My research focuses on the productive intersection of interest, learning, and
identity in kids’ lives, seeking first to document and analyze connections between these
areas and second to create and evaluate spaces that facilitate such connections. It is
well documented that students struggle with their engagement in academic disciplines when
spaces like school are felt to have different values, activities, and ways of being than
home or other social spaces students value. In other words, when students feel a gap
between who they are (or their “identity”) at home and who they are supposed to act at
school, their engagement and thus their learning suffer. This disconnect between
identities in- and out-of-school tends to be more prominent among non-dominant students,
and tends to exacerbate divisions of class, ethnicity, and gender. Yet when students feel
more connected—when they feel like themselves in a subject area at school or in another
learning setting—they tend to identify more strongly with that academic learning area.
This has an additional and perhaps equally important benefit of encouraging students to
thinking creatively by drawing on knowledge and practices across settings in their
academic learning. Studying the connective sites in kids’ lives, those social settings
that facilitate intersections between interest, learning, and identity, has two important
values. First, we need better theories for understanding the relationship between
engagement, interest, identity, and learning learning. Second, by understanding
connective sites better, we can facilitate the development of such connections in
students’ lives to promote more equity and creativity in learning.
As part of supporting and studying the relationship between interest, identity, and
learning I currently pursue three related research concerns: • Engaging kids in making
interest-driven technological objects that unit interests and learning through the
creation of objects, • Studying and providing design feedback on massive online spaces
for children and youth that can act as connective spaces, • Developing blended methods
that incorporate large scale data mining and ethnographic understanding in order to
understand processes of learning, engagement, and identity development in both digital
design making and massive online spaces.
These interests have guided my studies in virtual worlds and STEM (science, technology,
engineering & math) education in and across classrooms, clubs, and digital social
environments. I spent several years studying and writing about identity, avatar design,
ethnicity, gender, and cheating in the virtual world of Whyville.net. Related, I recently
co-authored a critical review of children’s participation in social networking sites for
the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. Some of my current studies focus on the role of aesthetics,
learning processes, and gender in kids’ designs with digital technologies, specifically
with computational textiles and computer programs made with Scratch. Thus I am especially
interested in digital media that draws together creative production and social sharing of
kid-created media.
I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and a recipient of the
Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Best Student Paper award in 2007. I am serving
as program chair of AERA’s Special Interest Group Media, Culture, & Curriculum.
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