Children's pedagogic rights in the web 2.0 era: A case study of a child's open access interactive travel blog

Year: 2017

Author: Beryl

Type of paper: Abstract refereed

Abstract:
In this research session we examine the web 2.0 blogging experiences of one eight year old travel
blogger. Theoretically speaking, the construction and sharing of artefacts via an online blog are conceived of as a form of pedagogy. The research question is centred on 'What does the interactive function of a web 2.0 blogging experience make available in terms of a child's pedagogic rights?'. This instrumental case study is made up of 56 written and photographic travel blog posts covering some 11 411 words and 150 photos over 170 days, as well as the 187 replies from external blog participants. Background information about the child, his family and the context of the blogging project is provided via an informal interview with him and his mother. In his last work, Bernstein (2000) proffered that pedagogic encounters should be contributing to developing the minimal conditions of democracy by invoking three pedagogic rights for the learner: the right to individual enhancement; the right to social inclusion; and the right to political participation. For this research, we developed an analytical framework capable of rendering visible what the travel blog project made available in terms of the three pedagogic rights of individual enhancement, the right of social inclusion and the right to political participation is developed and activated. Four core findings emerge. The first finding is that the web 2.0 experience was not only pleasurable for this young child travel blogger, but he was also able to engage all three of his pedagogic rights and thus benefit from this authentic activity. Second, the blog entries show that social inclusion does not necessarily have to be a human-on-human encounter. Third, in this blogging experience, the pedagogic rights of individual enhancement (80% of posts) and social inclusion (96% of posts) dominated the right to political participation (39% of posts). Fourth, despite claims that the interactive function of web 2.0 has the potential to boost 'individualism of meaning-making and action' (Selwyn,2011), in this case, the blogging experience did not always manifest itself to capitalise on the transformative potential of this experience for this young child travel blogger. Our finding that this child's active participation in social media was primarily 'social' suggests that school-based education may need to rethink its responsibility for overtly facilitating the development of the pedagogic right of political
participation so that children's three rights are guaranteed.

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