Thesis summary

I thought it would also be good to update my thesis summary which was a timely activity for the final DSE seminar I am doing.

Title: Teenage Technological Experts: Examining Youth Culture, Gender and Expertise

Summary:

This thesis explores the construction of technological expertise of a heterogenous group of New Zealand teenagers, specifically in regard to their home computer use, which for many of them is their primary site of leisure. This thesis explores the field that these teenagers place themselves in, and explains the practice constituting that field. The trajectories towards expertise in this field are explained including the motivation, time, experimentation, and pleasure evident in their praxis within this field. The main influences on their expertise development are time, opportunity, access and economic capital.

The qualitative, explorative study employed socio-cultural methods, specifically observations and interviews of eight teenagers aged 13 – 17. Five boys and three girls participated and each attended one of various secondary schools located within a provincial city in New Zealand. Each of the participants considered themselves to be a technological expert, and their peers and/or their family supported this premise.

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s socio-cultural theories, the cultural capital, economic capital, social capital, and habitus of the teenagers are described (habitus being what makes them who they are, and continues to define who they are in the future). Aspects of his theory are drawn on to provide discussion about the nexus between the gap of digital natives and digital immigrants. Traditional views of schooling and expertise are contrasted with what the teenagers think about their learning and expertise. This gap is specifically explained in regard to differences between the concepts and value of learning, expertise, and technology, and how they are recognised and valued differently between generations.

This thesis concludes that the gap between teenager and adult understandings of expertise is exacerbated in the digital world the teenagers place themselves. Their schooling is mainly positioned in the print culture and consequently, in the lives of these teenagers, schooling has had little influence on the development of their technological expertise. Additionally, gender has little impact in the development of expertise. Stereotypical notions of female underachievement as computer experts are dispelled.