Networking Young Citizens Blog

Greetings all,

As you may know, the deadline for the Digging into Data proposal is fast approaching, and actually falls just a day or two after our meetings in Seattle will conclude.  Based on this timeline, Lance and Stephen and I have been working on getting the proposal nearly ready so that we can have a chance to review it as a group before we submit.  Toward that end, I’m attaching the latest draft of the narrative section of the project application.

See the narrative here.

For convenience, the original RFP is here.

Other background materials on the funding challenge can be found at the DiD website.

Have been enjoying looking over the other proposals, documents, and RFPs, and am excited to see everyone in Seattle next week!

Mike

Hello all,

I am posting the excellent memo from Suzanne and Ariadne that kicked off our discussions a couple of weeks back

This contains the beginning of an agenda for us, and lots of issues that we can develop

There is also a plan at the end for two different types fo studies — one of schools and another of sites.

We may wish to divide the labor around this and then come together to discuss policy as a group?

– Lance

Networking Young Citizens- Draft research proposal 9th Feb, 2009
(Suzanne and Ariadne)

Preamble
In order to know more clearly what might enhance the likelihood of young people’s political/civic engagement, we need to know more about what they already know and bring to political/civic engagement/participation  activities, and how they relate to existing opportunities to engage.

The central tenet for the Networking Young Citizen’s WUN Group is that for this cohort the appeal of ICT-based participation is an additional incentive/assistance to political and civic engagement.
Thus in order to suggest what kinds of policies (including for both government and NGOs) could support enhanced political/civic engagement/participation in USA, UK and Australia we would need to collect indicative data on: young people’s experiences of and attitudes toward uses of ICT, the types of online and offline based opportunities available for civic/citizenship/political engagement/participation of young people within each national context; and a focus on a range of different environments to investigate how they encourage civic, political and digital engagement, on how constrained young people feel by existing participation models.

Research Issues
1. The distinctions between ‘civics’ and ‘citizenship’ understandings
Suzanne defines ‘civics’ as relating to knowledge of how a citizen’s system works, and ‘citizenship’ as relating to the attitudes/disposition to engage in that system, and argues research indicates that capacity in both assists in effective participation. Ariadne confirms the essential role and significant impact of ‘interest’ in particular issues in engagement/participation.
2. The operationalisation of dutiful and self actualising notions of citizenship through ICTs (from Lance and Michael’s work).
Here we have concepts that have been empirically and quantitatively examined in the US through studying existing internet based sites, but not to large extent in Australia or the UK.
3. The distinctions and interplay between understandings/knowledge and skills (digital literacy?) as they pertain to citizenship ICT-based activities.
This would be relevant in school based civics and citizenship teaching and learning and in other engagement/participation environments. We could follow up with  students who had experienced a digital C&C education program and seek to ascertain the level of impact that had the preferences they had for online participation over the more ‘dutiful’ forms of engagement advocated in conventional civics participation. We would also be interested what differences young people see as significant in different models of participation, and if/how they integrate them in their practices.
4. The distinctions between ‘policy’ and ‘policy outcomes’ are deemed important because in this project we are ostensibly suggesting that a cause and effect relationship exists, though manifestly they are interconnected and play out differently, according to the context.
We think the project would be able to advise that certain policies might have the effect of increasing young people’s engagement in a self actualising form of citizenship. [We are only going to be able to report on presumed outcomes from the participation activities we observe, but we would hope that we can hypothesise that some programs/facilities can be put in place that might/will increase the likelihood of young citizens participating]. We would hope that the project would also provide us with the opportunity to focus on how the structural policy environment shapes outcomes and opportunities for young people’s engagement, as well.

Proposed Research Methodology
1.    case studies of schools
For example, we propose locating a primary and secondary school in each of two large states (NSW & Vic) which have programs (general, or preferably Civics & Citizenship) with a strong emphasis on online delivery. These case-study schools would be visited and observed for the participation culture within the school, and how it is supported. Students in Yr 9 would be observed and surveyed with a view to getting a handle on how they learn, and how they relate online to civic knowledge, and to citizenship attitudes. We would gain considerable (albeit very small scale) indication of how the distinctions listed above play out in those schools. We would be able to report on how online cultures and programs can support student learning and attitudes to participation per se and to differing modes of participation, and also speak to the unique (or not) role of the online delivery in that participation.
2.    internet site analysis
To provide a large scale quantitative, comparative understanding of how existing sites facilitate either dutiful or self actualising citizenship styles; and an assessment of whether the sites are managed, autonomous or democratic (using Stephen’s typology) in their structural base. This would also include replication/expansion in the three countries of the experimental work Mike has been doing with young people’s use of particular sites (this would also surely relate to Sonia Livingstone’s existing research in the UK?). Thus bringing together a survey of what exists, how we would examine it contextually, and the dimension of what young people do and their attitudes towards engagement.
3.    policy analysis (two-fold)
First: provide a thorough comparative background on the existing policy context (building on Kathryn’s work) in the three places for both approaches to C&C learning and digital engagement . This would include documentary analysis and interviews with policy makers.
Second: based on all of the above, to create a model for facilitating self-actualising, democratic citizenship through both school and online environments.

Hello all, below are research ideas and suggested readings sent by Ian on the WUN email list. Lance has also asked me to collect similar items from others and post them on the blog. Since almost everyone is now on the blog, you can go ahead and post them yourself, or email me at muzammilh@gmail.com, and I can post and categorize them for you.

Research Ideas:

I would like to offer the following rather half formed ideas:

* I like the idea of exploring overlapping issues to look at what is happening in and beyond schools and policy communities (this seems to fit fairly neatly with the proposed research methodology in Suzanne and Ariadne’s very useful paper). I would see myself contributing more to the learning group (what young people are doing in schools and beyond) rather than the policy group (although there will be overlaps in all cases).

* Possible research questions for the research related to learning:

i) Are digital media being used by young people in relation to engagement/participation?

ii) for what purposes are they using them

iii) do those purposes vary across ‘locations’?

iv) how are they using digital media in different ‘locations’?

(The use of ‘locations’ in inverted commoas may allow us to move beyond simple issues of in-school out of school activity and allow us to consider issues of managed and/or autonomous learning in different places)

V) what is being learned as a result of use of digital media? (this would have 2 aspects: – acquisition of knowledge, understanding, skills, dispositions etc; acquisition of those things for particular purposes or in alignment with certain perspectives. The latter of these 2 points would allow us to consider AC/DC issues)

Generally, I suppose I wonder if digital media offer the opportunity for new learning or whether they are ‘merely’ providing an opportunity for the same sort of learning that people have advocated for some time but may be applied more successfully to larger groups. (I suspect it is new but that it is not as new as some suggest. I think the potential for it to be associated with the promotion of broader engagement – as well as the potential for use to reinforce the status quo – is greater than conventional chalk and talk teaching.)

Suggested Literature:

* Literature

I don’t think there is much on digital media and schools at least from within England so we are in a good position to make a contribution.

Some of the following may be of interest:

Becta (2005) The Becta Review 2005: evidence on the progress of ICT in education.

Carr-Chellman, A. A. (2005) (ed.) Global Perspectives on e-learning: rhetoric and reality. London, Sage.

Condie, R. and Munro, B. (2007) The impact of ICT in schools: a landscape review. Becta.

Friesen, N. (2003) Three Objections to Learning Objects and e-learning standards. http://www.learningspaces.org/n/papers/objections.html (accessed 7 July 2008)

Kerr, D., Lopes, J., Nelson, J., White, K., Cleaver, E., Benton, T. (2007)

Vision versus Pragmatism: Citizenship in the Secondary School Curriculum in England. Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study: Fifth Annual Report. Slough, National Foundation for Educational Research

Lawson, T. (2005) Information, communication and learning technologies: equipping the digital citizen. Pp. 160-167 in Brelin, T. ad Dufour, B. (eds) Developing Citizens: a compreh4nsive introduction to effective citizenship education in the secondary school. London, Hodder Murray.

Macpherson, M. Some applications of information technology to citizen participation in politics. http://home.snafu.de/mjm/miercurea.html (accessed 4 July 2008)

Ofsted (2004) ICT in Schools 2004; the impact of Government initiatives 5 years on. London, Ofsted.

Smith, F., Hardman, F., and Higgins, S. (2006) The impact of interactive whiteboards on teacher-pupil interaction in the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies. British Educational Research Journal, 32, 3, 443-457.

Whiteley, P. (2004) A Health Check for British Democracy: what do we know about participation and its effects in Britain? Swindon, Economic and Social Research Council.

Other Comments:

I have reservations about the potential of mass education to do more than promote versions of the status quo. Lance referred to my paper in Comparative Education in his recent Citizenship Studies article suggesting that in Canada, Australia and England there is no sense of radical action by policy makers. But there is a tradition of radical education in as well as beyond schools (e.g. Rattansi, A. and Reeder, B. (eds) (1992) Rethinking Radical Education: essays in honour of Brian Simpon. Lawrence and Wishart. Of course, without wanting to sound ridiculous it is often difficult to know what is meant by radical (some radicals that suggest not focussing on schools are more liberatarian rather than liberal) – if we give up on publicly funded schooling then something worse may ensue. In line with what I have written above about ‘locations’ I wonder at times what is meant by school (the reschooling/freeschooling/deschooling debates of some years ago all seemed to lead to a system for getting people together for particular purposes and presumably we could call those gatherings ‘schools’.

*organisational matters

I think I would welcome the opportunity to plan for Seattle. What do we want to achieve before during and after the meeting? I do not want to suggest that we should become too mechanistically focussed on submitting a project proposal to a funder but I would like to suggest that by the end of the Seattle meeting we have a draft ready to submit. Could I suggest that the organising committee proposes some aims for Seattle and a list of jobs to be completed by set points in relation to those aims?

Apologies for the length of the above and for its rather superficial nature. It’s been written rather quickly just before I rush off to teach.

I’m open to all suggestions!

Best wishes, ian

Professor Ian Davies

Department of Educational Studies,

University of York,

York, YO10 5DD, UK.

Tel: +44 (0)1904 433452.

e-mail: id5@york.ac.uk

See details about the MA in Citizenship and Global Education at

http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/educ/gsp/macge.htm

I’m very much persuaded by Lance’s emphasis upon learning outcomes from online citizenship projects. But I think we need to spend just a bit of time being clear that we all understand what learning is – how we know it’s happening – and how we might monitor and measure the effects of learning. Perhaps the educationalists amongst us could help us with some useful definitions – and problematisations of the concept.

Stephen

Is ‘youth’ a self-explanatory term? I suspect not. Perhaps we need to clarify the age range that interests us in this research – nd why upper and lower cut-offs seem to be right.

Stephen

In our recent telephone conference we agreed to ue the blog to chew over some of the key conceptual categories that we plan to explore in our research. I suggest we kick off with basic concepts such as Citizenship, Youth, Web 2.0 and Learning. I shall set up first posts on each of these and see if we can work towards some agreed meanings.

Stephen

What do we mean by Citizenship?

Is it a set of practices – a legal condition – a cultural condition – a normative aspiration?

Of course, it might be a hybrid of all these. But does the concept change when it describes pre-voters – or people who do not possess the full legal rights of adults?

Stephen