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Summative report: Identity, communities and citizenship

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Professor Helen Haste, Harvard Graduate School of Education and University of Bath (2009)

Keywords: community, society, technology, communication, IT

This Report addresses three overlapping and interlocking domains; identity, community and citizenship. The Challenge will also explore the intersection of identity and community, and identity and citizenship, and the ways in which changing technologies are likely to impact all.

Common to all three domains is communication, between persons, persons and institutions, and persons and information sources. It is here that new technologies are central; as well as changing forms of communication, they make highly visible how pervasive communication is in our lives. Core elements of all three domains are collaboration, participation and engagement with, and within, both the real and virtual worlds, in which we are active as agents intersecting with other agents. Information is not just something we access via a conduit; it is negotiated, actively communicated – and modified through our engagement with it.

The implications for future education are that educational policies, practices and institutions need to equip young people with the critical and technical skills to interact with technology effectively, to facilitate the development of positive and empowered identities and relationships and to be responsive to barriers or resistances that may conflict with or impede such agendas.

The Challenge’s key terms have multiple, nuanced and ambiguous meanings:  as such, working definitions are necessary:

By identity I shall mean, broadly, the ways that feel authentic for describing one’s self, which include multiple ’selves’ appropriate in different contexts. Such identity may include a sense of efficacy and agency – or its absence.  Identity politics, for example, is the pursuit of empowerment among people who are disadvantaged or marginalised but nevertheless are firmly committed to their personal identities.

Within this definition, this Report will explore:

  • the ways in which identity develops through individual self-exploration and experimentation in relation to ideas, others and the external world
  • identities associated with group memberships, including gender, disability, generation, value-based, ethnic, regional and national
  • sense of efficacy and agency associated with such identities and the implications for facilitating empowerment, for managing disempowerment, and for identity politics – social support and action, including resistance, designed to give voice to the identity group
  • how each of these intersects with technology.

By community I shall mean groups whose association has coherence, function and meaning to its members.  The term ‘community’ is contested and it is changing as a consequence of social, political and technological developments.  Exploring these changes is part of the agenda that this Challenge has addressed.

Community will be explored in relation to:

  • theories of what community means, its functions and practices and the ways in which a community builds and sustains those functions
  • the core features that subjectively comprise membership of a community and an identity related to that community; these may include shared values, sense of place, lifestyle, locality
  • the criteria, and means, by which a community includes and excludes members
  • how communities communicate and respond to members and how technology is changing this
  • how a community is defined externally and the implications of this for members
  • how intergroup relations are connected to the development and maintenance of group membership
  • the relationship between communities, identity politics and social change
  • the role of technology in these.

Citizenship is also a contested domain. The Challenge explores some issues around citizenship status but primarily in this Report I will address questions around the changing boundaries of ‘civic participation’, and the factors which contribute to both the extent and forms of young people’s engagement, specifically:

  • how the definition of civic participation is changing, from conventional activities to a wider range of action
  • how changing technologies alter the means of participating and therefore the definition of ‘active citizenship’
  • what factors, including identity and community factors, contribute to a sense of agency and motivation for young people’s participation
  • what factors create or perpetuate inefficacy in relation to civic participation
  • the changing boundaries of the domain within which persons are ‘citizens’ including participation as part of a self-identified community, whether local or global, and the relationship of this to the traditional citizenship of a nation state.

Any exercise in prediction must recognise its core limitations and therefore what its purpose can usefully be.  What WILL change? There are things that will not change at all. There are things that will not change fundamentally, yet the way they are practised, or the form they take, may change. There are things which, as a consequence of technological, social, political or economic developments, will change quite considerably.

Some changes we can predict. We know that the relative proportions of generations will tilt upward. As ‘youth’ diminish as a proportion of the population it is probable that ‘youth culture’ may become even more distanced from the adult world and more marginalised. As work patterns and the life cycle of work increasingly fragment, identities associated with work and its communities will adjust. Education will need to facilitate developing the competence for managing such identities.

In the three domains addressed in this Challenge, values play an important role. Our current values guide our thinking about preferable, as well as possible and plausible, futures. The dominant social values of Britain today are essentially ‘liberal’. They include diversity, equality of opportunity, religious tolerance, non-violence and participatory citizenship. However we should not take contemporary values for granted, nor assume that their public support will continue in its present form. In looking forward twenty-five years, we should be aware of the uncertainties of history. Twenty-five years ago Thatcherite neo-conservatism changed the face of British values and had a large impact on education. The current economic recession could have major consequences for how the public view our objectives.

While it is likely that educators will continue to have the objectives of overcoming inequality, exclusion and injustice, potential obstacles to their implementation might easily include emergent religious fundamentalism, neo-conservative values that re-emphasise competition, increased social disruption due to economic privation, nationalism and fears about immigration. ‘Threats’ from marginal groups – such as religious fundamentalists – tend to be seen currently as issues of ‘diversity’ and the management of minority interests. If major political and economic forces – national or international – tip the balance of public opinion towards a more defensive position for liberals, a different agenda may emerge.

Currently, we see both highly optimistic and highly pessimistic predictions, rooted in contemporary value concerns but which risk missing out whole areas of relevance. For example, some have argued that individually-controlled information retrieval and communication will make schools redundant, as students can access knowledge at their own pace, from their own homes, with minimal guidance and monitoring by teachers. This prediction makes huge assumptions about the function of the school as a social and moral community, and the mechanisms by which young people learn – and deal with obstacles to understanding. This Report reviews material that does suggest the need to transform the current school system but the ‘death of the school’ narrative fails to take account of the identity, community and citizenship functions served by a school-like institution.

The core questions of the Challenge concern how technological developments precipitate, facilitate or impede development and performance within each of the three domains, identity, community and citizenship. Some new technologies do not alter relationships or social practices, only the ways that these are conducted.  In other cases, the new technology transforms social practices and social institutions. For example, despite the different skills involved, the social function of emailing friends may be little different from writing them a letter. However, using the same skills to organise a mass demonstration may represent a transformation of practices. Phoning from a mobile is still a form of telephone conversation, but a landline is in a static place and a mobile is an individual body prosthesis so friends and family can be in perpetual connection, with very different boundaries of access and privacy.

I will focus on four developments, specifically relating to communication, that are central to the three domains of this Challenge.

One is the media, by which I mean professionally produced information, fact or fiction. The conduits of traditional media have proliferated enormously. They play a vital role in reflecting, reproducing and indeed modifying cultural narratives, values and norms, and will continue to do so, and so contribute to the formation of identity.

A second development is the capacity of everyone who has the equipment and minimal skills, to access information. Barring censorship, in principle all areas of human knowledge are universally accessible.

A third development is that access is interactive.  The individual can add, create and modify information, and can set up communication networks.  She can do this anonymously, or within her own identity or that of one or many avatars. This creates opportunities for exploring and experimenting with identities and communities.

Gaming is one manifestation of this development, providing huge scope for playful-but-serious explorations of identity and community, but also providing an interactive mode of cultural transmission via the narratives in the games and the way that they are played; Ian Bogost for example argues that games are rhetorical persuasive tools. Numerous ‘educational’ games are being produced to purvey desired cultural messages.  Because interactive technology facilitates influencing others in ways that were beyond the scope of most people until today, it has a major impact on citizenship. This may be democratising as it removes control of the flow of information (in either direction) from the traditional gatekeepers; however open channels can also give more power to technocratic filtering.

A fourth technological development concerns prostheses. Developments which can counter disability (for example deafness) have implications not only for diversity and inequality, but also for identity. We cannot assume that all persons with disabilities will wish to be ‘cured’, particularly if the ‘cure’ is only partial. Conceivable prostheses in the near future include pharmaceutical enhancements of mental function, which – whether legally available or not – would require a radical rethink of the time-pressured unseen examination. More exotic projections include implanted prostheses – for example tagging children’s and vulnerable adults’ bodies to keep track of them.

How does new technology enter life space, and how do people in different roles respond to it? Where are new technologies located in young people’s life spaces? How have they been transformative? What might or might not be durable? By ‘life space’ I mean how the individual interfaces with the external world through social and technological intersections, language and social practices.

A new technology initially performs existing social practices; it is an enhancing adjunct to current tools. In due course the additional potential of the new technology becomes apparent, and new social practices develop. However, what seems like potential to an ‘expert’ is not necessarily taken up by users in the way predicted. Unpredicted uses of new technology happen, and the way that social practices are transformed does not necessarily accord with the scenario of the designer .

Mobile phone penetration for adolescents in most industrialised countries approaches 100%. As the first widely used hand-held prosthesis it is the first experience we have of wholly individual agency in managing communication and sending digital information amongst one’s community – pictures, music, and other software. Even before possessing machines that could access the Internet, young people have become used to actively, instantly and autonomously mastering information digitally. As Justin Reich’s review shows, Web 2.0 has substantially increased informal communication in the hands of young people.  Adoption is rapid; two years ago over 50% of US teenagers had created pages on Facebook and MySpace; the number is undoubtedly higher today. Reduced costs and improved technology have transformed communication. Sharing information, whether personal or not, is possible for everyone, conversations can be global and blogs enable one to keep a ‘public’ diary and to monitor those of others.

This places young people as active agents in what they add to as well as take from the virtual world. It removes geographical boundaries of communication, and it blurs the traditional boundaries of public and private. As hand-held devices become less expensive, this will expand. Reich points out that in February of 2008 over 112 million blogs were tracked worldwide, with probably over 70 million more in China. As we shall explore more in the context of citizenship, Obama’s campaign depended on the blogging activities of millions of supporters – with very low cost and extremely rapid transmission of information.

The ‘life space’ opened up by new technology transcends previous boundaries, even before the individual enters the alternative virtual world of avatars, games and fantasy. Gaming is a major life space activity. Half of UK children between five and fifteen play computer or video games daily. Millions of people aged over fifteen are engaged in large-scale interactive games, often internationally. Gaming offers entry into an alternative culture in which values are played out in the game, and the intellect is challenged to multi-layered information processing.  This has stimulated creative thoughts on how gaming could be used for new ways of learning or to foster moral, social or civic awareness.

Eva Vass’s review documents how gaming requires “attention, motivation and perseverance for long stretches of time, quite often coupled with extensively delayed rewards.” Gaming also requires multitasking, cognitively complex and rapid problem-solving and information-processing, all of which take place within a collaborative and interactive context. Play has always been seen as essential for children’s development, and in the contemporary urban world free play is constrained by various physical and social risks. The world of gaming offers aspects of free play, including bridging thought and action, and engaging emotion as well as cognition. Vass concludes, “due to its fundamentally interactive and participatory nature, new technology provides a platform for the free exploration of a virtual landscape and participation in shared activities in virtual space.”  Gaming is relevant to all three domains of the Challenge.

The potentially transformative nature of new technology is also explored by both Reich and Vass. Vass reviews the question of whether our minds (and possibly brains) are being altered by interaction with new technology; James Flynn for example argues that the accelerated IQ scores in industrialised nations over the past century are due to changing ‘habits of mind’ consequent on ‘cognitive habituation’ to a more scientific way of thinking. Vass summarises the ‘new mindset’ in terms of habituation to complexity, propensity for experimentation, multimodal content, information foraging, democratic forms of social practice and growing capacity to collaborate with others.

First, thinking is embedded in the cultural context. Thinking involves negotiating meaning and understanding in continual interaction with others. It is not just a private act going on inside one individual’s head. Second, new technology requires different skills from those rooted in traditional formal education and the individual’s deep reading of hard copy texts. We now must work with a more complex interplay of written text, images, and graphics and sounds. Media material, including drama, is presented in faster, more swiftly changing units (such as the length of film takes) and the plots of soaps are multi-threaded. Information gathering and processing are participatory. As Reich discusses, the ability to modify wikis requires new skills of editing, and also opens up engagement with the text that is not present in traditional media.

These ways of thinking are practised in the world of leisure, and some are becoming increasingly routine in the business world.  However, adoption of new technology is both surprising and uneven. Some assumptions about who might be slow adopters, and why, have proved ill-founded; costs are dropping all the time and although there are still large sectors of the population who cannot afford the equipment, this may moderate considerably in the near future. In the history of most technology that becomes routinely part of our lives, we have seen barriers of age, gender, or lack of technical proficiency dissolve once the user interface becomes simpler, and the technology’s uses become more salient to one’s life space.  As we shall see when exploring how technology intersects with identity, community and citizenship, ‘need to know’ and changing social practices promote surprisingly rapid acquisition of both tools and techniques.

It is frequently asserted that gender is a ‘problem’ for new technology even though two variables that have long been known to contribute to gender effects are in fact highly malleable; the first is the nature of the material or task, the second is level of confidence in one’s skills. Both matter in women’s and girls’ performance with new technology. Louise Madden’s review of gender and the Internet explores some of the factors and myths, about women’s ‘resistance’ to technology.  Both location and the context of technology and its use are salient.

Any new expertise is best acquired through engagement in everyday activities, therefore those who have legitimate use of a machine are more likely to become experts. The person who purchases a tool is frequently its ‘owner’ in the sense of determining is primary use and location. The more routine the technology, the less formal the space in which it is located. Home television sets initially were centrally located within the family’s main social space, they then migrated to other leisure areas of the household as they became routine possessions. Computers, because of their mixed functions as ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ follow a slightly different path.

Computer technology tends to be purchased by men, although a prime reason for the purchase is children’s use (ostensibly educational but in practice also leisure use). ‘Ownership’ is also invested in expertise, which is likely to be shared by fathers and children, rather than mothers. Women’s use of a computer depends also on its location. A computer in the paternal ‘den’ locates the machine as the province of the father, with limited access to both spouse and children. A computer in the children’s bedroom limits parental access after their bedtime.

These territorial tropes have been used to explain women’s later adoption of technology and their identity as ‘non-expert’. However many activities involving technology rapidly become widespread as their cost drops – online banking has spread fast. Some areas of shopping are becoming routinely online, for both sexes.  Women’s use of computers is expanding rapidly, particularly email which is replacing letter writing and telephoning – traditional community-maintaining activities of women. A clear implication is that the spread of technology beyond the ‘young male geek’ stereotype is happening faster than some predicted. ‘Obstacles’ disappear once people find a ‘need to know’ reason to acquire the skills, especially to perform routine tasks.

Ellen Helsper’s review of young people’s responses to risks and challenges on the Internet also unpacks some assumptions – and pitfalls – about the take-up of technology. One narrative locates technical expertise as a generational phenomenon, comparing ‘digital natives’, those born after 1980 who grew up with technology and have – it is presumed – no problems with it, and ‘digital immigrants’, those born before 1980, who had to acquire new skill profiles. Helsper argues that this is both misleading and short-sighted.

Many inequalities in access to technology still remain and there is a wide range of actual skill, and also of confidence in one’s skills. One consequence is that young people who lack skills may adopt an ‘ostrich’ tactic both in relation to their limitations, and also in relation to the wide variety of risks that the Internet poses.  Helsper argues that a ‘digital native’ model militates against both skill acquisition, and the development of the competence to deal with managing risk and negative experiences. Such assumptions may create further obstacles to technological advances in education. Also today’s ‘digital natives’, insofar as they truly exist, will rapidly become ‘immigrants’ in the face of new developments.

For the future of education, identity is salient in the following ways:

  • how young people locate themselves vis a vis social groups, which is likely to have a role in their motivation to learn, their identification with the dominant values purveyed within education, their sense of agency with regard to participating in society and their preparation for this via school
  • the extent to which the marginalisation of groups on the basis of various forms of diversity is managed effectively within education, whether this means challenging discrimination and/or positively affirming difference
  • how is identity development facilitated within the educational context?
  • how can alternative and multiple identities be explored?
  • what messages do the educational agenda and curriculum convey about culturally normative, or desirable, forms and expressions of identity? what are the dominant values, narratives and explanations inherent both in the curriculum and in how it is purveyed by teachers and by the structure of educational institutions?

What does new technology do for identity? First, it opens up new avenues for developing and expressing one’s identity, through new ways to connect with others, and new ways to communicate. It expands the people and groups with whom one can communicate. These experiences may facilitate:

  • agency and choice; that one can be an active agent in developing, maintaining – and ending – one’s networks, and that one ‘belongs’ to a social group by choice not entirely by default.  One value message is that one has choice and should exercise it. The consumer’s right to choose, and to expect that choice to have outcomes, is a strong thread of some forms of youth culture, as Sarah Riley’s review explores.
  • the boundaries of identity and how these may be expanded or altered, physically or in other technological ways.
  • the expanded limits of identity including the management of multiple selves, in real as well as virtual life, and effective movement between these. This applies to multi-layered local and national identity as well as to movement between different social groups with whom one’s affiliation rests on shared values or interests.

Three things operate in the formation of identity. The first is the script.  Who we become as persons requires imagining possible future selves; throughout our development we make choices that steer us between the implicit scripts offered to us and modified by us, or those choices are made for us by circumstances. Cultural resources for scripts have expanded with the range of media available. As Sarah Riley’s and Thalia Magioglou’s reviews point out, the prolongation of financially dependent adolescence into a phase of ‘youth’ which may last well into the twenties allows young people a longer time to make such choices, and also, more time to try out alternatives. The addition of virtual role-taking and identity-playing activities, whether in fantasy games or in how one presents oneself on Facebook and in blog interactions, increases the potential for hands-on experiences of scripts and imagined selves.

A second dimension of identity development is social group membership, whether chosen or contingent. How strong is one’s identification with the social group, what are the reasons for it, and what are the consequences? A third dimension is location, and key experiences of that location are significant components of identity. Places have familiar memories and associations as well as symbolic reference. There are potential tensions around the relationship between this place and others. An oft-cited rhetorical example regarding immigrants and national identity was the ‘cricket test’; which team would an immigrant support if their ‘home’ team was playing a British one? This is a trivial example of a non-trivial point; to what extent does one’s attachment to one place, or national territory, create tensions with other attachments?

Identity is also about competence. For what demands of contemporary identity should education equip the growing person? One competence relates to mobility and to flexibility. Career patterns increasingly require relatively short-term commitment to a post, and often, career path changes through life. Many careers require relocation. Among other implications, this impacts on professional identity and such identity expressions as ‘I am a lawyer’ may come to mean more a domain of applicable knowledge than a job description. Planning one’s education for a lifelong career has become less salient than preparing the foundations for a range of options.

Mobile identity takes several forms. An increasing number of people will be working in several different regions and nations during their career, either physically moving or working via virtual means in several cultures. This will increasingly be the norm especially for the professional and managerial sector.   Such people retain their national identity but must be flexible and sensitive to the identities and perspectives of others. In addition, there is a pressure towards developing a wider or multiple, identity, being both British and European, engaging both with local and global issues . The practice of participation in international conversation, via blogging and wikis, as Reich describes, can lay the early foundations of these skills.

Another kind of mobile identity, that is likely to grow considerably over the next 25 years, is the phenomenon of young people whose parents may be of different nationalities, and who themselves have grown up in a series of locations as their parents move with the requirements of multinational employment. Currently, these young people tend to be educated in international schools but this may change as their numbers increase with multinational capitalism.  Such young people learn early to be flexible, adaptable and multi-lingual and to have a broad imaginary of their career options. However there is the question of their national identity and to whom do they feel civic commitment? They may be effective global citizens – but for whom do they vote?

A third category is immigrants. We are seeing the largest human migrations in history. In addition to questions of citizenship status, or discrimination from the host community, immigration has identity issues. National identity rests, for the ‘native’ population, on characteristics which are deemed inherent to the nation. This may include specifically defining as ‘other’, groups whose inclusion in the nation’s citizenship is resisted – for example the rhetoric around the ‘cultural threat’ of Islamic minorities. For those who enter the nation, whether as voluntary immigrants or as the colonised or invaded, acquiring a sense of, and commitment to, national identity means negotiating the adoption of ‘national characteristics’ in tension with retaining core features of the immigrant culture.  For nations (such as Britain) for whom as Denis Sindic’s review argues, multiculturalism is a central ethic of national identity, both these operate in tandem. In some other models, for example France, diversity is managed by attempting to subsume all identities to the dominant culture.

New technology does not invent imaginary space or media but it does make active participation with the imaginary possible. A question central to our imaginative lives is, ‘what if I did such and such?’ This becomes testable and its consequences managed, even if restricted by the parameters of a game.  First, this allows us to ‘produce’ an identity and explore it, and engage with others in playing it out. This is an active performance which also requires active management of the responses of others. While this can be seen as positive agency, as Sarah Riley points out it could also mean that “communication technologies are creating a situation where people understand aspects of themselves as only truly meaningful when offered up for the consumption of others”.

Broadly, there are three ways in which new technologies facilitate playing with alternative identities. There is reality self-presentation, interacting with others ‘as oneself’ even if there are several edited versions of this. This is the world of Facebook, and MySpace. This is ‘public’ to a degree not available before such technology. A second type of identity exploration comes from sharing narratives.  Kyoko Murakami’s review describes ‘digital storytelling’. Whether as an orchestrated or a spontaneous activity, technology-mediated interaction shares the description of an experience, creating collective memory and history. Meaning and a shared identity are co-constructed through the recollection and creation of the narrative. Murakami argues that this is a potential medium for giving disaffected and alienated youth empowerment and ownership of their identities.

Other initiatives using new technology have similar goals. One example is the World Film Collective, a group of young film makers working with disadvantaged young people in various parts of the world (Brazil, South Africa, Palestine) to make films using mobile phones as cameras. The young people make a DVD which presents their own experience authentically, as in digital storytelling. This has a citizenship component, making their voices heard, but they also acquire basic film-making and editing skills.

A third dimension of role-playing and identity experimentation is in gaming, where acting out an avatar role, usually within a complex scenario, involves many other people, requiring collaboration, teamwork, planning and considerable perseverance and attention. The key identity element is the interaction of the avatar with others, shaping and maintaining one’s alternative identity so that it works in the context, and the management of interaction with others in the sometimes threatening virtual world. Aubry Threlkeld’s review for example describes both bullying and unpleasant imaginary encounters in a queer virtual identity. On a more positive note, activities such as Second Life can be a sophisticated playing out of a complex alternative identity with positive products and outcomes.

Because ‘place’ is concrete it is a seductive explanation of identity. In one metaphor of place, virtual communities of the future are contrasted with the ‘real’ places of the past. Heike Doering’s and Nick Nash’s reviews show that this is a false distinction, and that it is highly likely that people will continue to define themselves in terms of a place-located identity and community. Place identity is as likely to be strengthened as weakened by the development of technologies. In diaspora societies, attachment to the ‘home’ town or region is largely sustained by a virtual network.

Nash argues that it is only when people engage in something that acts upon a place that it gains meaning – whether this is the physical or the social domain. For some, this ‘action’ is the conscious choice to locate to somewhere in particular. The meaning of that choice is located within, and contributes to, identity. Heike Doering’s review explores the concept of ‘elective belonging’ which is one manifestation of the ethic of choice.

The core question is, how do we make sense of a ‘place’? Making meaning of ‘place’ may arise from threat, whether natural or human. The work on risk perception provides a rich example of how people construct their local environment. They have clear ideas of what and where risk lies, how they will respond to it and what is tolerable within a local perspective. Air pollution for example may be acceptable where it comes from the factory that is the main source of income for the community.

National identity is problematic. A nation is a ‘place’, geographically but we largely experience our nation through metaphor, narrative and symbol – even if we claim that its familiar physical aspects are the source of our attachment. Denis Sindic’s review reminds us that national awareness arose in the 18th century when print media became widespread, both purveying ‘national’ news and invoking the experience of sharing that knowledge with others who read the same media. National identity can be fostered by threat, creating solidarity based on the boundary between ‘us’ and the (alien) other. National identity also depends on heroes, as Sindic shows with regard to Scottish and Welsh devolution, who are invoked as icons that reflect national qualities of the nation, in narratives and stories through which members of the nation find an identity.

Will national identity survive in the changing world? There are several different discourses around this. First, globalisation may be either a goal for those who want to transcend nationalism, or a more gloomy prediction for those who see it as a manifestation of capitalism. Second there is the EU; is it a desirable transnational state, or the maw into which ‘our’ identity is lost?  Third, there is the virtual world, where because there are no boundaries, will people generate new communities defined by elective belonging based on common interests and values – or will they become de-individualised because they have no longer any roots?

While globalisation expands the scope of identity, it seems paradoxically, that this is dependent on a secure base of national or regional identity. Globalisation can be a perspective that allows for exploring a larger universe of discourse, within which it becomes easier to see, and care about, one’s own space.  Sindic’s review shows us that people feel both European and attached to their own nation. In the virtual world, it appears that people identify themselves as representatives of their nation, while entering into open dialogue across national boundaries. However, local national identity trumps EU identity even though increasingly our routine actions upon our environment confront us with our larger connection to Europe.

If the idealised goal is to create supra-national young people, it would seem doomed. If the goal is to use the opportunities of new technology to obviate the more negative aspects of nationalism there is more hope. The enthusiasm with which many young people are already routinely interacting with other nationals via new technology suggests that this may be fostering open and multiple identities. The more positive conclusion is that people are managing multiple identities comfortably and on the whole are not trapped either by place or nationalism.

We should be somewhat wary however; political, economic and social change can rapidly create nationalistic and xenophobic retrenchment. The perceived threats from immigration continue to fuel the BNP (5% of a sample of young people in a recent study supported the BNP) and the fear of terrorism can so easily be translated in anti-Islamic sentiment. While this is currently at bay, over twenty five years we may expect to see considerable fluctuations. We have also seen transnational ‘localisation’ based on values, including religion. The World Wide Web plays an increasing role in transnational evangelism and fundamentalism.

Sarah Riley’s review of youth cultures explores one aspect of ‘chosen’ social groups and identities. She argues that communication technology, a consumer society and an extended period of financially dependent (or financially uncommitted) youth all facilitate a ‘playful pick and mix approach’ to ‘a kaleidoscope of temporary, fluid and multiple subjectivities’. Within this there is scope for practising multiple identities and for managing easy movement between them.  Furthermore, these are desirable skills for twenty first century life.  However, young people are exposed to considerable commercial pressures and to identities which are heavily loaded with commercial interests – whether in terms of clothing, music, or body style. The ‘choice’ therefore is a choice between identities of consumption.

These choices are made also within the wider cultural value of neo-liberalism, which Riley argues emphasises individual freedom and an ethic of choice even though these are largely illusory. Within this value system, to be able to make a choice is a right, and by making a choice one is understood as being an agent and taking responsibility for one’s self. It also has the moral connotation that one’s appearance and one’s lifestyle are within one’s control, so a well-toned body reflects responsible choices, flab does not.  Even if the choice is potentially damaging, the act of choosing is a freely made rational act. This includes entitlement to excess, to the voluntary pursuit of hedonism and intoxication and even the right to choose a dangerous ‘lifestyle’ of anorexia.

The contemporary cultural value of neo-liberalism, manifested in political as well as youth consumer circles, is likely to remain a dominant value unless quite a substantial cultural shift occurs. Even if the recession cuts back consumerism and the display of goods becomes less acceptable, the personal value of freedom of choice may still remain, an ethic with which fluid identities and youth cultures is consistent. An alternative (though not necessarily conflicting) explanation of multiple and fluid identities is neo-tribalism, a concept developed by Maffesoli. This argument is that young people form, and move through, small groups joined by values or interests. These groups communicate virtually but may also congregate physically. They provide a sense of belonging but also a sense of being an island of sovereignty, in which only the group’s rules prevail in the here and now.  Once the person moves to another group – and there may be numerous such transitions within a single 24 hour period – the new group’s rules apply. Again the dominant value here is freedom to choose and to define one’s identity.

By ‘unchosen’ identities I mean those that arise from contingencies of one’s body or environment that present potential challenges for identity. How is an identity constructed amongst a marginalised social group? To what extent is this a consequence of the dominant social groups’ positioning? In what ways do marginal groups affirm a positive identity? And what are the likely effects on the culture of ‘identity politics’?

One example of the cultural construction of an unchosen identity also demonstrates the role of traditional mainstream media, which are often overlooked in discussions of the implications of new telecommunications tools. The media’s role as a cultural resource and framer of our narratives, metaphors and explanations has been extensively researched and theorised at least since Marshall McLuhan’s classic work forty years ago. This is likely to continue even if in a form increasingly moderated by more interactive media. Mainstream media reproduce culture and by implication have the potential to modify culture.  This will probably continue even as media diversify. Mainstream media are already increasingly in competition with other channels of entertainment which offer other cultural messages.

David Weltman’s review paper presents a case study of the media representation of the British white working class, especially males. Whoever holds power over communication sets the terms of reference for the cultural story. Current media control is held by the middle class, and Weltman argues that the white working class are seen through a middle class perspective, frequently pathologised as moral failures and lacking self-management. They are seen primarily in leisure and family contexts, in work or in political activity only in extreme circumstances, such as industrial disasters, when individual ‘working class heroes’ emerge, while the conditions that caused the disaster remain unaddressed. In contrast, the non-white working class are often presented as economically deprived and oppressed – fitting into the contemporary agenda of recognising diversity.

Two other kinds of marginalised social groups having several commonalities are covered in the reviews.  Ruth Gwernan-Jones considers three types of disability, and Aubry Threlkeld explores non-heteronormative sexuality. Both domains are characterised by marginalisation, stigma and the management of identities in reaction to those societal positionings. They have both also been subject to a ‘medical model’ of explanation and de-legitimation as well as, or in tension with, a social construction model.

The groups are marginalised because the dominant society positions them as ‘different’ or ‘deficient’. This marginalisation is not only through language but also manifests itself materially and structurally. For example, for disabled people, a world of tools and mobility that has been built for the abled, excludes or limits their engagement. For other marginalised groups, routes to personal growth and adult fulfilment are thwarted by the absence of publicly recognised and valued models of, for example, their sexuality, and/or the absence of legal recognition of their relationships. It is not only a matter of ‘I am not able, or allowed, to be what I authentically am’ it is also a matter of ‘How as a growing person, can I find out what it means to be what I authentically am?’

Within such a framework, when the dominant group tries to overcome marginalisation it tends to be by addressing discrimination and ‘diversity’ issues.  However, the minority group’s response may affirm an identity which denies the ‘disabled’ label altogether. Such identity politics aim to overcome not only discrimination but also the labelling as ‘other’. In response, the structures that support the normative may adjust to include the hitherto marginal and so normalise it – an example would be if in all new buildings the transit between levels is never by steps but only by ramps, escalators or lifts, as is indeed the case in many airports.

Gwernan-Jones addresses several kinds of ‘disability’ in these terms. As she writes, the ‘disability model’ challenges the medical model, “encouraging a trend toward active, vocal disabled people, many of whom perceive their disability as a part of a positive personal and social identity and…would prefer to keep their disability rather than have it ‘cured”. The case of deafness is a strong example. The Deaf community positively assert that theirs is an alternative linguistic culture with a rich language, and not a ‘deficit’ situation. Cochlear implants for example make them less than completely effective members of the hearing culture; technology does not necessarily ‘help’. Dyslexia is slightly different; there has been a cultural shift.  Partly because of the technologies that compensate for aspects of dyslexia, it has become a much less marginalising condition.  However, these technologies are not targeted at dyslexics, or not only; they are part of cultural changes which have, almost incidentally, reduced the exclusion, marginalisation and stigma of dyslexia.

Threlkeld explores the way that heteronormativity still prevails in education, despite the significant changes that have taken place within the dominant culture in the legitimation of queer experience. He argues that anxieties on the part of the education establishment regarding teaching about sex, prevent appropriate teaching about sexualities. By prohibiting discussion of, or exposure to, alternative sexualities, a culture of heteronormativity, with homophobia and bullying, is perpetuated and young gay people have no legitimate framework within education for developing their identity except as marginals, defined by the dominant group. Censorship about gay identity also operates within the world of video games geared to children. In contrast, even the mainstream media have greatly expanded and normalised the representation of queer life and identity, although with a rather restricted and glamorised stereotype of ‘gay lifestyle’. New technology and the virtual world provide extensive resources for defining and developing a variety of queer identities. Queer identity politics have successfully normalised gayness such that homophobia is – at least in some circles – the new ‘pathology’. Nevertheless, this is still in definite tension with the message that young people get about the marginality of gayness and it is a far from universal message.

In the foregoing discussion of identity, much of what has been covered applies to ‘community’ because so much of identity derives from community participation and membership.  For example one’s social group is a primary source of identity, and the management of identity through technologies such as Facebook and MySpace is in fact a community activity. Youth subcultures, as described in Sarah Riley’s review, are communities. The discussion of ‘place’ and identity, as discussed by Nick Nash and Heike Doering, are also manifestations of community.

The reviews by Doering, Nash, Magioglou, Riley, Gwernan-Jones and Threlkeld all present examples of how elective belonging to a community may be empowering. Identification with a group with common experiences of marginalisation can affirm an identity that resists and redefines the construction by the dominant group – as we saw in Gwernan-Jones’ and Threlkeld’s reviews.  Nash and Sindic describe how perceived threat or risk – whether natural, of human origin or political – lead to community solidarity both in constructing a shared meaning, and in promoting collective action. In intergroup relations research, the importance of external threat in shaping both ingroup identity and ingroup solidarity is widely documented, as Sindic discusses. The creation of new states, and the reconstruction of states that have been suppressed through invasion or annexation, are marked by a combination of collective memorialisation of a former community, and explicit rejection of the oppressor/enemy.

This narrows somewhat the discussion of community as a distinct entity. I will focus on broad issues of technology in the context of definitions of community.

‘Community’ is a diffuse concept, made more messy by its values baggage. Idealised versions of community as a place of safety, support and empowerment exist alongside perceptions of communities as pernicious agents of conformity.  Each rests on a somewhat different analysis of what community members do to and for each other. The centrality of community is also problematic; behind liberal (and neo-liberal) enthusiasm for individualism and autonomy lies the assumption that the individual can transcend or resist his or her community, a position critiqued by communitarians and also by cultural psychologists who argue that we are inherently ’social’ in all aspects of our lives.

But what constitutes a community? David Studdert’s review, for example, asserts that community is more than contiguity – whether local or based on common interests; a community involves shared ‘beingness together’, an interaction that carries commitment and mutuality, not just sociality.

What are the processes of ‘community’ and how may they promote public or individual ‘good’? The basis of Robert Putnam’s communitarian stance is that communities are bound together by groups engaging in leisure activities, they create bonds and bridges that both empower members within a common identity, and lay the foundations, through local engagement, for the larger stage of national civic participation. The community is therefore the source of social capital which is in Putnam’s view the infrastructure of the democratic process.

It has been a recurrent, almost moral panic that new technology destroys community.  The flight, supposedly, to individualised communion with machines or to technological communication stripped of face to face interaction and warmth reflects some of the value baggage described above, and to some extent, Studdert’s critique also. However, technology in the form of telecommunications has been sustaining community for over a century. The key questions commonly asked are whether digital technologies enhance community or lead to atomisation, and whether online communities replace or reinforce offline communities?

Manuel Castells for example takes a structural – and radical – view, that the ‘network’ is the basis of all societies, and what new technology does is to speed up, facilitate and make more explicit what has been around throughout history (and prehistory). We connect to others through sharing information. This is a two way process between persons and a multi-way process amongst social groups.  We can expand or contract our network by adding people with whom we share information. We can exercise power over our information and over persons by inclusion and exclusion, and selective information-sharing. This is the basic structure of any community. In early history when communities were small and face to face, the reciprocity was obvious. With greater distance and larger groups, the apparent vertical, and controlled, passage of information arose from the long time-lag between sending and receiving, but Castells argues that the basic structure was the same. Modern technology restores the swift reciprocity of the network. This can be democratising or it can lead to control.

To create online communities requires effort and skill, and individual agency to join them. The extent to which these confer the sort of ‘belongingness’ that Studdert’s definition requires is open to debate, but there appears to be consensus that  one basis for community – on or offline – is shared values or interests. People join groups because they like being with people like themselves. This is something easily facilitated in virtual space. Doering argues that a ‘cosmopolitan’ identity derives from a community – whether face to face or virtual – that is really the concatenation of people from different nations who have common lifestyles and experience and who are probably not entering into the ‘local’ community in the geographical space they inhabit.

Two further examples challenge the anxieties about the ‘death’ of the face to face community. Keith Hampton describes the difference between dystopians who consider that new technology is destroying face to face life, and utopians who see the virtual world as the new location of thriving communities; he points out that the ‘loss’ of the community as it is described by dystopians long preceded new technology, and that in fact relatively small numbers of internet users describe themselves as members of a virtual community (though this may be changing). Online communities often overlap with off-line communities. Hampton’s ethnographic study of a small, newly built community in which 64% of residents were ‘wired’ from the start of their occupancy found that those who were wired were more likely to interact with their neighbours on and off-line and were more connected to their community.

In a review of studies of young people’s use of the Internet over two decades, Valkenburg and Peter found that, in contrast to fears that it would be socially isolated young people who spent more time on the Internet, it was the more socially competent who became active in using the internet as part of their social networking. They integrated Internet interaction into their social lives.  However, more socially anxious young people do prefer the more distanced, less face to face aspects of computer interaction. The authors conclude that in general Internet connection makes it easier for young people to self-disclose – and self-disclosure is an important part of establishing connection. This benefits boys more than girls, and social isolates more than the socially skilled. But the overall conclusion is that Internet connecting strengthens and expands social networks and communities.

Like ‘community’, ‘citizenship’ is a contested term. This is for two distinct reasons. First, the changing landscapes of nationality, immigration and globalisation have raised questions about what constitutes entitlement to citizenship status, alongside the moves made by governments to both include ‘new’ citizens through various hurdles of ‘integration’ and to exclude potential new citizens. Second, civic participation, as the mark of ‘citizenship’, has become contested.  Much research and policy writing around participation concentrated until recently on conventional forms of participation, especially voting and party support activities. Both the realities of young people’s civic engagement and changing theoretical perspectives about ‘participation’ have extended ‘participation’ to include community action and making one’s voice heard through collective action.

Globalisation does not offer citizenship and is unlikely ever to do so, but arguably, secure national citizenship enables the pursuit of global goals. The concept of the ‘global citizen’ is not therefore a status but a way of managing multiple layers of identity and having responsibility to multiple communities. Globally mobile and migratory people require the legal stability of clear national citizenship to protect and support their interests, their entitlement to participate in the democratic process, and also their identity. The EU creates another layer of citizenship status bringing with it additional rights and responsibilities. Whether or not there is tension or synergy between national and EU identity, EU citizenship status extends certain freedoms to members (e.g. the freedom to work, the range of institutions to which the individual can appeal for support).  However this also has the potential for increasing social and legal controls.

There has been much hand-wringing in many countries at the drop in young people’s voting in national elections. Gloomy prediction of ‘threats to democracy’ abound. How far the USA election in November 2008, in which 53% of young people voted compared to 37% in 1996, reflects a trend or a blip is uncertain . At the same time, young people’s increasing participation in other forms of civic engagement besides voting is being taken seriously. These data give a considerably more positive picture of young people’s civic engagement.

The shift in perspective began forty years ago as social movements such as civil rights and other forms of social protest emerged, and their role in political life was recognised.  Increasingly we are seeing research on the role that making one’s voice heard through collective action plays in the development of young people’s political identity.  Additionally, community action has come to be included in ‘participation’ both as a consequence of communitarian theory and also in the light of data that youth community action participation predicts adult engagement.

What promotes or fosters participation is also a contested field. Many writers have argued that knowledge is the key. However the evidence suggests that knowledge by itself does not promote motivation to engagement. Participation in hands-on civic experience especially if it can be seen to make a difference and is accompanied by reflection on the experience, appears to promote civic engagement as does experiencing a democratic classroom. As Reich notes, data relating specifically to new technology suggest that using blogs and wikis to make one’s voice heard, and gaming opportunities for proxy experiences of participation, facilitate civic engagement. There are caveats; making one’s voice heard via blogging may be as much about media self-expression as about really trying to have an influence on public opinion; more research on this is needed.

We need also to consider what creates political alienation and a sense of civic inefficacy.  As one example, in a 2005 British study, 25% of over 1000 11-21 year olds had not participated in any of the diverse civic activities listed (the list did not include online activities). Thalia Magioglou’s and Kyoko Murakami’s reviews explores the sense of civic inefficacy – powerlessness and disengagement – amongst many young people. One source may be that education in many countries still is based on authority and hierarchy which is sympathetic neither to the cultures of disadvantaged youth, nor to those youth who experience a different way of interacting with the world through new technologies. In addition, as Sarah Riley also points out, the extended period of ‘youth’, the ephemeral nature of much work, its associated insecurity and also mobility, are destabilising, and may contribute to uncertainty as to which community constituency one belongs. The research data strongly suggest that individuals for whom group identity is more relevant are more likely to participate in civic activities.  A consequence of this, Magioglou argues, is that many young people expect to participate in the future, rather than now; they feel like ‘citizens in waiting’.

The most comprehensive picture of youth involvement internationally comes from the 28 nation IEA study which involved over 90,000 young people aged 14-17. The data were collected in 1999. The countries included England, the USA and Australia, and several European countries, both ‘east’ and ‘west’, also two Latin American countries:

  • 80% expected to vote in national elections in the future
  • 59% expected to collect money for social causes
  • 45% expected to collect signatures for a petition
  • 44% expected to participate in a non-violent protest march; the figure for England was 28%
  • about 15% expected to participate in various forms of illegal protest; the figure for England was about 11%.

In current civic action:

  • 28% had been active in a school council; 19% in England
  • 28% had  collected money for a social cause; 55% in England
  • 15% had participated in an environmental organisation
  • 6% had participated in a human rights organisation.

Three-quarters of students claimed that the strongest messages they received from school about civic participation concerned cooperation with others, understanding people who have different ideas and how to protect the environment.  In comparison, 64% had learned to be patriotic (54% in England) and 55% had learned the importance of voting (41% in England).

Four distinct patterns of current civic action emerged among the 2005 British study; conventional participation (such as voting), making one’s voice heard, helping in the community and ‘active monitoring’. The latter involves paying attention to the news and discussing current affairs with friends and family, but did not involve current civic action. It was however associated with expectations of future engagement .

Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer identify three kinds of civic engagement which both incorporate types of action and the political intent of the action.  These are ‘ideal types’ but they overlap with emergent data. The personally responsible citizen obeys laws, acts responsibly, volunteers in times of crisis, and believes that to solve social problems, citizens must have good character. The participatory citizen is active in organising community efforts and knows strategies for accomplishing collective tasks. They believe that to solve social problems, citizens must actively take leadership positions within established structures. The justice-oriented citizen critically assesses social, political and economic structures, seeks out areas of injustice, and knows how social movements can effect systemic change. They believe that to solve social problems, citizens must question and change established systems and structures.

This model reflects a strongly liberal version of democratic action and goals. As a contrast, Olga Ververi’s review critically describes the OECD’s parameters of ‘civic competence’ currently being drawn up for the direction of civic education in the EU. These include desired ‘intended behaviours’, knowledge and values, mostly deriving from work on civic engagement including the IEA study. She argues however that the emphasis in the EU proposals is on the local community as the place for addressing social problems, which avoids collective action or seeing issues in the larger political and economic context.

This derives from an explicitly communitarian perspective in which, according to Ververi, ’social capital’ is located in the face to face community. The proposal specifically removes from the list of goals anything relating to protest (which includes lawful demonstration, boycotting products or signing petitions), and ‘positive attitudes towards immigrants’ – on the grounds that this is ’sensitive’, being linked to right or left politics. In conclusion, she says “it seems that the EU perception of citizenship is about a citizenship modality which does not aim at radical social changes but it intends to perpetuate the current order of things.”  As we shall see, this is even more evident in how the EU perceive e-citizenship.

Participation in some form of service activity, or other contact with ‘real world’ issues, appears to facilitate engagement as long as students have an active role in planning the project, and in directly reflecting on the experience.  As an example, Westheimer and Kahne compare two projects. In one the task was to gather data on local opinion about community services; in the other, the task was to find out about deprivation, inequality of access and violence in their community. Both programmes ‘worked’ but in different ways. Both groups increased their sense of civic efficacy and their belief that the government had responsibility for those in need. The first group, however, showed increased knowledge and social capital. In contrast, the second group developed much increased interest in politics, leadership efficacy and personal responsibility, and structural explanations for poverty.

New technologies have greatly expanded the scope of participation. As Reich and Vass describe, wikis and blogs have become major means for making one’s voice heard. The Obama campaign capitalised on new technology, in distributing its message, in recruiting and mobilising an online community of support, and in disseminating news. Many argue that this has transformed campaigning forever, the entire process reflecting a grassroots model, being bottom-up not top-down, even though the ‘bottom-up’ engagement was orchestrated in part by the Obama campaign machine.

The beginning of web-based activism is often ascribed to the WTO protest in Seattle in 1999, where 50,000 people were recruited electronically to participate in a demonstration. Later followed anti-Iraq war actions worldwide. Website-based campaigns and blogs proliferate, even when unaccompanied by physical protest. As Lance Bennett, from the MacArthur Foundation initiative, points out, a positive interpretation is that young people are becoming more empowered via peer networks and online communication to express themselves and make their own creative choices. A more pessimistic interpretation is that, despite their increased sense of efficacy, youth are becoming disengaged from conventional political activity, but more involved in consumer politics, on MySpace for example.

Bennett sees a product of new technology being a shift from what he terms the ‘Dutiful’ to the ‘Actualising’ citizen. The Dutiful citizen is the ‘traditional civic education [textbook] ideal’ who feels an obligation to participate in government-centred activities, to use mass media to become informed about government issues, to regard voting as the core democratic act, and to join civil society organisations or express interests through parties that typically employ one-way communication. In contrast, the Actualising Citizen has a diminished sense of government obligation and a higher sense of individual purpose, voting is less meaningful than more personally-defined acts such as consumerism, community volunteering or transnational activism. The AC mistrusts the mass media and politicians and favours loose networks of community action, often sustained through friendships, peer relations and social ties maintained through ICT.

Jeffrey Juris describes the ‘cultural logic of networking’ – changing the underlying metaphors of social action: “The self-produced, self-developed and self-managed network becomes a widespread cultural ideal, providing not just an effective model of political organising but also a model for re-organising society as a whole” (p. 353). This reflects the same pattern of horizontal connection, open information and decentralised collaboration that Reich in his review attributes to new technology’s civic potential. But there are downsides of such developments; what happens, for instance, if no-one responds to one’s blogs, or only the already converted? How can we control offensive blogs – and the communities whom they serve? And how best can we develop civic curricula that enable young people to achieve the full political as well as personally-empowering potential of ICT?

Already a ‘bottom-up’ model of democratisation and e-citizenship may be being constrained. Olga Ververi unpacks how the OECD appears to see the potential of e-democracy for technological infrastructures to “mould citizenship into a narrow, quiescent and consumerist model of civic action”. Three OECD objectives suggest e-democracy exclusively operated by government as a means of disseminating information and controlling decision-making, dialogue and networking and the political agenda. These three objectives are:

  • Information: a one-way relation in which the government produces and delivers information for use by citizens
  • Consultation: a two-way relation in which citizens provide feedback to the government on issues that re-defined by the government, and where information is provided by the government
  • Active participation: a relation based on partnership with government in which citizens have a role in proposing policy option and shaping the dialogue, but the final responsibility for policy-making falls to the government

These are clearly extensions of current consultation practices, which have indeed recently opened up dialogue considerably, but nevertheless they reveal the assumption that new technologies will make more facile and controllable what is already happening. Management of e-democracy is explored also by Stephen Coleman within the MacArthur programme. He points out that differing views reflect different conceptions of young citizens. On the one hand, in ‘managed citizenship’ young people are regarded as apprentice citizens in the process of transition; “they are human becomings rather than human beings.” (Coleman, 2008, p.191).  Their ‘apprenticeship’ entails learning how to exercise responsible judgement in a risky and complex world, including the Internet as an anarchic realm which is unsafe for young people “not only because their social innocence might be exploited by predators but also because they are politically vulnerable to misinformation and misdirection,” (p.191).

In contrast in ‘autonomous e-citizenship’, proponents refuse to see themselves as ‘apprentice’ citizens, they argue for themselves on agendas of their own making and youth is “a reflexive project in which narratives of emergence, socialisation and engagement can be renegotiated by each new generation,” (p.191). The very anarchy of the Internet appeals, a “relatively free space in which untrammelled creativity and acephalous [headless] networks can flourish,” (p.192).

Coleman sees the limitations of managed e-citizenship at least in part as over-protecting young people, avoiding ’sensitive’ issues, distorting the political world with its emphasis on friendliness, deliberation and consensus: “a virtual community of well-trained democrats who would be lost in any real political party, trade union or local council”. (p.192) On the other hand, autonomous e-citizenship can be dislocated from the structures and processes of effective power, preaching to the converted and paying little attention to opposing views or entering into deliberative debate, and focusing mainly on single issues.

I will finish with civic gaming. Henry Jenkins argues that the new participatory media offer “many opportunities for kids to engage in civic debates, to participate in community life, to become political leaders even if sometimes only through the ’second lives’ offered by massively multiplayer games or online fan communities”. Kahne, Middaugh and Evans explore the effects of “civically-oriented video game experiences that parallel the classroom-based experiences that previous research has found to promote civic outcomes”. Therefore they looked specifically at games in which players helped others, organised groups or guilds, explored social or ethical issues, learned about a problem in society, or had to make decisions about how a community, city or nation should be run. The study looked at the relationships between game-playing, civic participation and interest in politics.

The quantity of game play does not correlate with civic participation, but the characteristics of the game, and with whom it is played, do correlate. Those who play more civic-related games are on average 15% to 20% more likely to participate in civic activity than those who play fewer civic games. Playing the online game with others present is more likely to show an effect than playing online at a distance. The effect is considerably increased for those players who additionally participate in websites and discussion groups related to the game.  These data are supportive of the enthusiasm expressed by several people for gaming as an educational tool.

However sceptics remain, and more data is needed. For example, it is unclear yet as to whether a pre-existing interest in civic participation leads young people to play more civic-related games, or whether participation in such games expands ones interest in real life civic participation. Nevertheless, there is a clear relationship and the potential for future educational development is there.

I will focus on three issues, within technological development and each of the three domains:

  • what will not change
  • what are likely to be continuing trends and their implications
  • what is uncertain, and the implications of this

At the beginning of the Report, the question was posed; ‘what will not change?’  It is my view that the following will not change:

  • The need for a strong personal identity and sense of self, affirmed by one’s social circle. This encompasses also an identity which may incorporate as part of itself the capacity to move between versions of self and to be skilled in managing these in different social contexts
  • The need to be part of a community. We are social beings and we function in connection with others. This connection includes affirmation of self, and the sharing of information. It also includes identifying with particular groups of perceived shared characteristics – be it place, work, values or shared interests. Technology has for a long time enabled these functions to be non-local, as well as enabling a strengthening of local face to face contact; new technologies extend these functions
  • For many people, civic participation is primarily about maintaining one’s community. For some, it is about improving (and so changing) the condition of members of one’s own or another community; it is therefore about exercising influence on those with power.  The targets and methods may change in future but the function, I think, will not.

Technological developments:

  • Technological developments will become less expensive, with more streamlined and more usable personal devices routinely owned by young people; many existing barriers to access will go, as costs drop and skills become normalised
  • Both young people and adults will quite rapidly adapt to new technologies on a ‘need to know’ basis, and social practices will be modified by the potential of the new devices
  • The opportunities for network communication will expand as will expectations that people will be available on networks
  • Gaming will become more sophisticated and also more diversified in content
  • Storing information on one’s personal device will replace other forms of storage

Identity:

  • People are likely to become increasingly skilled at managing ‘multiple’ selves, and moving between them, in part because of increasing demands for flexibility in adult life/work, in part because this is an enjoyable activity both in the virtual world and in youth social life. This could be healthy, competent management of ambiguity and complexity, but for some it may be destabilising and fragmenting
  • Minority identities are likely to become increasingly less marginalised through a combination of effective identity politics, modifying mainstream cultural discourses and technological developments overcoming some of the obstacles to full participation
  • National identity is likely to remain a significant part of personal identity, but this may be less about a self bounded by criteria of ‘we’ versus ‘they’ and more a permeable self definition offered in interaction with other nationals
  • With more permeable boundaries between different aspects of self, and between work, leisure and also location, how people choose to describe themselves may become more open; the increasing ‘public’ and informal opportunities for self-presentation (such as Facebook) permit this.

Community:

  • Community is a fundamental human structure and likely to remain in a variety of forms.
  • Communities may increasingly combine off and on-line interaction and virtual communities may occupy more people’s time with the development of Facebook and MySpace ‘communities’ where people ‘friend’ both known and not known people
  • Face to face communities are likely to remain important where location is a significant part of identity, but communities based on common interests are likely to become increasingly significant, both on and offline

Citizenship:

  • The current ambiguities around citizenship status are likely to become more complicated with increased immigration and there will be moves to regularise and control.
  • Given international concerns, civic education is likely to gain a higher profile in the future. The enlargement of the curriculum to include innovative methods such as forms of gaming is likely, in view of the data supporting this. The ‘official’ civic agenda however may conflict with the already-developing goals and activities of young people who are engaged in participation
  • The use of blogs and wikis for making one’s voice heard, and creating transnational pressure groups, is very likely to increase, particularly if major political issues become fore-fronted in the news and the subject of widespread blogging – such as the environment or human rights
  • At the same time, there will be more consumer-related online activism and also more partisan/interest group activism of less liberal tone, which would proliferate under perceived threats (such as immigration or terrorist action)

Technological developments:

  • The extent to which the gatekeepers of information will attempt to control access and use and how far will such constraints affect, if at all, young people’s access to information sources
  • The extent to which information overload will cause people to self-censor or limit the network universe to which they ‘belong’
  • How necessarily increased security both for hardware and software will be managed, to create a safe environment for communication

Identity:

  • What would a ‘global identity’ mean, aside from the value of not being nationalistic; how will people manage the more permeable boundaries between nation, the EU, and the ‘global’, particularly under conditions of threat (such as increased immigration)
  • How far will people wish to assert a dominant, or core, identity, and if so, in which life domain will it be?  How far will traditional classifications, often coded primarily for bureaucratic purposes such as ethnicity, nationality, disability, remain useful?
  • Given the agency that young people have through technology to define their identities and experiment with identities, how can we equip them to do this safely?
  • While multiple identities will be managed, there are many ways this can evolve

Community:

  • The extent to which any community is strengthened by threat or adversity, as suggested by both communitarian and intergroup relations theories, or whether adversity prompts retreat into individual survival strategies, and under what circumstances each occurs
  • How far online communities develop ’sociality’ and ‘belongingness’, leading to mutual affective support

Citizenship:

  • A major uncertainty is about values: to what extent will economic pressures in conjunction with immigration and perceived cultural threats, precipitate a shift to more a conservative, exclusionary, public mood
  • To what extent will the Islamic world become more unified within a moderate worldview, or become fragmented into factions which will affect both identity and civic issues for Muslims and other faith and secular communities
  • How far might further environmental threat lead to greater resistance from young people, and how far to disillusionment
  • To what extent will young people feel empowered to take risks in expressing their views, and to what extent will systems be put in place to limit their online power, or to delegitimise their use of it
  • To what extent will the increased empowerment deriving from technological access be used for civic participation, and to what extent will it be diverted into consumerist action or self-promotion
  • Civic status, and the criteria for inclusion and exclusion, may become more regularised but it is not clear on exactly what basis and how much freedom people will have to define their civic status
  • The motivation for civic participation rests on a combination of personal efficacy, moral and social concern and belief that an effect is possible within the system. The political and economic situation can vary to the extent that apathy and alienation (include a retreat into individualism) may be a response, or a drive to collective action
  • The dominant cultural values may change radically. Currently these are primarily ‘liberal’ in the broad sense with concerns about under-privilege, diversity, rights, freedom of choice and the environment. A more hostile economic environment, perceived cultural or military threats, or a moral reaction against a consumer-hedonic culture may each precipitate a considerable value shift in the next two decades
  • What ‘globalisation’ means is diffuse; in all its versions it is ‘uncertain’, except possibly global multi-national expansion. While people may become more ‘globally aware’ – about other peoples and cultures, about identifying with a world religion that transcends national boundaries, about the environment, about the possibility of adopting a transnational identity – the form(s) these will take are highly uncertain

6.4    How might schools adapt?

Interactive media provide many opportunities for opening up new ways of knowing and working, and developing new competences (such as collaborative working) which are much more appropriate to contemporary life. In education however both adoption, and the transformation of practices, has been slow. Too often in the classroom technology is used as an adjunct to traditional methods, another source of information, not as a way of transforming how information is used. Pupils often report that the school use of technology is both boring and irrelevant. Vass and Reich both argue in their reviews that the disconnection between current educational culture and new technology is huge.

Access to technology is indeed one block. Developments may be constrained by unequal access to both equipment and skills. However this may be a temporary obstacle. It is very likely that within five years hand-held devices that can access the Internet will be affordable, or available to, everyone who now has a mobile phone. But is this the whole story behind slow adoption? In part there is a perceived cultural divide between leisure/pleasure versus learning. Currently many schools ban mobile phones. This distances even more the routine ‘leisure’ aspects of new technology from their potential for formal learning.

The trends are also subversive. One powerful message from this Challenge is that interactive technologies subvert the fundamental metaphors and rhetoric via which we have hitherto managed our relationship with information, especially in education. To a large extent, the basic metaphor of school-based learning has been that the teacher facilitates and channels information to students, in ways designed to maximise the students’ ability to process and absorb it. Within that there are a variety of means. These methods include direct knowledge conduits which are top-down. They may create opportunities for students to learn information through praxis or through discussion and collaboration. But these are usually choreographed to the extent that the opportunities have a known successful outcome. Another version sets up a framework in which the goal is to train students in a way of thinking itself, whether in the scientific method, in critical thinking or some other mode. In all of these, first, the teacher has a central role and is the orchestrater, even if off the scene. Second, the primary target is the individual learner’s performance, as an individual.

Shared participation in an action, and the action itself changing that with which it acts (for example editing and modifying wikis) both sidestep the role of the teacher as manager and authority and blur the boundaries between expert and novice. Interactive technologies are inherently ‘bottom-up’, driven by the agent who is acting on the information and its source, horizontal rather than vertical, and, potentially if not exclusively, collaborative. Many quoted in the discussion of citizenship claim that the very system ‘democratises’; it is a metaphor of democracy and interacting with it is an act of democracy.  This applies to identity and community functions as well as citizenship.  But it can also be a metaphor of anarchy. The apparently anarchic lack of boundaries, including boundaries between individual and collaborative thought and action, contrasts with conventional education and particularly with a model in which achievement depends on the individual working alone. There is a profound tension between investment in individual achievement and performance and the kind of open collaboration we see in new technology.

The tacit or explicit assumption that current institutions can graft on new technologies to existing practices is in my view misguided. In order to take advantage of new technologies, and to bring into formal education what are increasingly the routine and taken for granted practices and skills of the rest of the student’s world, schools will need to rethink the top-down model of education, and find ways to facilitate, and orchestrate, these bottom-up, often collaborative, practices productively.

One adaptation must be to enable students to work collaboratively and interactively, with distributed knowledge management as the objective, so changing the teachers’ role from a hierarchical conduit to a facilitator of collaboration, critical thinking and synthesising. Individual devices, whether notebook-style computers or future-generation iPhones, will need to be incorporated into the classroom as routinely as notepads and books are today.

The Report has focused on the implications for school education primarily because most of the available data referred to has been around school, or school-age adolescents.  It is also in the conventional school context that most of the gaps between practices are evident.  The evidence cited in the Report from a variety of out of school activities suggests that in more informal settings, the adaptation to new technology and new social practices is more flexible.  In tertiary education, though the Report has not addressed this, there has always been more scope both for individually-directed learning and for novel forms of pedagogy, even if the majority of teachers in such institutions do not adjust their own teaching practices. Lifelong learning, adult education, already has capitalised on new technology in a variety of innovative ways.

Four areas are explored in this Challenge.

  • The relationship with technology, particularly how it is used
  • The nature of identities, their development, location and processes
  • How communities are created and  sustained, how they change
  • What is citizenship and how is civic engagement fostered?

Reviewers were asked to consider the state of trends in the field within their chosen topic area, implications for educational practice and policy, and likely (probably, plausible and preferable) future directions.

Fifteen review papers were completed, the majority of which addressed the intersection of at least two of the four areas (in some cases touched on all four) with a focus on particular topics. The papers were commissioned mainly from younger researchers with recent direct research experience relevant to the Challenge. An Advisory Group of twelve senior experts in the field acted as advisors, commentators and reviewers. Two workshops with these participants, in September and November 2008, served to refine and develop the agenda and the dominant themes and ideas, under the chairship of the Challenge Lead.

Appendix 2: Participants

Professor Anna Craft

Professor of Education, University of Exeter and The Open University

Government Advisor, Creative and Cultural Education

She leads research projects in creativity and educational futures, and she has written or edited seventeen books in these areas.  She co-initiated and co-convened BERA SIG Creativity in Education.  She is currently Lead Editor of Journal of Thinking Skills and Creativity. She leads the Educational Futures Research Group at Exeter University, and she is writing a new book: Creativity and Educational Futures (publication 2010).

Professor Ian Davies

Professor in Education at the University of York, UK

He has extensive international experience in the field of citizenship education. Recent publications include co-editing The Sage International Handbook of Education for Citizenship and Democracy (Sage 2008) and co-editing the 4 volume reader Citizenship Education (Sage, 2008).

Dr Ruth Deakin Crick

Senior Research Fellow, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol

Conjoint Professor of Education, University of Newcastle, Australia

Her research interests include the assessment of learning dispositions, learner centred pedagogies, citizenship and values in schooling; learning and leadership for social sustainability. Publications include Learning Power in Practice: a guide for teachers, London, Sage and Distributing Leadership for Personalising Learning, London, Continuum.

Dr David Eddy Spicer

Lecturer in Education, University of Bath

David’s research interests are in the organisation of schooling and educational innovation. His current studies focus on the dynamics of authority in settings of technology-enabled collective enquiry among school leadership teams. He is co-author with Martha Stone Wiske of a chapter in the forthcoming third edition of the International Encyclopaedia of Education (Elsevier), Teaching for Understanding and Teacher Education, which explores new approaches to professional learning through networked technologies.

Dr Jeff Gavin

Lecturer in Psychology, University of Bath

Jeff Gavin leads a programme of research into intimacy and trust in online dating and health support groups. This research explores how internet communications impact on identity in relation to relationship development and coping strategies online. He has recently published and presented work theorising ‘cyber-technologies of the self’, with a particular focus on the role of online profiles in identity construction and maintenance.

Dr Richard Joiner

Senior Lecturer in Developmental Psychology, University of Bath

Richard’s main area of research is the use of new communications technology for supporting learning. He has a particular interest in computer supported collaborative learning and the use of video games for supporting learning.

Wolff A, Mulholland P., Zdrahal Z . & Joiner R (2007). Re-using digital narrative content in interactive games. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 65, 3, 244-272.

Facer, K., Joiner. R., Stanton, D., Reid, J., Hull, R. & Kirk, D. (2004) Savannah: mobile gaming and learning? Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. 20, 6,399-409

Professor David Kerr

Principal Research Officer, National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) and Visiting Professor in Citizenship at Birkbeck College, University of London

His main research interests are in citizenship education policy and practice, the political socialisation of young people and the comparative dimension of these areas at national, European and international levels. Publications include Making Sense of Citizenship (2006).

Professor Brahm Norwich

Professor of Educational Psychology and Special Educational Needs

School of Education and Lifelong learning, University of Exeter

He has interests in the area of special educational needs and inclusive education, policy and practice, including futures work. He has organised a futures scenario planning workshop and produced a Policy Paper Future schooling that includes children with SEN /disability and written about the future of inclusion.

Professor Steven Reicher

Professor and Head of the School of Psychology. St. Andrews University

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, past Editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology and a Scientific Advisor to Scientific American Mind. His work centres on the relationship between social identity and collective action. He has studied such phenomena as crowd behaviour, leadership and political rhetoric, processes of national identity, and, latterly, the psychology of tyranny and intergroup hatred. This work (along with links to key publications) – which was televised by the BBC and has already entered the core psychology curriculum – can be accessed at www.bbcprisonstudy.org

Professor Valerie Walkerdine

Research Professor, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University

She researches community, identity, subjectivity, class and gender, as well as popular culture and new media. She has obtained considerable research funding in these fields from the ESRC. Her latest book is Children, gender, video games: towards a relational approach to multimedia, Palgrave Macmillan 2007.

Dr Leon Watts

Lecturer in Computer Science, University of Bath

His main research interests relating to the Challenge are on the effect of computer-mediated communication on group activity, especially in terms of identity, degree of participation and dispute.

Billings, M  & Watts, L. (2007). A safe space to vent: Conciliation and conflict in distributed teams.  In Bannon et al. (eds.) ECSCW 2007 Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Limerick, Ireland, 24-28 September 2007. Springer Verlag. pp. 139-138.

Ducheneaut, N  & Watts, L (2005) In search of coherence: a review of E-Mail research.  Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (1&2),11-48.

Watts, L., Nugroho, Y.  & Lea, M (2003) Engaging in email discussion: conversational context and social identity in computer-mediated communication. In Rauterberg, G.W.M., Menozzi, M. and Wesson, J.  (Eds.) Proceedings of INTERACT’03 Amsterdam: IOS Press, 559-566.

Professor Rupert Wegerif

Director of Research, School of Education and Lifelong Learning University of Exeter

Rupert has researched and published widely in the field of teaching and learning with ICT, teaching thinking and the philosophy of education with technology. His recent book: Dialogic, Education and Technology: Expanding the Space of Learning (Springer, 2007) develops a dialogic account of identity and the connection between educational technology and teaching thinking.

Heike Doering

School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University

Communities and Citizenship: paths for engagement?

This paper deals with current issues in the constitution and maintenance of communities and the effect on notions of citizenship and public engagement. This review looks at a number of studies concerned with the building of communities and the effects of structural changes on the maintenance of communities. It uses the decline of the nation as dominant scale for collective identification as starting point for two parallel trends: the increased importance of the local and everyday practices in the formation of communities and the development of cosmopolitan/global identities and citizenships. Examples are drawn from research into regeneration in former industrial regions as well as studies on youth engagement in rural and urban settings. Notions of politics and engagement need to be reconsidered to include small-scale, everyday political engagement which is based on residence rather than a status of citizenship conferred by the state. Technology can enhance and facilitate this process of becoming a local citizen. Digital inclusion can foster social inclusion. Accessibility to technology is therefore a major concern, not only in terms of affordability but also in terms of skills, confidence and trust. The ability to negotiate the offline world of changing boundaries and places for engagement translates into the ability to do so online: social and cultural capital becomes digital capital.

Keywords: community, citizenship, participation, place, accessibility

Heike Doering’s doctoral research interests lie in the field of state restructuring, community participation and socio-economic transformation. Since 2004 she has conducted research on regeneration and factors determining political and cultural responses to socio-economic change in two localities. Special emphasis is placed on the impact of local civil society and notions of community and citizenship in collaborative governance practices.

Ruth Gwernan-Jones

University of Exeter School of Education and Lifelong Learning

Identity and Disability:

A review of the current state and developing trends

Currently, disability is primarily viewed from a medical model that sees it as a tragedy resulting from impairment within the disabled person. The social model of disability views disability as the barriers that society creates for people with impairment. The social model has been the ‘battle cry’ of the Disability Movement, challenging the medical model, and encouraging a trend toward active, vocal disabled people, many of whom perceive their disability as a part of a positive personal and social identity, and as many as half of whom, given the choice, would prefer to keep their disability rather than have it ‘cured’. This paper looks at the wide range of identity issues that occur as result of a wide range of possible impairments, social and political changes relating to identity and disability, and issues around identity and disability that arise from medical and technological advancement, while whenever possible seeking to represent the perspective of disabled people rather than a stereotypical, non-disabled perspective, or the dominant professional perspective of disability.

The review of identity and disability draws attention to certain possibilities for the future of education, including the need for change in the structure of education, toward one that addresses disability inclusively, the need to direct focus onto the ways that education disables children and young people, the importance of listening to the voice of disabled pupils/students, and the need for developing conceptual models in education that encompass complexity, diversity and fluidity in identity and disability.

Keywords: Disability, identity, disability movement, social model of disability, universalism

Ruth Gwernan-Jones BA, MSc, Dip SpLD, AMBDA is pursing doctoral research on the socio-cultural aspects of dyslexia; her thesis involves life history research interviewing dyslexic adults to illuminate their experiences of being dyslexic, and how this relates to their cultural context.

Ellen J. Helsper

Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

Digital Natives and Ostrich Tactics?

The possible implications of labelling young people as digital experts

The notion of a generation uniquely at home in a digital environment – the Digital Natives – is increasingly being challenged. Expertise and experience are just as important as generation in explaining activities that are considered indicative of digital nativeness. This means that people advocating the death of schools due to an irreconcilable gap between educators and students are wrong. Nevertheless, cross-generational understanding is hampered by an insistence on identifying all young people as digital natives, ignoring evidence to the contrary.

The findings presented in this paper suggest the erroneous identification of a whole generation as digital natives, might lead to an overestimation of young people’s skills in dealing with the risks and negative experiences associated with the Internet. Younger generations are less likely to seek help than older generations and more likely to ignore the risks they do encounter without taking action to prevent these from happening again – here labelled the ‘ostrich tactic’. ‘If young people can shed the ‘Digital Native’ identity they might be more likely to seek help when they need it.’

Another possible problem is an offline/online separation as regards risks and coping strategies in older generations, young people see online risks as part of everyday life just like offline risks. A continuation of this separation in the minds of adults could lead to Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants who speak different languages. This paper argues that future scenarios might be different, a disconnect between educators and students is not inevitable.

Keywords: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Internet, Risks, Coping strategies

Ellen Helsper PhD is Survey Research Fellow in Social Impacts of the Internet, Her current interest is in the use of new media in every day life specifically by socially excluded or isolated groups. An important aspect of her work is the development of quantitative and qualitative methodology in relation to media and policy research. In her current position the focus is on cross-national survey research in relation to technology and everyday life with a special interest in media literacy, digital exclusion and mediated social interactions.

Louise Madden

Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences

Integrating the internet into women’s lives

This paper explores how the internet is taken up and used by women in the everyday; how it enters their lives, and how it is integrated into other projects and areas of life. Internet use is treated as an activity that needs to be viewed in context, considering the rich social world that goes on around it, to understand how the internet emerges and is made meaningful through a set of embodied everyday practices. Women have historically been somewhat excluded from the internet, and the form of this exclusion has proved difficult to understand using traditional methods. This paper reviews a set of research and literature that attempts to contextualise use of these technologies to tease out some of what is particular to women’s experience of the internet.

This paper is located primarily within strand 2. (i) ‘How much is change and how much is more of the same?’ It has some elements of relevance to (ii) ‘The technological ‘gap”, in that it illuminates some gender differences on access to the internet, and a little relevance to (iii)’How do young people use personal technology? What purposes does it serve?’ in that it addresses these issues with regard to women, and there will likely be some commonalities.

Keywords: Women, internet, objects, bodies, email

Louise Madden is a PhD student in critical psychology. Her doctoral research investigates how women use the internet, and particularly how feminine subjectivities are constituted through relations with the internet. In-depth case-studies explore internet use through a range of methods both on and offline, to capture a detailed story of what the internet becomes in everyday usage.

Thalia Magioglou

Maison des Sciences de l’Homme de Paris, and CURAPP, University of Picardie

Young people’s reaction to a feeling of marginalisation and the role of technology; towards a new kind of citizenship

This review paper concerns the issue of citizenship, as it applies to young people, especially those who have a sense of inefficacy in the political system. Starting from a normative point of view in political philosophy, concerning the meaning of democracy, citizenship is defined as a way people relate to and create communities, especially as active participants, in the formation of common rules that are open to revision (Castoriadis, 1987). Citizenship is also defined as a cultural and social dimension of the self. Many studies in the last ten years underline the absence of younger generations from the traditional channels of participation of representative democracy (i.e. Haste and Hogan, 2006). Based on field work with Greek young adults, (Magioglou, 2008) but also on evidence from other European (British, French) and North-American populations, my starting point is that there is a feeling of inefficacy in the public sphere, but that new technologies already channel in democratic or less democratic directions (Bennett, 2008). In that sense, the role of education, state, community or groups, could be to empower young people so that they may assume responsibility for their actions in the local and global community.

Key words: citizenship, young people, self-efficacy, technology, public sphere, dialogical self, autonomy, community, democracy.

Thalia Magioglou ’s doctorate in social and political psychology is from the University of Picardie, France. She is currently affiliated to the laboratory CURAPP and the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, as coordinator of a political psychology network (EPOPS). Her interests are societal creativity, democracy and globalisation, lay thinking, and social representations theory.

[In preparation] T. Magioglou  (ed) The Creative Dimension of Lay Thinking

Kyoko Murakami

Department of Education, University of Bath

Re-imagining the future: Young people’s construction of identities through digital storytelling

This review paper explores a relationship between young people’s identity construction and digital storytelling in the learning environment, especially those who are disaffected and at risk of being socially excluded. In particular, I will focus on the young people’s engagement in learning despite various efforts to tackle youth disaffection, disengagement in education and training and lack of aspiration for the future. As a theoretical framework, I draw on in particular a socio-cultural and cultural anthropological view of culture and mind (Holland and Cole 1995) and “history in person” (Holland and Lave 2000). The review links the current context of youth disengagement and disaffection to the increasingly popular practice of digital storytelling (technology mediated production of stories). Lastly, it would consider implications for the future of education, in particular with the role of the teacher in the 21st century and the future of education as a technology-mediated learning environment.

Kyoko Murakami PhD is Lecturer in Education and a member of the Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory. She specialises in sociocultural and activity theory research drawing on discourse analysis and discursive psychology. She worked on intercultural projects on Anglo-Japanese reconciliation and UK-South African school partnerships. The current project includes a digital storytelling project titled ?ID-dentity? based in a secondary school in Wiltshire.

Nick Nash

Department of Psychology, University of Bath

Future Issues in Socio-Technical Change for UK Citizenship:

The importance of ‘place’

This paper emphasises the importance of place in relation to identity, community and citizenship. In considering future technological advances it is argued that these concepts will continue to be understood in relation to place.

Identification with place is an integral dimension of selfhood and evidence for a positive relationship civic engagement is discussed. People will continue to define themselves and their communities in relation to place in the future, although identities will be increasingly grounded in virtual spaces created by online community networks. Therefore, citizenship initiatives should be geared towards understanding the complexity of relationships to place and people’s place-based meanings. In addition, the growth of online social networks will enrich and extend offline social networks rather than replace them. However, communities will be increasingly based on shared interests rather than shared locations and communication devices will become more geared towards personal, rather than spatial networks. This will create problems for policymakers and it will be necessary to adopt more flexible initiatives. Finally, it is proposed that citizenship will eventually become more fragmented and dislocated from the nation-state. Policymakers should gear interventions towards multiple forms of citizenship spaces, identities and practices both online and offline.

Keywords: Place, physical space, virtual space, place-identity, local community, citizenship, internet, computer-mediated-communication, networked individualism

Nick Nash PhD completed his Doctorate at the University of Bath in 2006. His research looked at the social construction of physical space in the context of people’s perspectives on a local development conflict in England. Taking a discursive social psychological approach, he examined how particular accounts and descriptions of socio-political space constructed the conflict in different ways in accordance with speakers’ positions towards development.

‘Not in our Front Garden’: development conflict and the politics of naming place.

Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology (under review).

Justin Reich

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Reworking the Web, Reworking the World: How Web 2.0 is changing our society

Web 2.0 refers to a suite of technologies that have dramatically lowered the interaction costs of two-way communication over the World Wide Web, which has democratised the production of information and applications across the Internet. To sum up the Web 2.0 phenomena in a sentence: lower communication costs have led to opportunities for more inclusive, collaborative, democratic online participation. As the costs of communicating online decreased, more people, millions more, decided that it was worth their while to participate in these communication networks. These people did not just communicate more, they started communicating in qualitatively different ways than before. As these millions found new media for expression and collaboration, they opened possibilities for a more inclusive, open, democratic society, possibilities which may or may not be realised.

There is no doubt that this democratisation, these contributions from many millions of Web participants, has produced a series of profound social, political and economic changes that this paper will seek to document. The changes inspired by the democratisation of the Web, however, will not of necessity lead to a more equitable distribution of power and resources in our society. The future of the Web will depend upon the degree to which this blossoming of online participation will allow ordinary citizens and consumers to have greater voice and influence in shaping society and the degree to which powerful political and commercial interests can co-opt and constrain the surge of online enthusiasm in the support of the established hierarchy.

Keywords: Web, Web 2.0, change, future, society, identity, politics, economics, education.

Justin Reich is a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the co-Director of EdTechTeacher.org, a professional development firm offering education technology training. He recently published Best Ideas for Teaching with Technology, A Practical Guide for Teachers, by Teachers with M.E. Sharpe Press. He is currently conducting research on the Web 2.0 digital divide and on the affordances of Web 2.0 tools for fostering 21st century competencies.

Sarah Riley

Department of Psychology, University of Bath

Identity, community and selfhood:  Understanding the self in relation to contemporary youth cultures

This paper discusses some of the key factors that shape young people’s identity in relation to contemporary youth cultures. It describes a tightening of relationships between identity, leisure and consumption that have interacted with developments in communication technologies and an understanding of the self as being dynamically (re)produced in interaction, constructed from the range of subject positions that may be contradictory or only partially formed. These identities may be personal or social, with the later being associated with neo-tribal theory. This context has opened up the possibility for young people to engage in a playful pick and mix approach to identity as they move through a kaleidoscope of temporary, fluid and multiple subjectivities that often celebrate hedonism, sociality and sovereignty over one’s own existence. Multiplicity and sovereignty however, involve complex interactions between contradictory values and are associated with a variety of stressors and inequalities that are strengthened through neo-liberal rhetoric of risk, responsibility and individualism. Furthermore, both neo-liberalism and neo-tribalism provide a context in which political and social participation shift to the local, informal and personal. For future education to provide environments where schools are fun, interesting, relevant and safe, a personalised portfolio model of education is recommended, where educators act as facilitators for the successful management of the self as a project; provide alternative discourses to neo-liberalism by working as ‘community enablers’; and act as protective stewards, shielding young people from some of the more aggressive aspects of technology, surveillance and commercialisation.

Keywords: youth cultures, neo-liberalism, neo-tribalism, consumption, leisure, political participation.

Sarah Riley PhD is a Lecturer in Psychology Her research is concerned with social constructionist theories of identity and qualitative research methods. Current projects include a study on leisure, identity and political participation and a co-operative inquiry project on ‘dilemmas of femininity’.

She is an editor of Critical Bodies: Representations, Identities and Practices of Weight and Body Management (Palgrave, 2008).

Denis Sindic

Instituto de Ciências Sociais, University of Lisbon

National Identities: are they declining?

The main question addressed in this review is whether national identities are likely to remain an important feature of our societies in the coming decades. Some have argued that national identities are declining, due to increasing globalisation, the growth of supra-national organisation such as EU, the increasing multicultural nature of our societies, and, in multi-national countries like the UK, the presence of separatist movements with substantial political support. However, the review of current evidence and current practices (as well as their likely evolution) suggests the following points: a) national identities (including British identity) are likely to remain important in the next decades, despite the alleged ‘fragmenting’ effects of globalisation and advances in technologies of communication; b) European integration and the possible development of a European identity are unlikely to lead to the disappearance of existing national identities, especially in the UK; c) The impact of strong sub-state national identities, devolution and separatist movements in the UK remain uncertain, but the scenario of an upcoming break-up of Britain does not seem the most likely; d) national identity is not necessarily incompatible with or threatened by multiculturalism, though it may be increasingly perceived as such in the UK. This review will also address the question of the consequences of national identities in term of relationship with others, arguing that this impact depends on how the boundaries and content of national identities are defined, and that such definitions are open to argument and political contestation. The review will conclude with some reflections on the possible role of national identities in future educational practices.

Keywords: National identity, globalisation, European Union, European identity, British identity, separatism, devolution, multiculturalism, intergroup relations

Denis Sindic’s doctorate from St Andrews University, was on national identity in Scotland and attitudes to the UK and the EU. His research interests are on national identity and political attitudes towards supra-national groups.

Sindic, D. & Reicher, S.D. (2008). Our way of life is worth defending: testing a model of attitudes towards superordinate group membership through a study of Scots’ attitudes towards Britain. European Journal of Social Psychology, DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.503.

David Studdert PhD

Centre d’Etudes sur l’Actuel et Quotidien (CeaQ), Paris

Community and CMC: the virtual absence of online communal being-ness

This paper examines the close relationship between the social sciences and offline interests (government, business, media and all general non-CMC communities) as a key to investigating how the Internet came to be the Internet it is today. It argues that potential online educational benefits as well as more general benefits from projects of social cohesion and community building are being limited by the manner in which the internet is conceived and constructed; that for projects and benefits potentially available to governments to be realised the net needs to be conceived in a different manner.

It seeks to understand why the discursive formation ‘community of interest’ has come to dominate and shape the contemporary internet. It argues that this domination limits the possibilities of CMC by privileging certain relationships, principally uni-polar forms, and thus hinders the potential of the internet for educational and community building processes.

Finally, it suggests ways in which a differently conceived CMC might encourage the Internet’s rebirth as a genuine social and public space.

Keywords: community, computer mediated communication, community of interest, multi- dimensionality, sociality.

David Studdert PhD Is a research academic with an interest in community both theoretically and empirically, particularly relational and phenomenological approaches. He has researched local communities and markets, and Muslim identity and community.  He is currently working on online communities.

D Studdert (2006) Conceptualising community beyond the state and the individual. Palgrave.

Aubry Threlkeld

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Virtual Disruptions:

Traditional and New Media’s Challenges to Heteronormativity in Education

Schools generally reinforce heteronormative discourses to the degree that queer representations surface primarily through traditional mass media, and new cybermedia sources.  In order to inspect possible future trends in the field of education, I review the most current research available on the role of media in shaping the perceptions of sexuality by youth. I focus primarily on representations of queerness that challenge heteronormativity in changing traditional media sources such as television and film, and in emerging media such as avatars in on-line virtual worlds and social networking websites.

These challenges, as virtual disruptions, open up discourse and offer opportunities to engage in critical pedagogy. In conclusion, I outline how teachers can begin to use critical pedagogy to leverage their knowledge of virtual disruptions in media in order to challenge heteronormativity in schools.

Keywords: Heteronormativity, education, queer studies, future , cybermedia, sexuality.

Aubry Threlkeld is a doctoral student in Human Development and Education at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. His interests include adolescent literacy, learning disabilities, improving reading pedagogy and queer studies in education. Having been a teacher and lecturer in special education in New York City for the last four years, he attempts to connect his research and recommendations directly to positive classroom outcomes. His present research centres around professional development for secondary school literacy teachers.  In addition to his scholarly activities, Aubry has participated in queer activism intermittently for the last twelve years at both the local and national levels.

Eva Vass

School of Education, University of Bath

New technology and habits of mind

The centrality of technology in human life has manifested itself throughout history in all cultures and civilisations. This paper examines the role of new technology in restructuring processes of thinking and knowing, and its impact on social practices of knowledge building. It highlights the transformative force of new technology, necessitating changes in our ‘habits of mind’ to manage the increasing complexity of the contemporary information landscape. Also, it shows that convergent new technology remediates processes of shared knowledge building; creating virtual, collaborative, continuously evolving arenas of activity. Thus, new media contexts afford new forms of social collectivity in virtual space, requiring a fresh understanding of collective action and creation, the ability to belong to different social groups that may not meet face-to-face, the skills to artfully reconnect thought and practice in a simulated world and the confidence to establish new relations to authority.

Keywords: New technology and learning; habits of mind; information behaviour; convergence; participatory cultures, collective intelligence, participation and interaction.

Eva Vass B.Ed, M.Phil, PhD is a Lecturer in Education and has research interests in collaborative learning, with a specific focus on exploring processes of collaborative creativity, the emotional aspects of peer collaboration, and the role of new technology in children’s shared knowledge building.

Olga Ververi

Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol

“The Civil Society Project”

In this paper I examine the CRELL-Network research reports on active citizenship and civic competence. I argue that the specific institution promotes a particular view for citizenship aiming at a citizenship identity which cannot enable individuals to see themselves as initiators within democracy but as followers within the so called civil society. In the same vein, lies the idea of the virtual civil society while Civic e-communication resulting from e-citizenship seems to become a key skill in the citizenship agenda of Europe in the future. I claim that both actual and virtual civil society cannot bring about any changes as they promise but they seem to contribute to the preservation of the status quo. My suggestion is that learners should be encouraged to exert criticism using a different discourse aiming at the evolution of democracy. I have named the specific approach as “radical citizenship” in opposition to the active citizenship term which seems to have dominated the citizenship (education) discourse.

Keywords: active citizenship, (virtual) civil society, e-citizenship, civic e-communication, E.U., Lisbon strategy, Neo-liberalism, radical citizenship.

Olga Ververi’s doctoral thesis pertains to the examination of critical thinking in citizenship education. Through an interdisciplinary approach she examines the interactions of ideology, discourse and critical thinking focusing upon the CoE’s programme ‘Education for Democratic Citizenship‘.

Dave Weltman

Department of Organisation Studies, University of the West of England

Popular Representations of the Working Class:

Contested Identities and Social Change

Using examples from different forms of media, this paper argues firstly that there is prevalence of derogatory images which undermine the emergence of valued independent working class identities. However, attention is also given to some – albeit exceptional – more contradictory representations which may indicate more progressive lines of development. One particular common stereotype which is highlighted is that of working class people’s consciousness lacking potential for development except at the price of losing their working-classness. This, it is argued, is encouraged by the more general commonsense division between workers and thinkers, one which in fact goes against rich traditions of working class self-education. After discussing the educational implications of these observations, the review shifts to consider a recently intensified tendency in the media for ‘defending’ specifically the white working class as an oppressed ethnic group. Different examples of this phenomenon are discussed in the light of alternative perspectives based on historical insights into the possibility for transcending divisions within the working class. In this way the emphasis on white working class particularism is seen to be in danger of reintroducing assumptions of working class stasis and of crippling efforts – including in educational settings – to tackle racist viewpoints.

In light of these arguments future prospects for how media technology frames working class identities, including the role of Internet discussion forums, is explored. A historically informed perspective indicates the likelihood of social representations reflecting and refracting factors associated with a changing economic and political balance of forces, especially in a period of deepening global economic recession. It is in this latter sphere too, it is claimed, rather than in the technological setting itself, that one finds the fundamental factors shaping the challenge to stereotypes propagated through Internet forum technologies.

Key words: Working class, representations, media technology, identity, white working class, education, future.

Dave Weltman PhD is Visiting Lecturer in Organisation Studies. He has a long-standing interest in the ideological analysis of media representations, as well as in critical social-psychological approaches to class relations. His recent publications consider how the ‘utopian’ rhetoric of International Financial Institutions operates to obscure the class cleavages which underlie their field of work.

Weltman, D. and Upchurch, M. (In press). The ideal of non-coherence in the World Bank’s Social Capital reforms: A textual analysis of ‘gratuitous complexity’. Journal of Language and Politics.

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation

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Bennett, L. (Ed)  (2008) Civic life online; learning how digital media can engage youth, Cambridge, Mass:  M I T Press.

Bickerstaff, K. and Walker, G . (2006) Public understandings of air pollution; the ‘localisation’ of environmental risk. Global Environmental Change, 11, 133-145.

Bogost, I. (2007)  Persuasive games; the expressive power of videogames. Cambridge, Mass: M I T Press.

Buckingham, D. (2007) Beyond technology; children’s learning in the age of digital culture, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Castells, M. (Ed) (2004) The network society;  a cross-cultural perspective, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Cliff, D., O’Malley, C. & Taylor, J. (2008) Future issues in socio-technical changes for UK education.  Bristol: Futurelab.

Coleman, S.  Doing IT for themselves; management vs. autonomy in youth e-citizenship.  In Bennett, L. (Ed)  (2008) Civic life online; learning how digital media can engage youth, Cambridge, Mass:  M I T Press.

Dede, C. (2007). Reinventing the role of information and communications technologies in education. In Smolin, L.,  Lawless, K. &  Burbules, N. (Eds.),  Information and Communication Technologies: Considerations of Current Practice for Teachers and Teacher Educators [NSSE Yearbook 2007 (106:2)], Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 11-38

Doering, H. (2008) Communities and citizenship; paths for engagement? Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

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Flynn, J. (2009) What is intelligence?  Beyond the Flynn effect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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.

Gwernan-Jones, R. (2008) Identity and disability; a review of the current state and developing trends. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Hampton, K.N.  (2004)  Networked sociability online, offline.  In Castells, M. The network society; a cross-cultural perspective, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.217-232.

Haste, H. (1996) Communitarianism and the social construction of morality, J. Moral Education, 25(1), 47-55.

Haste, H. (2004) Constructing the citizen. Political Psychology, 25(3), 413 -440.

Haste, H.  (2005) Joined-Up Texting, Nestlé Social Research Programme #3, Croydon: Nestlé Trust.

Haste, H. (2005) My Voice, My Vote My Community, Nestlé Social Research Programme #4, Croydon: Nestlé Trust.

Haste, H. (2006) Assets, aliens or asylum seekers? Immigration and the UK. UNESCO Prospects, 26(3), 327-341.

Haste, H. (2007) Good thinking; the creative and competent mind.  In Craft, A., Gardner, H. & Claxton. G. (Eds)  Creativity, wisdom and trusteeship, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 96-104.

Haste, H. ( 2009) Culture, tools and subjectivity.  In Magioglou, T. (Ed) Culture and political psychology, InfoAge.

Haste, H. & Hogan, A. (2006) Beyond conventional civic participation, beyond the moral-political divide; young people and contemporary debates about citizenship. Journal of Moral Education, 35(4), 473-493.

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Helsper, E. (2008) Digital natives and ostrich tactics?  The possible implications of labelling young people as digital experts. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Hoskins, B. and Mascherini, M. (2008) Measuring active citizenship through the development of a composite indicator, Social Indicators Research, 90, 3, 459-488.

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Klandermans, B. (1997) The social psychology of protest, Oxford: Blackwells.

Levinson, M. (1999) The demands of liberal education, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Littleton, K, Light, P., Joiner, R., Messer D. & Barnes, P.  (1998) Gender, task scenarios and children’s computer-based problem-solving. Educational Psychology, 18(3), 327 – 335.

Loader, B.D.  (Ed) (2007)  Young citizens in the digital age; political engagement, young people and new media, London: Routledge.

Madden, L.  (2008) Integrating the Internet into women’s lives.  Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Mafffesoli, M. (1996) The time of the tribes; the decline of individualism in mass society, London: Sage.

Magioglou, T. (2008) Young people’s reaction to the feeling of self-inefficacy and the role of technology towards a new kind of citizenship. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

McAdam, D. (2003) Recruits to Civil Rights activism. In Goodwin, J. & Jasper, J.M. (eds) The social movements reader, Oxford: Blackwell.

McLuhan, M. (1994) Understanding media; the extensions of man, Cambridge, Mass:  M I T Press [originally published 1964].

Morgan, W, &  Streb, M. (2001) Building citizenship; how student voice in service-learning develops civic values. Social Science Quarterly, 82(1) 154-169.

Murakami, K. (2008) Re-imagining the future: young people’s construction of identities through digital storytelling. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Nash, N. (2008) Future issues in socio-technical change for UK citizenship; the importance of ‘place’. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Paxton, R.O. (2009) Can you really become French? The New York Review of Books, LVI (6), April 9, 52-56.

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5) 1-6

Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling alone; the collapse and revival of American community, New York: Simon & Schuster.

Reich, J. (2008)  Reworking the web, reworking the world; how Web 2.0 is changing our society. .  Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Reicher, S. and Hopkins, N.(2001) Self and nation; categorisation, contestation and mobilisation, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Riley, S. (2008) Identity, community and selfhood: understanding the self in relation to contemporary youth cultures. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Rychen, D. and Salganik, L. (eds) (2001) Defining and selecting key competences, OECD/Huber & Hogrefe.

Salen, K. (ed)  (2008) The ecology of games, Cambridge, Mass: M I T Press

Selwyn, N. ((2008) Re-imagining the school as a ‘loose space’ for digital technology use.  In Drenoyianni, H. & Stergioulas, L  (Eds) Pursuing digital literacy in the twenty-first century; reconstructing the school to provide digital literacy for all. New York: Peter Lang.

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Studdert, D. (2008)  Community and CMC; the virtual absence of online communal being-ness. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2. Studdert, D. (2006) Conceptualising community; beyond the state and the individual, London: Palgrave.

Suarez-Orozco, M. & Qin-Holland, D.B. (eds) (2004) Globalisation; culture and education in the new Millennium, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Taylor, C. (1991) The ethics of authenticity, Cambridge Mass:  Harvard University Press.

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Vass, E. (2008) New technology and habits of mind. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Ververi, O.  (2008)  “The civil society project”. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Weltman, D. (2008) Popular representations of the working class; contested identities and social change. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Wertsch, J. (1998)  Mind as action, New York: Oxford University Press.

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Yates, M and Youniss, J. (1999) The roots of civic identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Youniss, J., McClellan and Yates, M (1997) What we know about engendering civic identity. American Behavioral Scientist, 40(5), 620-631

Endnotes

One case is texting, incorporated in the design of mobile phones for use by the engineers who would maintain the system. It rapidly became the primary communication function for young people, and in consequence social practices of communicating, arranging meetings, dating and dumping and keeping into touch with parents, have substantially changed.

I am reminded of H.G.Wells’story of the sighted man in the kingdom of the blind.  Contrary to the ‘dominant’ platitude, ‘In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king’, the sighted hero’s sense is regarded with bewilderment by the inhabitants and he is pressed strongly to remove this unnecessary attribute.  What he can see is either experienced by them through other senses, and so is routine, or is incomprehensible and irrelevant.

In addition to the reviews by Magioglou, Murakami, Reich, Ververi  and Vass, I will draw upon data from the IEA 28 nation study, my own 2005 data on British young people, and studies from the MacArthur Foundation program on civic participation and new technology[3].

A somewhat curious side effect has been ‘astro-turfing’, the creation of spurious websites that purport to present a ‘grassroots’ viewpoint which in fact undermines the candidate.

In April 2009, young people in the former Soviet satellite of Moldova used text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter to rally 10,000 protesters within a few hours, to an anti-government rally in the capital Chisinau.

In February 2009 the Dutch government struggled with the tricky question of whether, and how, to control a wild card politician who was being offensive about Islam (in blogs and other media), yet is democratically entitled to freedom of speech.

Council of Europe

EDC is a citizenship education programme which aims at the cultivation of active citizenship culture.

Selwyn, N. (2008) Re-imagining the school as a ‘loose space’ for digital technology use.  In Drenoyianni, H. & Stergioulas, L  (Eds) Pursuing digital literacy in the twenty-first century; reconstructing the school to provide digital literacy for all. New York: Peter Lang.

Cliff, D., O’Malley, C. & Taylor, J. (2008) Future issues in socio-technical changes for UK education.  Bristol: Futurelab.

Bogost, I. (2007)  Persuasive games; the expressive power of videogames. Cambridge, Mass: M I T Press.

eg Shaffer, D.W. (2006) How computer games help children learn, New York: Palgrave Macmillan;  Salen, K. (ed)  (2008) The ecology of games, Cambridge, Mass: M I T Press; Gee, J.P. (2007) Good video games and good learning, New York: Peter Lang;  Gee, J.P. (2007) What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bennett, L. (Ed)  (2008) Civic life online; learning how digital media can engage youth, Cambridge, Mass:  M I T Press;  Loader, B.D.  (Ed) (2007)  Young citizens in the digital age; political engagement, young people and new media, London: Routledge.

Haste, H.  (2005) Joined-Up Texting, Nestlé Social Research Programme #3, Croydon: Nestlé Trust.

Reich, J. (2008) Reworking the web, reworking the world; how Web 2.0 is changing our society.  Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Bennett (2008) op. cit.: This is also part of the agenda of the MacArthur Foundation initiative on Digital Media and Learning.

Johnson, S. (2005) Everything bad is good for you, London: Penguin; Vass, E. (2008) New technology and habits of mind. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Shaffer, D.W. (2006) op. cit.

Flynn, J. ()2009) What is intelligence?  Beyond the Flynn effect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [cited in Vass]

Johnson, S. (2005)  op. cit.

Littleton, K, Light, P., Joiner, R, Messer D. & Barnes, P.  (1998) Gender, task scenarios and children’s computer-based problem-solving. Educational Psychology, 18(3), 327-335.

Madden, L.  (2008) Integrating the Internet into women’s lives.  Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Helsper, E. (2008) Digital natives and ostrich tactics?  The possible implications of labelling young people as digital experts. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5) 1-6

Riley, S. (2008) Identity, community and selfhood: understanding the self in relation to contemporary youth cultures. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Magioglou, T. (2008) Young people’s reaction to the feeling of self-inefficacy and the role of technology towards a new kind of citizenship. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Sindic, D.  (2008) National identities; are they declining? Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Haste, H. (2007) Good thinking; the creative and competent mind.  In Craft, A., Gardner, H. & Claxton. G. (Eds)  Creativity, wisdom and trusteeship, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. pp 96-104: Rychen, D. and Salganik, L. (Eds) (2001) Defining and selecting key competences, OECD/Huber & Hogrefe.

Buckingham, D. (2007) Beyond technology; children’s learning in the age of digital culture, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Hayden, M and Thompson, J. (Eds)  (1998) International education; principles and practice. London: Kogan Page.

Haste, H. (2006) Assets, aliens or asylum seekers? Immigration and the UK. UNESCO Prospects, 26(3), 327-341: Suarez-Orozco, M. & Qin-Holland, D.B. (eds) (2004) Globalisation; culture and education in the new Millennium, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Levinson, M. (1999) The demands of liberal education, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Paxton, R.O. (2009) Can you really become French?  The New York Review of Books, LVI (6), April 9, 52-56.

Murakami, K. (2008) Re-imagining the future: young people’s construction of identities through digital storytelling. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

www.worldfilmcollective.com

Gee, J.P. (2007) op.cit.; Salen, K. (2008) op.cit.:

Doering, H. (2008) Communities and citizenship; paths for engagement? Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2;  Nash, N. (2008) Future issues in socio-technical change for UK citizenship; the importance of ‘place’. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Bickerstaff, K and Walker, G . (2006) Public understandings of air pollution; the ‘localisation’ of environmental risk. Global Environmental Change, 11, 133-145.

Reicher, S. and Hopkins, N. (2001) Self and nation; categorisation, contestation and mobilisation, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Haste, H. (2005) My Voice, My Vote My Community, Nestlé Social Research Programme #4, Croydon: Nestlé Trust.;  Haste, H. & Hogan, A. (2006) Beyond conventional civic participation, beyond the moral-political divide; young people and contemporary  debates about citizenship. Journal of Moral Education, 35(4), 473-493.

Mafffesoli, M. (1996) The time of the tribes; the decline of individualism in mass society, London: Sage.

McLuhan, M. (1994) Understanding media; the extensions of man, Cambridge, Mass:  M I T Press [originally published 1964]

Weltman, D. (2008) Popular representations of the working class; contested identities and social change. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Gwernan-Jones, R. (2008)  Identity and disability; a review of the current state and developing trends. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2;

Threlkeld, A. D. (2008) Virtual disruptions; traditional and new media’s challenges to heteronormativity in education. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2.

Reicher, S. & Hopkins, N. (2001) op.cit.: Haste, H. (2004) Constructing the citizen. Political Psychology, 25(3), 413 -440; Bar-On, D. (2008) The others within us; constructing Jewish Israeli identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Taylor, C. (1991) The ethics of authenticity, Cambridge Mass:  Harvard University Press:   Haste, H. (1996) Communitarianism and the social construction of morality, J. Moral Education, 25(1), 47-55;  Haste, H. ( 2009) Culture, tools and subjectivity.  In Magioglou, T. (Ed) Culture and political psychology, InfoAge; Wertsch, J. (1998)  Mind as action, New York: Oxford University Press.

Studdert, D. (2008) Community and CMC; the virtual absence of online communal being-ness. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2; Studdert, D. (2006) Conceptualising community; beyond the state and the individual, London: Palgrave.

Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling alone; the collapse and revival of American community, New York: Simon & Schuster.

Castells, M. (Ed) (2004) The network society;  a cross-cultural perspective, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Hampton, K.N.  (2004)  Networked sociability online, offline.  In Castells, M. The network society, ; a cross-cultural perspective, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 217-232

Valkenburg, P.M. & Peter, J.  (2009) Social consequences of the Internet for adolescents. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18 (1), 1-5.

Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and self-identity; self and society in the Late Modern Age, Oxford: Polity Press: Putnam, R. (200) op.cit.., Beck, U. (1992) The risk society, London: Sage: Haste, H. (2004) op.cit.; Torney-Purta, J. Lehmannn, R., Oswald, H. & Schulz, W. (2001) Citizenship and education in twenty-eight countries; civic knowledge and engagement at age fourteen, Amsterdam:  International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).

http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.html

Giddens (1991) op cit ; Klandermans, B. (1997) The social psychology of protest, Oxford: Blackwells.

Youniss, J., McClellan and Yates, M (1997) What we know about engendering civic identity. American Behavioral Scientist, 40(5), 620-631; Morgan, W , &  Streb, M. (2001) Building citizenship; how student voice in service-learning develops civic values. Social Science Quarterly, 82(1) 154-169; McAdam, D. (2003) Recruits to Civil Rights activism. In Goodwin, J. & Jasper, J.M. (eds) The social movements reader, Oxford: Blackwell.

Haste, H.  (2005) My voice, my vote, my community, Nestlé Social Research programme #4, Croydon: Nestlé Trust

Torney-Purta, J., Lehmannn, R., Oswald, H. & Schulz, W. (2001) Citizenship and education in twenty-eight countries; civic knowledge and engagement at age fourteen, Amsterdam:  International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).

Haste, H. (.2005) op cit

Westheimer, J. & Kahne, J. (2004) Educating the ‘good’ citizen; political choices and pedagogical goals. www.democraticdialogue.com/DDpdfs/WestheimerKahnePS.pdf

Ververi, O.  (2008) “The civil society project”. Beyond Current Horizons Review paper, Challenge #2; Hoskins, B. and Mascherini, M. (2008) Measuring active citizenship through the development of a composite indicator. Social Indicators Research, 90(3), 459-488.

Morgan, W, &  Streb, M. (2001) Building citizenship; how student voice in service-learning develops civic values. Social Science Quarterly, 82(1) 154-169; Yates, M and Youniss, J. (1999) The roots of civic identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Juris, J. (2004) Networks of social movements; global movements for global justice. In Castells, M. The network society; a cross-cultural perspective, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.pp341-362.

Bennett, L.  (2008) op.cit.

Juris, J. op.cit

Coleman, S.  Doing IT for themselves; management vs. autonomy in youth e-citizenship.  In Bennett, L. (Ed)  (2008) Civic life online; learning how digital media can engage youth, Cambridge, Mass:  M I T Press

Jenkins, H. cited in Bennett (2008).

Kahne, J., Middaugh, E. & Evans, C. (2008) The civic potential of video games. MacArthur Foundation, www.digitallearning.macfound.org.

Flanagan, M. and Nissenbaum, H. (2007) A game design methodology to incorporate social activist games.  CHI 2007, April-May.

Dede, C. (2007). Reinventing the role of information and communications technologies in education. In Smolin, L. Lawless, K. &  Burbules N.(Eds) Information and Communication Technologies: Considerations of Current Practice for Teachers and Teacher Educators [NSSE Yearbook 2007 (106:2)], Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 11-38

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation

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ageing citizenship communication community creativity culture economics education employment family home identity Internet knowledge politics school society technology work young people

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