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Developing Youth Civic Engagement Pathways at Community Technology Centers: A Connected Learning Approach

Mon, April 8, 2:15 to 3:45pm, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Floor: Lower Concourse, Sheraton Hall E

Abstract

This research explored how urban youth used digital tools at two community technology centers (CTCs) to support the development of civic engagement pathways. African American students from lower-income neighborhoods often lack the same opportunities as their wealthier peers to engage civically (Levinson, 2007). This is problematic given the benefits of civic engagement, specifically related to positive youth development and the strengthening of our nation’s democracy (Lerner, 2004). CTCs have been shown as valuable places where young people can develop positively (Kafai, Peppler, & Chiu, 2007), therefore, the purpose of this multisite multicase study was to understand how young people might use digital tools at CTCs to develop pathways to civic engagement. Observations, interviews, and artifacts were collected at both centers over the course of three months. The Positive Technological Development Framework (Bers, 2012) was employed, and inductive analysis using the constant comparative method revealed that participants' digital content creations played a critical role in their development of civic skills, namely civic knowledge, collaboration, and communication. Participants also developed emergent civic identities and built community.
This study’s finding about the importance of the participants’ digital content creations for civic engagement also illuminates how connected learning can be used as approach to understand how youth civic engagement can be supported at CTCs. Most specifically, the cases in this study show how they benefited from a production-centered, shared purpose, interest-driven, openly networked, and peer-supported environment in order to develop their civic engagement pathways. This research supports and builds on current literature focused on the relationships between connected learning and civic engagement (Chen, 2018; Ito et al., 2015). At the same time, this work asserts that the CTC’s face-to-face environment provides tremendous value to the young people in ways, perhaps, not available solely online.
This poster will focus on two cases from two different CTCs, and it will highlight how these young people’s civic engagement pathways were both supported at their respective CTC through the production-centered experience but how they also differed in many ways. For example, Tori, one of the cases, most benefited from the peer-support and shared purpose, whereas Tony most benefited from the interest-driven and openly-networked experience. The overall purpose of this work is to show how connected learning can offer a meaningful way to understand, as well as design, learning activities at community technology centers to support the development of youth civic engagement.

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