Uncovering Ingenuity in Everyday Practices

• In Event: Ingenuity and the Shaping of New Participation Trajectories: Examining Connected Learning Through Joint Mediated Practices in the Home

Abstract

Objectives:
We explore in this poster session the ways in which the everyday practices of three working class families index their ingenuity, or their resourceful reorganization of materials, time, and space, to support meaningful interactions in their social worlds. Presenting representative data of our analysis of the everyday practices of the families illustrates how members transformed their everyday practices and resources (including but not limited to digital technologies) into opportunities for new forms of learning across contexts and tools.

Perspectives:
Scholars have underscored the importance of looking with “new eyes” at the varied ways in which people creatively and ingeniously transform their environments through participation structures (e.g., Gutiérrez, 2008, 2012; McDermott & Raley, 2012). Following these scholars, we view ingenuity not as an individual or rare achievement, but rather as a socially distributed phenomenon that manifests as playful yet deliberate adaptation of resources at hand (McDermott & Raley, 2012). These perspectives frame our understandings of family members’ everyday practices as “playgrounds” for agentic participation in and orchestration of social worlds.

Methods, Participants & Data:
The analysis reported here developed within the context of a larger multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995) of 14 families. Qualitative data sources included home video recordings captured by researchers and family members, interviews with family members, and surveys about family members’ perceptions of issues related to health, education, energy, and social media. This poster focuses on data from three of the 14 families. Using inductive and deductive approaches, the authors systematically coded video recordings, interview transcripts, survey responses, field notes, and video logs. Data were further reduced through analytic memos and weekly research team meetings that helped identify salient themes shared across the focal families.

Results:
Our analysis reveals that members of the focal families actively repurposed everyday practices (e.g., video gaming, commuting to and from school with children) and resources (e.g., communal family space, internet connection) in order to 1) pursue digitally-mediated and/or interest-based learning opportunities and communities; 2) engage family members in digitally-mediated and/or interest-based learning opportunities and communities; 3) “reclaim” quotidian activities (e.g., snack time, family movie time, instant messaging) to support formal and informal learning; and 4) negotiate identities different from those typically dictated by family or school structures. Additionally, we found that these varied displays of everyday ingenuity always involved the participation of more than one person, whether in the household or outside of the household, suggesting the socially distributed and negotiated nature of such playful, purposeful rearrangement of everyday practices.

Significance:
Ingenuity is often characterized as an individual accomplishment that is extraordinary and/or pursued for institutional validation. Our research refutes such generalizations by highlighting how quotidian necessities within the familial collective drive innovation. This study adds to current literature in new media by demonstrating the need to foreground problem-based, collaborative activity that promotes transformative experiences. Our findings also have significant implications for in-school practices by illustrating the socially and culturally constituted nature of ingenuity and everyday learning.

Authors

• Jennifer Higgs, University of California - Berkeley

• Arturo Cortez, University of California - Berkeley

• Joanne Tien, University of California - Berkeley

• Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of California - Berkeley