Paper Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Youth as Knowledge Brokers Across Learning Environments: Social Capital as Catalyst for Cross-Setting Learning

Tue, April 12, 8:15 to 9:45am, Convention Center, Floor: Level One, Room 103 A

Abstract

How youth connect and build upon positive experiences gained in OST environments to other contexts in their lives, such as school, future work, home, or online communities, is a burgeoning area of study within the informal learning space. The study presented in this poster explored new questions around how youth act as knowledge brokers across different environments to construct and build capital that facilitates their learning and interest development. The employment of social network analysis, with individual youth as the unit of analysis, allows for a new lens on understanding the role social capital can play in learning across multiple settings.

Traditional conceptions of learning as a within-person cognitive phenomenon fail to adequately account for the social and contextual aspects of learning processes. This research explores and measures the ways in which youth act as brokers of connected learning activities across both physical settings and distinct social groups. This research explores questions of an individual learner’s choice, participation, and collaboration in connected learning activities and OST/IST programs.

This study used Putnam’s (2000) conceptualization of social capital as a bridging/bonding mechanism as a foundation to understand the role of relationships in youths’ connected learning experience. This theoretical framework is applied to an OST environment to better understand how the three design principles of connected learning (production-centered, openly networked, and shared purpose) relate to the three core values of connected learning (equity, social connection, and full participation).

This research was conducted using a mixed-methods approach that integrated quantitative social network analysis surveys with qualitative ethnographic interviews. Researchers spent time as participant-observers at one program site for one week. Informal interviews with youth participants (n=14) and adult mentors (n=6) guided the network surveys that were then constructed and administered. When analysis of the personal networks was complete, researchers returned to the site and conducted follow-up interviews with each participant where they explained their network results in detail.

Research questions include:
• Is there evidence that interest-driven learning is more likely to be of import to youth when the learning is cross-setting?
• What do the social support networks look like in the lives program youth in these different settings?
• What role do social relationships play in sustained participation in connected learning activities?

Results from this work were compelling, and outlined many of the ways that youth utilize their peers and mentors to build new opportunities for future careers and academic pursuits, as well as build their social networks to support their interests across settings.

This work lays out an approach to understanding the importance of youth agency to create learning opportunities across settings, and how brokering and the creation of social capital in multiple environments support productive persistence for themselves and others in these activities. This work also contributes to the body of knowledge around learning ecologies, by providing methods by which researchers can identify the role of certain individuals across learning environments.

Authors