Conference

I have been accepted to do a poster presentation at the 18th Annual Ethnographic and Qualitative Research in Education (EQRE), June 9 & 10, 2006 in Cedarville, Ohio (near Dayton and Columbus).

http://www.cedarville.edu/academics/education/eqre/

My paper is titled, 'Fish in Water' – the Field and Habitus of Teenage Computer Experts

The abstract is:
Although contemporary education literature regularly gestures towards the fact of teenagers’ (and children’s) ever increasing technological competency, there appears to be little research focused on the ways in which teenagers themselves conceptualize the idea of expert performance and the multiple ways they acquire expert status.

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus, this paper outlines research focused on a heterogeneous group of teenagers in semi-urban New Zealand settings and identifies the participants’ multiple (and contradictory) understandings of expertise and the ways they have attained expertise and performed as experts in out-of-school settings. Discussion focuses on how most of the teenagers gained their expertise independently with minimal input from their schooling, which raises questions regarding the relevance of schooling.

How does my study relate to education?

How bout this?

The teenage experts did not gain any of their learning from education and traditional schooling; they gained their expertise by independent means.

How has education affected teenage technological expertise? It hasn’t.

Schooling does not teach expertise.

Teenage technological experts do not require schooling.

Schooling does not teach how to be an expert; it does not teach how the process of expertise is achieved.

Technology is not about doing; it is about thinking. Providing children with the opportunity to create, negotiate, trial, and explore enhances learning of expertise and learning in general, rather than doing, i.e. completing a task.

Discussion welcomed

"I'm addicted"

My step-daughter (14) says "I'm addicted" about television programmes that she really wants to watch, or that she really enjoys. That is a very different notion of 'addiction' then what is traditionally conceived. Is this a part of youth habitus, or a part of the discourse of popular culture?