Bridging the Participation Gap

My first encounter with a PC was during my undergraduate days in the computer lab, and that was just trying to finish up assignments using wordpad. I still remember the experience of feeling so inadequate at it in comparison with some of my classmates (from more well off background) who's got previous exposure to the technology.

In retrospect, my teaching experiences (5 years ago) involving multiliteracies mirrors to some extent the kind of participation gap we had 10 years ago. I had been to two schools with very different student demorgraphics. One school had students from very good family background and students seem to take to multiliteracies well and participate meaningfully and engagingly in social software learning environment. On the other hand, students from the other school had to struggle with after school part-time jobs just to have their daily allowances. For these students, social software learning tasks remain narrow and unengaging. In addition, these students' informal learning experiences with social software pales in comparison with that of the former school students.

In bridging this participation gap, our ministry of education in Singapore has done well in implementing master plans for IT in education. For the initial master plan, the focus was in equipping schools with ICT infrastructure. Having recognized that it is insufficient to just provide access to ICT infrastructure in bridging the participation gap, the master plan was refined in 1997 to focus "...less on technology and more on providing the skills and content that is most beneficial...(pg 8)" (Wartella, O'Keefe and Scantlin 2000). One of the key strategies for the plan is then to equip our students with thinking, learning and communication skills through IT based teaching and learning. The master plan gained impetus later on as the education system move towards integrating IT for engaged learning with the "Teach Less Learn More" (Engaged Learning) movement. This speaks importantly on the interdependence of IT use and strong pedagogies, for the full potential of IT for teaching and learning can't be tapped if it is used based on didactic teaching.

With the emergence of web 2.0 tools and increased access to higher bandwidth, more innovations in such tools integration for engaged learning are taking place in some of our schools. In these schools, students are not just consumers of technology but creators and participants of it. They may be producing and hosting podcasts on some social issues or engaging in process writing for some themes using wiki engines. Such participatory learning is characterized by students' artistic expression and engagement in communities of learning, where creations are shared, peer critiqued and peer learnt. It is of interest to note that these schools also have strong programs for their teaching and learning, adopting new teaching approaches such as inquiry based learning, problem based learning or alternative assessment. Such programs have successfully leverage on the web 2.0 tools to situate students' learning to real world contexts as well as real world processes in the creation of solution or ideas.

The goal here is to extend such participatory learning opportunties to all students in all schools. One may argue that students are already informally engaged in such participatory culture through their own peers outside school hours. This assumption holds true only to students where lots of such informal learning opportunities avail to them; it does not stand when considered against students from lower socio-economic background.

I believe that this can be achieved to a great part by coupling effective pedagogically sound learning programs with web 2.0 technologies. Having said that, we note that students can only engage in the new participatory learning activites only if they can read and write. Students must expand their basic literacy competencies in order to develop the new social and cultural skills in web 2.0 participatory literacies. We may build these skills into their daily activities in ways appropriate to the curriculum to be learnt. Whilst implementing new approaches to learning through problem based learning or alternative assessment, teachers can leverage on emerging web 2.0 media tools to design social and cultural learning activities for students.

Through such particpatory activities, school can start to equip students with just not essential learning, thinking and communication skills, but much more with the social and cultural skills necessary to participate fully in 21st century learning and working. This can and will be done in the hope that all our students can be equal participants in the dynamic and changing world of tomorrow. Notwithstanding this optimism, more developmental and empirical evidence is needed to affirm this belief.


Reference:
Wartella, E., O'Keffe, B., & Scantlin R. (2000). "Children and Interactive Media: A Compendium of Current Research and Directions for the future," New York: Markle Foundation. Available online at http://www.markle.org/downloadable_assets/cimcompendium.pdf