The Ecologies of Children's Computing: Investigating the use of Technology across Multiple Settings

Education Development Center, Waltham MA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will investigate the role that the quality and depth of in-school technology access plays in shaping disadvantaged children's broader understanding of and engagement with technology, as expressed in their technology use at home and in other out-of-school settings. In particular, the research will examine how school choices about educational computing affect disadvantaged children's use of technology at home, in their peer groups, and in community settings. This research begins from a premise that how young people are invited to make use of technology shapes their conceptions of themselves as users of technology. This work will follow 36 young people from two middle schools during their seventh- and eighth-grade years of school. Surveys, interviews and structured observations will track participants' use of, engagement with, and knowledge about technology as it develops and changes over the course of the two years of the project. This project will explore concerns raised by researchers who have demonstrated that children from different family backgrounds are using computers for very different activities in school, with children from disadvantaged families facing greater barriers to meaningful use of the technology. Drill-and-practice software is used more widely in schools serving large numbers of impoverished students than in other schools, and teachers in these schools are more likely than others to report that they use computers to "reinforce basic skills" for their students than to encourage creativity, self-expression, or communication. Even in schools serving a diverse student population, poor students and students of color are likely to be using computers for drill-and-practice work or to learn office skills, while Caucasian students and students with high socioeconomic status are likely to use computers to conduct original research, create original work products, and communicate with others. This prior research demonstrates that effectively addressing the digital divide will mean doing more than providing more points of access to technology. Ensuring that all children have opportunities to make full use of the range of technological tools available for communication, information-gathering, and self-expression, will require attending to the interplay of multiple social settings on children's learning and development. Little is yet known about how they are using these technologies outside of school, and even less about when and how those uses intersect with school or family goals for young people's learning and development. This project will describe how a range of social settings influence young people's understandings of and uses of digital technologies. This study will also describe how young people's use of technology in multiple settings develops over time, and how experiences in various settings shape expectations and interests brought into other settings. Finally, findings from this study will demonstrate specifically whether and how different kinds of in-school technology use shape young people's perceptions of themselves as users of technology across multiple settings.