Abstract
In the 21st century, what role does interest play in the organization of equitable learning opportunities for young people? Drawing on a large corpus of interview data from a longitudinal study of fifty-four adolescents involved in interest-driven afterschool activities domestically and abroad, we investigate the role of youths’ interests in their everyday lives. Cognizant of the growing emphasis from sociocultural learning scholars on issues of interest, agency, and engagement as they relate to learning, we explore youths’ interests from their perspective—that is, we highlight the ways in which youth themselves made sense of their interests in relation to the rest of their lives. Informed by social practice theory, our analysis situates the interests articulated from the first-person perspectives of youth amidst the broader sociocultural situations from which they arose. Analysis of data reveals the material and social constitution of interest itself—and calls for increased attention to the interplay between social relations and material realities as key mediators of contemporary learning opportunities.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 51-60 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Learning, Culture and Social Interaction |
| Volume | 19 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2018
Funding
We are grateful to the Connected Learning research team at the University of Colorado Boulder for their helpful feedback on the many versions of this manuscript, as well as to the adults and young people involved in the Connected Learning programs that generously agreed to speak to us about their experiences in these programs. Funding for the development of the survey and interview effort for this study comes from the MacArthur Foundation . All opinions expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the authors. We wish to thank the youth leaders in the sites that facilitated data collection for the field test and members of the Connected Learning Research Network for their generous input into the data collection process and feedback on the protocols themselves. We are grateful to the Connected Learning research team at the University of Colorado Boulder for their helpful feedback on the many versions of this manuscript, as well as to the adults and young people involved in the Connected Learning programs that generously agreed to speak to us about their experiences in these programs. Funding for the development of the survey and interview effort for this study comes from the MacArthur Foundation. All opinions expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the authors. We wish to thank the youth leaders in the sites that facilitated data collection for the field test and members of the Connected Learning Research Network for their generous input into the data collection process and feedback on the protocols themselves.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation | |
| University of Colorado Boulder |
Keywords
- Interest
- Learning
- Social practice theory
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education