Cultural Modeling of Digital Practices in the Household: Shifting Schemas of Parenting, Caring, and Expertise

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

Abstract

Objectives:
This poster presents case studies that examine the role of cultural modelling in the mediation of technology and digital media use in everyday practices of families in the home context. We aim to surface the internalized and externalized schemas that inform how family members enact their multiple, layered, and context specific roles and identities. Accordingly, we take a critical view of how context is constituted by mediated action--centering joint mediated activity as a unit of analysis. In the cases presented, we highlight how cultural notions of parenting and caring manifest in certain kinds of technology/digital tool use.

Theoretical Perspectives:
This work extends multi-sited ethnographic orientations (Marcus, 1995; Vossoughi & Gutiérrez, 2014) that underscore the necessity of examining the multiple contexts learners navigate in an effort to gain a robust understanding of learning trajectories. Our focus here is to place culture at the center of these explorations of context and ensemble interactions (Cole, 1996; Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003), in order to identify how cultural repertoires of practice enacted within the family context mediate notions of and practices with technology and digital media use in the home.

Methods, Participants, & Data:
Our analyses stem from a larger multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995) that included home video recordings, interviews with participating family members, and surveys about family members’ perceptions of issues related to health, education, energy, and social media. The data that supports this particular analysis stems from case studies of four families within the larger set of fourteen families. The size of the individual families range; however, at least one of the children in each family attended the afterschool connected learning program in a small suburb of a mid-size city in the state of Colorado. Because of the researchers’ connections to the afterschool program, the families were recruited to be a part of the cross-setting study examining new media practices at home and in school.

Results:
Our triangulated analysis reveals historically constructed cultural models of parental and child roles that inform how technology and media use are orchestrated. Namely, mothers’ schemas around notions of care positioned them as de-facto “tech persons” in the household where they utilized (and orchestrated the use of) digital tools to ensure the safety and health of her family. However, youth marshalled their level of technological expertise with digital tools to construct their own, sometimes conflicting notions of technology and digital media use, thereby complicating the strict child/parent division of roles and labor. Also of note is how youth utilized digital tools to begin transforming cultural schemas around binary gender identity and roles.

Significance:
Our study calls for a continued reconceptualization of how one studies children’s learning across contexts. In keeping with multi-sited ethnographic orientations (Marcus, 1995; Vossoughi & Gutiérrez, 2014), our work elucidates the role of culture and history in learning trajectories and the use of digital tools across various contexts. Furthermore, the results of this study underscore a need to depart from segmenting explorations of child learning by environment.

Authors

• Arturo Cortez, University of California - Berkeley

• José Ramón Lizárraga, University of California - Berkeley

• Joanne Tien, University of California - Berkeley

• Sepehr Vakil, University of California - Berkeley

• Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of California - Berkeley