Browsing by Author "Forsström, Heidi"

The purpose of my study was to trace primary school students’ socio-digital activities ranging from ordinary to more advanced practices across informal and formal contexts. I examined young people’s socio-digital learning ecology, the intensity and complexity of socio-digital participation (SDP) and the socio-digital competences associated with technologies preferred by both girls and boys. By relying on Ito and colleagues’ Gen-res of Participation, I distinguished friendship-driven and interest-driven practices in informal settings. My study extends these genres to consider also the socio-digital activities under advanced instructional settings in accordance with Connected Learning. The data were collected during academic year 2016-2017 from four primary schools in the capital area of Helsinki, Finland. Total of 296 students, 5th (n=164), 6th (n=76) and 7th (n=56) grade students (136 girls and 160 boys) responded to Socio-Digital Participation Inventory (SDP2.0). In each school, a group of teachers and their students took part in co-invention (STEAM) projects that use digital fabrication technologies for bringing elements of maker culture to schools; the data were collected before implementing the maker projects. Many of the teachers were involved in digital innovation activities organized by Innokas Network (https://globalinnokas.com/) and, thereby, enacted more sophisticated socio-digital practices in their class-rooms than Finnish schools in general. The intensity of socio-digital participation (SDP2.0) was measured with 48 items elaborated by relying on earlier studies. The instrument used Likert-type scale from 1=never to 7=all the time for examining how often participants use various digital technologies. Socio-digital competences were measured with 15 items by asking how well young people master certain technology-mediated practices. Items were measured with Likert scale form 1=not at all to 5=very fluently. I conducted the statistical analyses using R. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was applied to construct both students’ Socio-digital Learning Ecology (WLS with Oblimin rotation) and to compose the dimensions for their Socio-digital Competences (MinRes with Promax rotation). The latter were conceptualized as 1) Academic Socio-digital Competences, 2) Artistic Socio-digital Competences and 3) Technical Socio-digital Competences. The factors of Socio-digital Participation were then subjected to Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) as clustering variables to create Socio-Digital Participation Profiles, which were further conceptualized as 1) Hanging out participators, 2) Messing around participators and 3) Geeking out participators. Finally, students’ Socio-digital competences, composed by EFA, were analysed as a function of gender and SDP profiles using two-way factorial ANOVA. None of the analyses revealed any interaction effects. Participation profiles had statistically significant main effects on each competence dimension: Geeking out participators had evaluated their competences higher compared to other two groups and Messing around participators higher than Hanging out participators, as confirmed by post hoc (Scheffé) group comparisons. Gender had analogous main effects on Artistic and Technical Socio-digital competences according to which girls saw themselves as more competent with Artistic technologies and boys with Technical aspects of digital technologies. In average, the students of the present sample participated more frequently in messing around and geeking out activities in school compared to corresponding informal practices, if the recreational gaming is opted out. Regarding the participation profiles, there were no differences between girls and boys while with respect to self-reported socio-digital competences; girls saw themselves as more competent with artistic and boys with technical aspects of digital technologies. Consequently, I concluded that innovative and technology-motivated teachers may promote a more equal socio-digital participation and build of young people’s 21st century skills through digital-pedagogical practices that are attractive both for girls and boys