Participatory Culture as a Model for How New Media Technologies Can Change Public Schools. WCER Working Paper No. 2016-7

Students who have mastered the ability to create their own learning environments have an advantage over students who rely on traditional environments to structure their learning. Students who understand how to use new tools for school learning typically do not pick up these skills at school--they learn from the habits of parents and peers who work in knowledge fields (Watkins, 2013). Widespread access to many innovations in the digital world has great promise in engaging all students in 21st century learning, but without the active role of schools to remediate the class distinctions, the participation gap will continue to widen in ways that reflect social inequalities. This paper addresses the gap between the potential of new media tools for transforming learning in and out of schools and the school commitment to technologies that support testing and accountability. The authors argue that the gap between schools and digital worlds can be "intentionally bridged" if affordances of widely used new media environments and tools, such as makerspaces, video games, citizen science, fantasy sports and youth media arts organizations are matched with needs that traditional schools often struggle to meet. Matching affordances with needs means that educators do not have to invent entirely new approaches to teaching and learning. Rather, they can leverage learning practices widely used outside schools to answer questions raised by teachers and learners in schools. The authors propose the idea of "participatory culture" as a robust model for how to think about the emerging practices of learning in digital media spaces. The participatory culture framework helps to make sense of learning in and out of schools, and points toward viable paths to integrate the best of new media experience into contemporary school design.