(McGonigal 2011; Prensky 2010), personalized learning systems, learning analytics, and open online content (Khan 2013).
Both proponents and detractors often focus more on the technology and generalizations about youth than on the specific social, cultural, and institutional contexts of their uptake. Technologies and techniques, however, take on different characteristics depending on the cultural and social settings they are embedded in. History is replete with examples of how new learning technologies have been heralded as the answer to our educational problems, only to become incorporated within existing institutionalized practices in decidedly nontransformative ways (Cuban 2003; Ito 2009; Rafalow 2016). Even when they are deployed in free and open online settings, we find that new educational technologies tend to amplify existing inequity; the most highly educated are the most likely to adopt these new open-education opportunities (Carfagna 2014; Hansen and Reich 2015; Reich and Ito 2017). Institutionalized practices, in education, entertainment, and the emerging technology landscape, drive the ways in which young people adopt new technology in differentiated ways in their everyday lives.
These studies of educational technology deployment have argued that focusing on the promise of a particular technology, technique, or platform can deflect attention away from deeply rooted and institutionalized forms of stratification and cultural differences. In other words, access to social, cultural, and economic capital, not access to technology, is what broadens opportunity. This recognition on its own, however, does not guide the way to positive and equitable roles for technology in learning. Both proponents and critical scholars must focus less on pinning hope and blame on technology, and more on understanding and adapting institutionalized practices and policies, if we are truly concerned about better and more equitable educational futures. The connected learning approach is an effort to move beyond a “boosters versus critics” divide through a shared agenda informed by both critical empirical studies of learning technology and forward-looking theories of change.
A shared progressive agenda for technology and learning is particularly important as informal learning and social networks play an increasingly important role in structuring opportunity for young people growing up in the United States and the Global North. Young people growing up in educated and economically stable families are enjoying a growing abundance of riches in learning opportunities. Not only are they likely to be attending a school that takes full advantage of new technology-enhanced learning, but their parents are spending unprecedented amounts of money on out-of-school enrichment activities. The economic investment of the wealthiest quintile of families has tripled to nearly $9,000 annually since the 1970s, while the poorest quintile of families’ investments have continued to hover at about $1,000 annually during these same decades (Duncan and Murnane 2011; see figure 1.1). With the aid of online platforms, privileged and tech-savvy families are more effectively tapping their social networks to guide their children’s specialized interests, cultivate career opportunities, and develop agency and voice. These out-of-school learning experiences and social connections are particularly important for success in high-tech sectors that put greater emphasis on innovation, problem solving, and hands-on learning (Thomas and Brown 2011; Wagner 2012).
Figure 1.1. Growth in enrichment expenditures by income quintile.
Source: Duncan, Greg J., and Richard Murnane. Figure 1.6, “Enrichment Expenditures on Children, 1972–2006.” In Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances. © 2011 Russell Sage Foundation, 112 East 64th Street, New York, NY 10065. Reprinted with permission. https://www.russellsage.org/publications/whither-opportunity.
The growth of these enrichment gaps argues for investigation into the specifics of technologies’ intersection with existing forms of stratification, the variation in how young people engage and learn online, and what our learning institutions can do to address these differences. Why do some young people go online primarily to hang out with existing peers and to browse entertaining YouTube videos, while others dive into online tutorials, courses, and communities of interest that drive more specialized forms of “geeking out” and social organizing? What role can educators, parents, peers, and the developers of online resources play in shaping these dynamics? What kinds of institutional practices, policies, and infrastructures can build stronger connections between youth interests and sites of opportunity, particularly for less privileged groups? What kinds of cultural barriers and assumptions inhibit or facilitate the building of these connections? Only by asking these questions and gaining a greater grasp of how digital learning opportunities intersect with social, cultural, and economic differences can we begin to shape a progressive educational reform agenda keyed to today’s networked world. This book addresses these questions by taking an in-depth look at online affinity networks and how they are connected and disconnected to educational, career, and civic opportunity. We turn now to a discussion of our research and case studies before concluding this introduction with the theoretical and conceptual framing for the chapters to follow.
Situating Our Research
The Leveling Up study, situated within an evolving arc of research that has become more strategic and impact-focused through time, is one effort within a broader interdisciplinary and collaborative network of research and practice. Here we describe this broader context in relation to our ongoing research and our collaborative network before turning to the specifics of how the case studies were selected, developed, and analyzed.
An Evolving Research Agenda
The Leveling Up project, part of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning (DML) Initiative and Connected Learning Research Network (CLRN), continues a line of ethnographic inquiry that the DML Initiative has supported since 2005. This research builds on Ito’s prior, more exploratory and descriptive research in the Digital Youth Project, which conducted fieldwork between 2006 and 2007, when teens were flocking to MySpace, when YouTube was just taking off, and before the mobile internet and texting had taken hold in the United States. The Digital Youth Project is the largest ethnographic study of youth new media practices to date, involving 27 researchers, more than 800 interviews, and 5,000 hours of online observation. The study involved a broad scan of youth new media practices, asking foundational questions about how these technologies intersected with peer and romantic relations, family life, creative expression, work, and play. The book that resulted from the Digital Youth Project, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (Ito et al. 2010), was not designed to directly inform educational practice or design. Nonetheless, we were heartened to see how the book inspired educators and designers to create programs and spaces that centered on youth culture and practices (Hernandez and Marroquin 2013; Larson et al. 2013; Seelye 2014).
The Digital Youth Project provided a baseline understanding of how young people are incorporating social media, digital games, and digital media into their everyday lives, but it was clear that more targeted inquiry was needed to inform design, policy, and other practical interventions. In particular, our findings about the highly uneven and often inequitable ways that new media opportunities were taken up gave us cause for concern. The interdisciplinary CLRN was launched in 2012 as an interlinked set of research projects that investigated, from different dimensions and with different methods, the challenges and opportunities in leveraging new media for progressive and equitable learning. Within the CLRN’s range of projects, the Leveling Up study followed in the footsteps of the Digital Youth Project in continuing in-depth ethnographic investigation of youth new media practices, but with a focus on groups and practices that helped us understand and expand the potential of online networks to support connected learning.
The Leveling Up study represented a different moment in our research priorities, reflecting how new media have spread through various institutions and populations. A growing number of studies were investigating youth new media practices (Black 2008; boyd 2014; Clark 2013; Gee and Hayes 2010; Lange 2007; Watkins 2009), offering a firm base
