Second Life: Offering Marginalized Youth a Second Chance
- Autores: Sneha Veeragoudar Harrell, Dor Abrahamson
- Localización: SLACTIONS 2009 International Conference: Life, imagination, and work using metaverse platforms: Proceedingsof the SLACTIONS 2009 International Conference / Leonel Morgado (ed. lit.), Nelson Zagalo (ed. lit.), Ana Boa Ventura (ed. lit.), 2009, ISBN 978-972-669-924-8, págs. 128-133
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
At an alternative high school serving predominantly at-risk underrepresented students evicted from mainstream education, we implemented Fractal Village, a critical/computational/constructionist-pedagogy (C3 ) learning environment of my design. Fractal Village, instantiated in the virtual-world "Second Life," constituted an empirical environment to research my emergent model of mathematical/computational agency (m/c) as well as an intervention aiming to foster such agency.
Key research objectives were to: (1) study relations amongst cognitive, affective, material, technological, and social factors that would contribute to individual development of m/c agency; (2) delineate design principles for fostering m/c agency; (3) implement a sustainable program in collaboration with school personnel.
The student cohort engaged collaboratively in virtual-world imaginative construction activities each manifesting generative themes (Freire, 1968), to which the designers-as-teachers tailored mathematical and computer-science concepts, such that students appropriated the STEM content apropos of tackling their own emergent construction problems. Through the lens of three case studies, we argue that to build agency, students must develop both skills and dispositions—a spiraling inter-constructive growth. We conclude that we can, and must, engage at-risk youth by helping them to build STEM identities, engaging their a priori m/c agency, and customizing skills and dispositionsrelated classroom discursive supports.
