier) within a school is new. This case study takes a learning-in-place (Leander, Phillips, & Headrick Taylor, 2010) perspective that views processes of learning and interaction within the school and the digital atelier as connected to flows of culture, history, bodies, and politics streaming within, across, and without the “boundaries” of the school (Nespor, 1997). Learning is understood as socially, physically, and materially constructed, or “taking place,” across students’ lives and movements. With this theoretical framework on learning and interaction, data include videotaped observations of and semi-structured interviews with focal students, community partners, teachers, school administrators, digital media mentors, and Convergence Academies staff during both the collaborative design process of this digital atelier and during its implementation and use by students, teachers, and members of the school community before, during, and after school hours for formal and informal learning, instruction, digital tool use, and planning. As much as possible, videotaped interactions include recording of on-the-move learning and action through the use of small, mobile cameras (e.g., GoPro) and audio equipment. Data also include collection of artifacts produced by those who designed and use the digital atelier.
Analysis of data followed from theories of learning that involve whole bodies in interaction with others, settings, and spatial and social arrangements of people and materials (e.g., Stevens, 2012). Through multimodal (Norris, 2004) and microanalyses of videotaped interaction (Jordan & Henderson, 1995) I identified social and spatial mentoring as key elements of design and learning in the digital atelier. Both in the collaborative design process and in teacher, staff, and students’ structured and unstructured opportunities to learn, the social and physical structures afforded by the digital atelier mentored learning. In this presentation, identify these structural elements of mentorship and argue that the design and use of digital atelier spaces in schools more broadly can have an essential impact on connected learning (Ito et al., 2013).

Author

• Nathan C. Phillips, University of Illinois at Chicago