Ecer presentation 2010_body

An ethnographic and Narrative Research about ICT mediations on youths embodiment Construction. Implications for Secondary School (12-16)

Oscar Molto Egea. University Barcelona.

Biography Physical Education Teacher in Primary

Schools, Anthropologist, and PHD student in Education

• Education--Society--Culture--History--Policy Complex articulation of knowledge not merely

educational view.

(BODY) Paradox Body in schools: • Shaped in educational institutions /

invisibilized in educational discourses.

• Fragmented Knowledge in Curricula / Holistic Presence of the body

(ICT) Educational problems solution:

• ICT understood as tools or artifacts

• Investing in ICT in schools will solve and modernize education

• Support of academic Discourses: ICT improving schools.

• Young people worlds full of ICT dimensions.

Paradox Focus: • ICT discursively covered by "innovation" aura / Young

Body discursively invisible or secondary: "educating the soul/mind"

• Explosion of Discourses about ICT and "knowledge society“

• Poor understanding of youth meanings and relevance of ICT

• Competences of Knowledge Society tends to forget the body and the subject

• Non-formal hypothesis

If….. every socio-historical moment has concrete and shifting knowledge-power articulations, where subjects are "produced" by certain technologies of the self, established in the intersection of those mobile structures considered as neutral, natural and needed, mostly reified.

• In which sense ICT discourses/practices contributes to develop new technologies of the self (young people)?

• In which sense ICT establish new knowledge/power

locations, and how is this affecting educational Institutions and their traditional structures?

• ICT in schools tends to re-articulate new control,

surveillance, and punishment over young subjects? In which sense?

• How adult discourses about ICT represents youth?

• How ICT affects youth subjectivity constructions and how their body is re-defined and produced in and our of schools?

Objectives of the project:

Analysis and interpretation of:

• Representations of young people in ICT educational discourses.

• Institutional meaning of ICT introduction.

• Young people ICT practices in and out of schools, and the self-understanding of these practices.

• Subjectivity/ Embodiment processes shaped by ICT practices in schools.

Questions of the project:

• How is it represented youth people in ICT educational discourses?

• How and why educational institutions tend to introduce ICT in schools, and how does young people understand it?

• How Young people signify ICT Practices in and out of schools?

• What do young people do with ICT in and out of schools and how this affects their subjectivity?

Theoretical framework:

• Continuities/discontinuities in and out of schools (Tedesco/Murdovich)

• Technologies of the self (Foucault)

• ICT as environment non-neutral affecting subjectivity (Feenberg/Sibilia) (writtng, reading, playing, talking, looking, hearing, thinking, feeling...)

• Socio-historical and political construction of young people. Digital Natives. (Canclini/Pattel Stevens,L.)

• Subjectivity shaped by experience of the world (Ricoeur, Van Mannen,Arendt )

• ICT affecting new knowledge/power articulations (Bifo/Virno/Sibilia)

Methodological construction: Hermeneutical and narrative approach (CLANDININ, D. J.; CONNELLY, F.M)

• Ethnography: 1 Secondary School promoting ICT introduction. (HAMMERSLEY, M. ATKINSON, P.)

• Discourse Analysis (Gee, J.) Youth representation among academically research: Phd thesis last 5 years in Catalonia. Educational Technologies significant authors.

• Everyday narratives (Conle, C.)from Young People. In/Out: notebooks and group discussion.

Previous results/ideas :

• Naturalized understanding of the body / non discursive topic in schools.

• Naturalized understanding on ICT.

• ICT contributing to fragment schools.

• ICT practices non modifying gender distinctions.

• Middle class understandings of ICT: tools, videogames, lifestyle, future possibilities, cultural consumptions.

Previous results/ideas :

• Autonomy / peer to peer learning: non affecting their status in schools.

• Intensification of the time, and supervision of adults.

• Re-creation of autonomy in private spaces: redefinition public/private.

• Acquirement of new languages, sub-cultural belongings, meanings...

• New models of “normality”: to get a mobile, to get credit on it, to be connected through msn, facebook..

Thank you !!