Facilitating Digital Access: The Role of Empowerment Agents

• In Event: Digital Equity: Micro- and Macro-Level Perspectives

Abstract

Strengthening students’ digital expertise is a complex endeavor involving multiple players, institutional contexts and processes. This paper focuses on the role of educators in helping students build digital expertise and strengthen educational outcomes due to: (1) their unique position to provide access to technology that students may not have at home and (2) their close proximity to students in a leadership capacity.

The authors make use of social capital theory to better understand how adults on school campuses can serve to hinder or bolster students’ access to educational content and opportunities through digital tools. Educators as “institutional agents” have the potential to socialize adolescents in ways that reify mainstream norms (Ianni, 1989) or in ways that encourage youth to question the various forms of oppression in their lives and how they might engage in resistance (Stanton-Salazar, 2011). The latter approach of fostering a “critical consciousness” leads to processes of empowerment and is influenced by the structure and resourcefulness of an adult’s social network (Stanton-Salazar, 2011,1068). Empowerment agents move beyond simply sharing resources by: (1) recognizing power-laden relationships; (2) tuning into unique identities and backgrounds of students; and (3) connecting youth with skills and information that cultivate those students' critical consciousness. When working at schools with limited resources or within institutional contexts that create challenges to accessing digital resources, this approach can prove transformative.

Empirical data from a mixed-methods study analyzing the process of implementing an online game-based college access intervention highlights challenges and successes educators face in empowering students through digital tools. Through the implementation of the intervention designed to boost college knowledge, college-going efficacy, and college outcomes, study authors learned that the space where teachers, students and technology interact is complicated. Digital infrastructures vary tremendously between and within schools. Teachers' comfort levels with and knowledge of digital tools also differ substantially -- this in turn affects teachers' abilities to effectively make use of technology in the classroom. This paper expands on the above concept of “empowerment agents” by contending that best practices occur when adults act as “digital empowerment agents” and thus facilitate digital learning in nuanced and effective ways.

The paper illustrates that effective educators conveyed: (1) an understanding of the potential of technology to positively impact students; (2) a critical consciousness or keen awareness of micro- and macro-level challenges faced by students and educators; and (3) creativity in their approaches to ensuring that students had access to technology and support. These traits were evident when teachers were situated in formalized technology roles within the school environment as well as when teachers did not have an explicit digital focus but incorporated technology into their practice. Study findings have implications for theory and practice.

Authors

• Zoe Corwin, University of Southern California

• Antar Akari Tichavakunda, University of Southern California