LICESO

The civic involvement of students of compulsory secondary education from Andalusia in social networks (LICESO).

Group: Research Group ICUFOP (Curriculum research and teacher training) Consolidated Group HUM-267 of the University of Granada.

Dates: 2015-2018

Financing Entity: Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Project I+D of Excelence. Secretary of State for Research, Development and Innovation. General Directorate for Scientific and Technical Research.. Reference: EDU2014-51961-P.

Abstract:

The major interest of this research looks toward the Thiessen & Cook-Sather (2008) experience, regarding students in Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO in Spain). In this project, we will focus on students experiences with citizenship in ESO, an indeed relevant issue (Inman & Burke, 2009). We will try to identify the students’ “democratic feelings” (Harber, 2008), the “ethos” inside the school institution, subjected to so many changes and pressures. We will also pay attention to students’ experiences in virtual scenarios. Both the school and virtual scenarios, the first more formal, ordered and foreseen, and the second, technological, open and very flexible, do interact and influence school learnings.

We also want to know the mutual implications of virtual and school scenarios–with regard to students’ experiences of citizenship–to identify students’ differences or inequities which entail different status because of their genre, social class, ethnicity or cultural issues. Moreover, we seek to find out the meaning that students give to their relationships and their knowledge of colective concerns in order to understand how they face such concerns in school and virtual scenarios. All these topics only can be enquired with a research method basically interpretive and implementing new trends in research about students’ activity understood as “experience.”

So far, only a few investigations have payed attention to the way students live and feel at the school institution through virtual scenario. We do not know any research project which searches for interactions between both scenarios taking as referent issues related to coexistence and citizenship.

We will discern between students’ experiences according to social class, culture or ethnicity in different territories. We will tackle these experiences which happen in urban, rural and new rural contexts as well as virtual settings–such as the usage of internet at home, cybercafes, social networks, MSN

Our major focus of interest is on students, but interactions with teachers and families will be taken into account in this project. We will also analyse virtual interactions with school staff in order to deep into our understanding of students’ democratic “ethos.”