Joint Activity within Everyday Practices:
Sites for Investigation that Attend to Expansive Notions of Learning
Daniela DiGiacomo, José Ramón Lizárraga, Samuel Martinez, Kris Gutiérrez
Purpose:
This poster shares our investigation into the ways in which routine family activity is constituted by negotiated and shared practices within and across family members. Taking a social practice approach to learning, we see joint activity in the home as indexing both historical and contemporary artifacts and tools toward the support of family well-being, learning, and development.
Theoretical Perspectives: Bringing together perspectives from the Learning Sciences and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (Gutiérrez & Stone, 1998), the cases presented in this poster examine the dynamic movement of expertise and activity that structures the routine practices of three households. As scholars who come together around the investigation of learning as it relates to equity, we take care in espousing an interdisciplinary, yet humanizing approach to human activity, learning, and development.
Methods:The analysis reported here developed within the context of a larger multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995). We took an ecological approach to our inquiry, noting daily routines, social networks, family routines, and family beliefs about health, education, energy, social networks, and digital media use.
This poster shares our investigation into the ways in which routine family activity is constituted by negotiated and shared practices within and across family members. Taking a social practice approach to learning, we see joint activity in the home as indexing both historical and contemporary artifacts and tools toward the support of family well-being, learning, and development.
Theoretical Perspectives: Bringing together perspectives from the Learning Sciences and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (Gutiérrez & Stone, 1998), the cases presented in this poster examine the dynamic movement of expertise and activity that structures the routine practices of three households. As scholars who come together around the investigation of learning as it relates to equity, we take care in espousing an interdisciplinary, yet humanizing approach to human activity, learning, and development.
Methods:The analysis reported here developed within the context of a larger multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995). We took an ecological approach to our inquiry, noting daily routines, social networks, family routines, and family beliefs about health, education, energy, social networks, and digital media use.
Findings:
•Joint activity accounts for learning as a fluid practice across time, space, and peoples.
•Youth emerge as mediators of joint media engagement (Takeuchi & Stevens, 2011) with the use of digital tools, specifically smartphones and tablets. In so doing, youth leverage their expertise with digital image curation and gaming to connect with other family members and researchers.
•Parents play an important role orchestrating more analog joint engagement by privileging and encouraging family time in the form of physical activities and game play.
•Joint activity accounts for learning as a fluid practice across time, space, and peoples.
•Youth emerge as mediators of joint media engagement (Takeuchi & Stevens, 2011) with the use of digital tools, specifically smartphones and tablets. In so doing, youth leverage their expertise with digital image curation and gaming to connect with other family members and researchers.
•Parents play an important role orchestrating more analog joint engagement by privileging and encouraging family time in the form of physical activities and game play.
Significance: We contribute to an ongoing conversation in the Learning Sciences on how to bridge research on designed learning within informal and formal learning spaces (Vossoughi & Gutiérrez, 2014), by making visible the complexity of joint activity within everyday practices.
References:
Gutiérrez, K. D., & Stone, L. D. (1998). An Emerging Methodology for Cultural-historical
Perspectives on Literacy Learning: Synchronic and Diachronic Dimensions of Social P
ractice.
Marcus, G. E. (1995). Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited
ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 95–117.
Takeuchi, L., & Stevens, R. (2011). The new coviewing: Designing for learning through joint
media engagement. New York, NY: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.
Vossoughi, S. & Gutiérrez, K. (2014). Toward a multi-sited ethnographic sensibility. In
J.Vadeboncoeur (Ed.), Learning in and across contexts: Reimagining education NSEE
Yearbook Volume 113 (2). New York:Teachers College.