Learning Identities: Trajectories of Identification and Participation in Digital Learning Publics

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium brings together diverse research perspectives to shed light on forms of identification and participation in digitally-mediated publics. Convening different disciplines, frameworks and methodologies, the studies presented here consider the identity trajectories young people take up in relation to their self-conceptions as students, writers, gamers, innovators, and journalists. Collectively, we examine how aspects of the social context (such as academic institutions or digital platforms) enable and constrain variable trajectories. Presented studies focus on new, connected learning contexts, including environments that combine elements of the formal and informal, online and offline, synchronous and asynchronous. Taken together, the session will raise questions about student subjectivity, agency, and participation in hybrid publics and will end with implications for further research and practice.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Writing and Literacies

Chair

• Nathan C. Phillips, University of Illinois at Chicago

Papers

• Disciplining "Youth Voice": Discourse Itineraries in an English Language Arts–Based Community Journalism Unit - Natalia Smirnov, Northwestern University

• Making Innovators in Formal and Informal Learning Environments - Matthew Rafalow, University of California - Irvine

• "Not Writing" Writing: Learning Identity Stances in Networked Fandoms - Ksenia A Korobkova, University of California - Irvine

• Why Doing Well in School Is Not Enough: The Rise and Fall of a Creative Writer - Crystle Martin, University of California - Irvine

Discussant

• Nathan C. Phillips, University of Illinois at Chicago