Young People’s Learning in Digital Communities. The Challenge of Being Educated

Description

A growing body of research acknowledges the learning potential of digital communities, while at a societal level, these digital learning experiences are often not acknowledged as ‘learning’ or as leading to becoming an ‘educated person’. In this research we are interested in those communities in which young people seem to be shaped by (and shape) alternative notions of being educated that might question or challenge dominant discourses and practices related to what it means to educated. We hope to answer the question: how do young people learn in digital, interest-based, learning communities, and how does their learning, through their interaction with the digital platform and respective community, represent alternative discourses on ‘being educated’? Using an ethnographic approach, we have collected and analysed learning experiences of young people across three distinct digital, interest-based, learning communities within the popular platforms YouTube, TikTok and Twitch. In our analyses, bearing in mind Gert Biesta’s conceptualization of the three functions of education (2010), we map alternative processes of qualification, socialisation and subjectification in the respective communities. Preliminary results indicate that young people consider ‘alternative’ learning paths and careers due to online learning. Also, they experience clashes between the digital norms and values, which hinder them from using them for the benefit of mainstream society. We will discuss these results in the light of the hypothesis that online distinct forms of qualification, subjectification and socialisation can arise that in different degrees will speak back to dominant notions of what it means to be educated.