Showing posts with label visual arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label visual arts. Show all posts
Monday, 15 July 2019
Reflections after 'Young black women curate visual arts e-portfolios': a South African cultural hierarchy versus local practices...
Written for media studies researchers and educators interested in the challenges that young people in Cape Town face when formally expressing identities as visual arts students.
My first sole-authored journal article is published in the Learning, Media and Technology journal at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439884.2019.1640738. Young black women curate visual arts e-portfolios: negotiating digital disciplined identities, infrastructural inequality and public visibility addresses the special issue’s theme ’Global Technologies, Local Practices’, outlined here. Please visit http://bit.ly/2NOxxiM to download one of the 50 free e-prints that Taylor & Francis has made available for download.
Dr Jeremy Knox and a few anonymous reviewers provided in-depth guidance that helped me to better address both the special issue’s theme and its international audiences. Over the course of two revisions, the article’s abstract became:
‘Despite the growing importance of digital portfolios for justifying creative work and study opportunities, little is known about arts students’ creative appropriation of online portfolios in secondary school. In particular, there is a research gap concerning the challenges that young black women face when curating portfolios as visual arts students. This paper describes the key challenges that three such government school students negotiated when taught to creatively appropriate an online portfolio software for curating showcase visual arts e-portfolios:
In formal contexts, art students’ e-portfolios are strongly shaped by assimilatory norms. Visual arts students who want to develop portfolios that follow local or global crafts and fandoms must negotiate their low status in, or complete exclusion from, the national syllabus. Students in under-resourced school and home settings may already be using other online portfolio solutions that suit their purposes better than the particular software prescribed in arts lessons. Online portfolios are public by default and young women negotiated this risk by using pseudonymous self presentations. Each student’s classroom practices were also constrained by a technology selected for its minimalist exhibition aesthetic. Students curated showcase exhibitions, but the prescribed service did not facilitate a wider exploration of contemporary digital practices.’
The case studies for three young black women revealed the diverse, yet overlapping, challenges each faced in expressing their creative identities and interests. It balanced the need to provide a full context with the special issue’s concerns in under 6,000 words. Following this article's publication, I felt I should use this blog post for reflecting more broadly on why so few local practices from Cape Town (and South Africa) became shared by visual arts students in their e-portfolios.
My first sole-authored journal article is published in the Learning, Media and Technology journal at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439884.2019.1640738. Young black women curate visual arts e-portfolios: negotiating digital disciplined identities, infrastructural inequality and public visibility addresses the special issue’s theme ’Global Technologies, Local Practices’, outlined here. Please visit http://bit.ly/2NOxxiM to download one of the 50 free e-prints that Taylor & Francis has made available for download.
Dr Jeremy Knox and a few anonymous reviewers provided in-depth guidance that helped me to better address both the special issue’s theme and its international audiences. Over the course of two revisions, the article’s abstract became:
‘Despite the growing importance of digital portfolios for justifying creative work and study opportunities, little is known about arts students’ creative appropriation of online portfolios in secondary school. In particular, there is a research gap concerning the challenges that young black women face when curating portfolios as visual arts students. This paper describes the key challenges that three such government school students negotiated when taught to creatively appropriate an online portfolio software for curating showcase visual arts e-portfolios:
In formal contexts, art students’ e-portfolios are strongly shaped by assimilatory norms. Visual arts students who want to develop portfolios that follow local or global crafts and fandoms must negotiate their low status in, or complete exclusion from, the national syllabus. Students in under-resourced school and home settings may already be using other online portfolio solutions that suit their purposes better than the particular software prescribed in arts lessons. Online portfolios are public by default and young women negotiated this risk by using pseudonymous self presentations. Each student’s classroom practices were also constrained by a technology selected for its minimalist exhibition aesthetic. Students curated showcase exhibitions, but the prescribed service did not facilitate a wider exploration of contemporary digital practices.’
The case studies for three young black women revealed the diverse, yet overlapping, challenges each faced in expressing their creative identities and interests. It balanced the need to provide a full context with the special issue’s concerns in under 6,000 words. Following this article's publication, I felt I should use this blog post for reflecting more broadly on why so few local practices from Cape Town (and South Africa) became shared by visual arts students in their e-portfolios.
Overall, such neglect of the local seemed strongly shaped by four cultural hierarchies in Cape Town communities, which may fall under a broader cultural hierarchy in South Africa:
As my essay describes, young black women did face obstacles in using the "global" online portfolio technology, Carbonmade.com, for expressing their artistic identities. This technology was not designed to accommodate their under-resourced contexts.
By comparison, the strong shaping influence of the dominant cultural hierarchy seemed to exert a much greater influence on all visual arts students in my PhD research study. Most did not spotlight uniquely local cultural interests and practices in their portfolios. This suggests how South Africa's cultural hierarchy is a great obstacle for those Cape Town visual arts students and their expression of local practices via "global" technology.
Kindly comment on this post, or contact me with your thoughts.
- South African visual arts education is dominated by a Modernist tastes for expressing a traditional version of aesthetic distinction.
- Cape Town is an important creative hub in South Africa and there are many creative industries producing local content. However, students’ e-portfolios largely ignored it and other (South) African creations. This reflects how better-off homes typically prefer consuming global popular cultures versus local creative industries. Global media fandoms from the United States (such as Hollywood franchises) and Japan (Manga and Anime) influenced most of the fan art in students’ e-portfolios.
- The lifestyle and vocational preferences of the middle-class dovetail with the cultural capital of secondary schooling. By contrast, working class culture was largely excluded in teens' e-portfolios.
- There are 11 official languages in South Africa. Despite several of the students not speaking English as their home language, all used English to present their identities and work.
By comparison, the strong shaping influence of the dominant cultural hierarchy seemed to exert a much greater influence on all visual arts students in my PhD research study. Most did not spotlight uniquely local cultural interests and practices in their portfolios. This suggests how South Africa's cultural hierarchy is a great obstacle for those Cape Town visual arts students and their expression of local practices via "global" technology.
Kindly comment on this post, or contact me with your thoughts.
Labels:
cape town
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eportfolio
,
global
,
local
,
media studies
,
PhD
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technology
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visual arts
,
voice
Location: Cape Town, Western Cape Province, RSA
Cape Town, South Africa
Friday, 12 April 2019
Five curricular changes to consider when teaching visual arts e-portfolios
Written for visual arts and design teachers who teach their students e-portfolio curation.
'Young black women curate visual arts e-portfolios: negotiating digital disciplined identities, infrastructural inequality and public visibility' was recently accepted subject to changes for a special issue of the Learning Media and Technology journal. Contributions whose perspectives challenge 'universal technological solutionism' were invited for the forthcoming 'Global technologies, Local Practices: redefining digital education with marginalised voices'.
My contribution foregrounded the key challenges that three young black women faced in creatively appropriating online portfolio software for showcase e-portfolio production. Each student had to negotiate (i) cultural and technical forms of exclusion, (ii) visibility versus privacy concerns and (iii) different forms of digital infrastructural inequalities. To reach the journal's 6,000 word limit for articles, I cut mine's initial visual arts e-portfolio curriculum recommendations, but cited this post. I trust its readers will find the recommendations below helpful, whether for reworking the visual arts showcase e-portfolio curriculum or refining similar curricula. Such changes may better accommodate young visual artists’ varied circumstances and creative aspirations:
Recommended changes when teaching visual arts e-portfolios
+1 > Provide examples of privacy protection that can address visibility risks
+2 > Accommodate the roles in creative industry and digital identities that young people explore
Taken together, the case studies suggested a broader need for a more inclusive visual arts syllabus. South African visual arts pedagogy largely ignores the many and varied types of genres in visual culture that students may participate in. Despite affinity spaces in youth-, do-it-yourself and ethnic cultures potentially being valuable resources for young people's e-portfolio personas and projects, students reported exercising self-presentation strategies that hid participation in "unofficial", "illegitimate" genres. There was a missed pedagogical opportunity for challenging cultural exclusion and supporting greater e-portfolio differentiation by including teens' informal cultural interests.
I trust these five suggestions will help teachers of visual creative e-portfolios to better accommodate young people’s different circumstances, repertoires and creative aspirations.
'Young black women curate visual arts e-portfolios: negotiating digital disciplined identities, infrastructural inequality and public visibility' was recently accepted subject to changes for a special issue of the Learning Media and Technology journal. Contributions whose perspectives challenge 'universal technological solutionism' were invited for the forthcoming 'Global technologies, Local Practices: redefining digital education with marginalised voices'.
My contribution foregrounded the key challenges that three young black women faced in creatively appropriating online portfolio software for showcase e-portfolio production. Each student had to negotiate (i) cultural and technical forms of exclusion, (ii) visibility versus privacy concerns and (iii) different forms of digital infrastructural inequalities. To reach the journal's 6,000 word limit for articles, I cut mine's initial visual arts e-portfolio curriculum recommendations, but cited this post. I trust its readers will find the recommendations below helpful, whether for reworking the visual arts showcase e-portfolio curriculum or refining similar curricula. Such changes may better accommodate young visual artists’ varied circumstances and creative aspirations:
Recommended changes when teaching visual arts e-portfolios
+1 > Provide examples of privacy protection that can address visibility risks
"Lesley Ann", "Melissa" and "Dina" all chose not to use their full first and last names for minimising risks of sexual harassment. Such measures were often not sufficient, since their full names were shown in their email addresses. E-portfolio curricula must guide students appropriately on how to protect their privacy by not sharing genuine identities. For example, a curriculum could include reflection of the potential negative consequence of presenting one's legal identity online, versus assuming that using one's genuine identity and legal name, as "the ('Modern gallery') artist" must be the norm. Alternative self-presentation strategies should be taught, particularly where vulnerable individuals would benefit from privacy protection.
+2 > Accommodate the roles in creative industry and digital identities that young people explore
Taken together, the case studies suggested a broader need for a more inclusive visual arts syllabus. South African visual arts pedagogy largely ignores the many and varied types of genres in visual culture that students may participate in. Despite affinity spaces in youth-, do-it-yourself and ethnic cultures potentially being valuable resources for young people's e-portfolio personas and projects, students reported exercising self-presentation strategies that hid participation in "unofficial", "illegitimate" genres. There was a missed pedagogical opportunity for challenging cultural exclusion and supporting greater e-portfolio differentiation by including teens' informal cultural interests.
Educators could explore potential continuities between youth’s extra-mural affinities and the visual arts syllabus. This may better engage students’ interests, whilst also offering youth greater scope to share their varied personas. For example, presenting market-driven identities in creative industry proved a valued strategy for gaining economic capital amongst under-resourced students. E-portfolio curricula can also better house the existing social network and online content practices of students, which our curricular plans neglected. For example, the curriculum could accommodate students’ pre-existing digital portfolios by encouraging students to link link to theirs from within their e-portfolios.
+3> Cater for students who want to be seen as 'emergent creative pros', not "students"
An online identity as an arts student can be seen as undesirable to emergent visual creatives, who prefer to portray themselves as 'creative professionals' outside school. Examples of young creatives could be added to visual arts e-portfolio curricula for such students to learn from and experiment with.
+4> Foreground both process and product to make context explicit
The 'visual arts showcase' e-portfolio curriculum was taught as a capstone showcase exhibition project. This neglected sharing information related to students’ digital infrastructures. Their e-portfolios did not list the resources that each student used, which made it very difficult to compare the respective infrastructures youth used in e-portfolio curation. Teenagers from black, working class homes faced the greatest obstacles in accessing and using digital infrastructures. A danger lies in the increasing use of digital portfolios potentially serving as a new hurdle for these youth in accessing tertiary studies at elite institutions. This is allied to the rise of professional, digital self-presentation in spaces of creative production potentially serving as another gatekeeper to freelance projects.
+3> Cater for students who want to be seen as 'emergent creative pros', not "students"
An online identity as an arts student can be seen as undesirable to emergent visual creatives, who prefer to portray themselves as 'creative professionals' outside school. Examples of young creatives could be added to visual arts e-portfolio curricula for such students to learn from and experiment with.
+4> Foreground both process and product to make context explicit
My thesis revealed that students’ curation of disciplined digital identities and addition of other personas was strongly shaped by their levels of connectivity. In particular, under-resourced youth’s school and homes did not provide sufficient infrastructure for them to fully participate in e-portfolio design. The least resourced students were under-connected in lacking home internet access and having to share ownership of digital devices. Both were strong markers of class inequality. Under-connected students were at a severe disadvantage in being constrained to doing digital portfolio curation only in e-portfolio lessons. Youth with costly mobile internet access could workaround their computer lab’s slow internet speeds, but could not always work on e-portfolios at home owing to priorities related to mobile broadband costs.
The 'visual arts showcase' e-portfolio curriculum was taught as a capstone showcase exhibition project. This neglected sharing information related to students’ digital infrastructures. Their e-portfolios did not list the resources that each student used, which made it very difficult to compare the respective infrastructures youth used in e-portfolio curation. Teenagers from black, working class homes faced the greatest obstacles in accessing and using digital infrastructures. A danger lies in the increasing use of digital portfolios potentially serving as a new hurdle for these youth in accessing tertiary studies at elite institutions. This is allied to the rise of professional, digital self-presentation in spaces of creative production potentially serving as another gatekeeper to freelance projects.
+5> Provide workarounds for inequalities in digital infrastructures
E-portfolio teaching must accommodate the media ecologies of students who are under-connected to the internet. They should be identified and prioritised with classroom support, since other students can readily do such work at home. Our syllabi also neglected mobile technologies by focusing on desktop and laptop computer users. Resourceful teens used their mobile phones in class to continue e-portfolio curation and overcome school infrastructure constraints. Teaching should accommodate the mobile devices that students bring with them. Students must be encouraged to use these tools for creative production, as well as to make resourceful workarounds where there are problems with classroom infrastructure.I trust these five suggestions will help teachers of visual creative e-portfolios to better accommodate young people’s different circumstances, repertoires and creative aspirations.
Labels:
Carbonmade
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eportfolio
,
OCC
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online_portfolio
,
participatory culture
,
research
,
visual arts
,
visual culture
Location: Cape Town, Western Cape Province, RSA
Cape Town, South Africa
Tuesday, 13 December 2016
Multimodal education for inequality: exploring privilege in visual arts students’ e-portfolio personas #8ICOM
Written for researchers interested in how technological and material inequalities become evidenced in young people's digital personas.
Here's the 19 minute 8ICOM conference talk that accompanied my Multimodal education for inequality presentation. This talk aimed to be a concise overview of my PhD research and its contribution:
"My research serves as a cautionary
tale concerning the inequalities evidenced in visual arts students’
curation of digital personas. By contrast to often celebratory accounts of
teaching contemporary digital media literacies, I describe how the technological
and material inequalities between students at a government and an
independent school became mirrored in digital portfolios.
My thesis’ research
contributions are as an Action Research project that enabled the recording
and analysis of students' differing negotiations of arts studio personas
for up to three years. It included students from very different social
backgrounds with contrasting access to media ecologies for digital
curation. I explore how young people’s e-portfolio styles mirror inequalities
in their digital curations and connections to varied affinity spaces. I also
highlight other challenges youths faced in articulating interest via
e-portfolios. For example, remediating “unofficial” cultural repertoires, such
as fashion and Manga.
In South Africa, just
doing ICT, visual arts or visual design subjects is a rare privilege. The
Department of Education’s technical report on the National Senior Certificate
reveals that a low percentage of students do subjects likely to support
access to study options in visually creative industries. In 2012, Equal Education reported that Cape Town’s schools offering
art or design until grade 12 (Matric) are predominately those serving the middle-
and upper-classes. Anecdotal
experience suggests that very few students have curricular opportunities to
experiment with online content creation. A narrow subject focus tends to
exclude inter-disciplinary productions, such as visual arts students
using ICT technologies to curate their productions. Such rigid silos ignore the
importance of hybridity in domains such as contemporary art or graphic
design. My action research project makes a small contribution to building
bridges between silos.
I helped teachers
develop syllabi that appropriated online portfolios for e-portfolio curation. Online
portfolios emerged in 2003 and visual creatives increasingly use such
services to reach web audiences. Digital portfolios are
used for varied forms of capital exchange: For example, securing academic
and vocational trajectories. Some portfolios also support commercial
transactions, such as auctions or art catalogues. Portfolio portals
provide a resource to develop extensive knowledge about the numerous
domains in visual culture. Visual creatives can also develop in-depth
knowledge by learning from others in digital affinity groups. For
emergent creatives, experimenting with portfolios can help with developing
intent around who they want to be.
My action research
project aimed to enfranchise students with fair opportunities for formally
experimenting with online content creation. I helped two educators appropriate
Carbonmade for their students to produce e-portfolios. E-portfolios were taught
conservatively as an aid to prepare for matric exhibitions. A
Bourdieusian field analysis reveals why: it was easy to source the well-resourced
sites supporting digital media prosumption. By contrast, e-portfolio curricula
had to dovetail with the DOE’s visual arts syllabus requirements. It was
a process to gain approval from the DOE, WCED and to secure buy-in from
educators.
Youth were taught and
assessed on their self-presentation as visual arts students (or
"disciplined" identities) and in organizing curricular showcases.
Students' Carbonmade entries were used by the service’s database in creating
four types of page: A 'homepage', ‘artwork project folder’ pages, an ‘about’
page and ‘search page’ results.
Carbonmade’s use was
part of a broader digital curation process, which Potter defines as new
media literacy involving intertextual meanings and strategies for different
audiences. E-portfolio curricula saw students practice the steps A. to C. of
collation, production and sharing in their digital curations. Twenty nine
students curated e-portfolio; seventeen pupils came from an elite,
all-boys, independent school’s Class of 2012. They were taught
e-portfolios from grades 10 to 12. Twelve volunteers came from a less
well-resourced, mixed sex, government school, where ICT broadband
failure delayed the bulk of my lessons to grade 11 in 2014.
The independent school’s
speedy adoption mirrored its material and technological advantages
versus the government school. van Dijk identifies five different types of
inequality and their properties shaping digital media’s usage. My research
focuses on the material and technological aspects:
Technology wise, the
independent school had a one-laptop-per-learner-policy and conspicuous
consumption of electronics was evident. Varied societies, workshops and
extra-mural leisure activities received the independent school’s
support. By contrast, the media infrastructure available to government school
learners in its Khanya computer lab were old. As an Arts and Culture
Focus school it offered some co-curricular activities, but most students
needed to leave early for safe public transport.
The results from my
sites are not comparable due to these large differences, as well as the
shorter e-portfolio syllabus at the government school. There were also
important differences in students’ vocational interests, with the
government school volunteers being more motivated to pursue visual creative
studies. Working in a creative industry seemed a prized social trajectory to
them. By contrast, many independent school students perceived such choices to
be low in prestige, versus say, finance or medicine.
After four years of
fieldwork I amassed a lot of data and my analysis followed Potter’s (2015) example. He
researched digital curation through a combination of Social Semiotics
and Cultural Theory. Given the potentially strong role of ICT
infrastructure and capital resources on youth’s curation, I added insights from
Digital Materialism (especially Infrastructure studies) and also Social
Interactionism. I also adopted Sen’s (1992) inequality approach.
I did a multimodal
content analysis on the representational and communicational choices of all
students. I then wrote 12 case studies, covering student’s diverse
circumstances and e-portfolio styles. The content analysis revealed particular
patterns in the disciplinary, extra mural visual creative and other
personas at each site. For example in
self-presentation, no government school students wrote self-descriptions
over 10 sentences long or used formal genres. Similarly, informal
mobile genres were used for self-representation in their images. Here,
youth tended to differentiate themselves through the “unofficial” visual
culture personas they shared.
Notable patterns at the independent school included the impact
of strong assessment on students’ presentation of their disciplined
identities, which predominately featured formal styles. Most students added
lifestyle personas to differentiate themselves. Several drew on differentiated
practices in tourism, watersports and music for subject matter.
Students’ contrasting e-portfolio styles marked
their unequal access to ICT infrastructures. The
content analysis showed that youth did not have equal opportunities, but
the formal and extra-mural advantages of the better-off were amplified at both
schools. For example, students from homes supporting “free”
internet access created better organized and more extensive showcases than
under-, or non-, connected classmates. Young people’s disciplinary and
“unofficial” e-portfolio personas evidenced privilege. Youth’s online access for developing academic
cultural capital online could be likened to museum visits. As can be seen
across all these digital curation practices, limited internet access
seriously hampers one’s opportunities to engage with exhibits or in developing
one’s own.
This points to the importance of each young
person’s digital hexis in developing e-portfolio styles. Young
people with a history of access and use of ICT were advantaged in having foundational
digital literacies for e-portfolio curation. By contrast, those
inexperienced with scanners, desktop computers, internet browser use and local
area networks, had to play ‘catch up’ in class.
To situate how
material and technological inequalities become evidenced in e-portfolio
curation, my research links young people’s habituses to their affinity spaces. Each
individual's habitus comprises different habituses. My research focuses on four;
the secondary school habitus, a primary home habitus, a vocational habitus and the mediated
preferences in the digital information
habitus. The secondary habitus links directly to the legitimated affinity
spaces supported in classroom arts studio practices. Other affinity spaces tend
to relate to “unofficial” personas.
Here follows case
studies for five enthusiastic students, who differed in terms of the
material and technological resources available in their habituses and affinity spaces:
A White, independent school
student, George went beyond want his educator expected by using a fine arts
gallery metaphor while closely reproducing the disciplinary identity. His
benchmark example evidenced a fandom for fine art, which was unusual
amongst his peers. George was privileged to attend both international and local
galleries, and also pursued this fandom in online affinity spaces. Keen to do Medicine,
George’s assessment strategy foregrounded his observational drawer and painter
personas to achieve the best possible grades from his markers. Although he
published extra-mural photography and designs to Instagram, Deviantart and
shared them via social networks, George’s assessment strategy avoided
mentioning such “unofficial” accounts in his e-portfolio.
Nathan, was a Black,
government school student. Despite also being a fan of art, Nathan could not
do visual art or e-portfolio production outside class. His digital
information habitus was heavily constrained and this was mirrored in an
e-portfolio curation of four images and a brief self-description. Privacy
concerns also shaped his concise profile and decision not to add a self-image.
Unusual in expressing dissatisfaction with his
e-portfolio at the curriculum’s end, Nathan did ‘not really’ believe his
e-portfolio might support his vocational objectives in design.
Masibulele also attended
the government school. His case highlights some assimilatory challenges that
Black students might face in producing visual arts e-portfolios: a first-language
isiXhosa speaker, Masibulele chose to use English instead for an
international audience. He did not share traditional mixed-media productions
as he perceived that these productions were not what was expected in arts
class. For the same reason, he also did not initially share his fashion
labels’ creations. Despite his educator’s inclusive approach, exclusion
of traditional and fashion repertoires shows how students might conceal
cultural capital from home. This suggests strategies of assimilation in
respect of the predominately taught Western fine arts canon and observational
drawing and painting studio practices. His case also highlights how particular
types of visual culture (surface, media and genre) embody social distinction,
albeit moderated within “multi-cultural” repertoires.
Melissa’s case
illustrates the influence of global youth culture and gendered
strategies on self-naming practices. She used a well-resourced home environment
to explore “unofficial” Japanese Manga, Anime and calligraphy practices.
The influence of Japanese pop-culture was also evident in the pseudonymous
identity choices she made. Such privacy choices reflected shared concerns
with her female classmates about unwanted audiences and the dangers of
cyber-bullying and sexual harassment. Her well-developed digital hexis had a
downside; while she did use a pseudonymous identity, her contact email address
featured her full name. Melissa linked to a separate deviantArt profile
to share Gothic and other interests with potential to be misinterpreted by a
religiously conservative audience.
Kyle’s case highlight
the ease of extra-mural interests dovetailing with dominant cultural capital
being remediated into e-portfolios. A White, independent school student, Kyle shared exclusively resourced sports and
photographic productions that dovetailed with his school's institutional
cultural capital. Kyle could easily access professional photographic and
videographic equipment and focused on ‘point-of-view’ work in extra-mural
productions from grade 11. He took travel photography and combined his
enjoyment of wave-boarding with technicity to shoot and edit professional-looking
videos. YouTube was used to research video techniques, such as
achieving the right frame rates to show a giant wave break. Kyle also used
Flicker to research productions by photographers with similar lenses and
cameras to him.Kyle linked to his Flicker and Vimeo accounts from his
e-portfolio. After matric, Kyle became the most successful prosumer amongst his
peers with over 30,000 followers of his Instagram account and high quality
prints of his work are available to buy via society6.com. While Kyle and
Melissa’s examples show what is possible for young people as prosumers, it also
suggests the reproduction of advantage via high volumes of capital needed to
develop a prosumer identities as a semi-professional photographer or aspirant
animation producer.
I had hoped that my
action research would support new literacies and equality. By contrast,
it seemed to contribute to the reproduction of symbolic advantage: Under-resourced
students did not create disciplinary showcases and faced challenges in
adding cultural repertoires. Well-resourced students created showcases,
adding distinctive prosumer identities, while negotiating their disciplinary
personas with more exclusive ones. While e-portfolio production is still being
taught at the private school, it’s NOT for government school students. That is a pity; both
Masibulele and Melissa used their e-portfolios to successfully apply for tertiary
studies - Masibulele did surface design and Melissa Fine Art. Despite her
passion for animation, Melissa went on to study Fine Art, evidencing the
importance of educational investment in dominant high culture.
Similarly, Masibulele's parents would like him to transfer to studying
architecture.
Both Melissa and
Masibulele are fortunate relative to their government school peers in being
able to progress into tertiary habituses rather than being unemployed. Ironically, despite facing the least challenges in e-portfolio curation, Kyle
and George went on to study outside visually creative industries: George
entered medicine and Kyle business science.
My content analysis and
case studies suggest the importance of material and technological resourcing
in young visual artists’ e-portfolio curations. In
particular, resource-intensive communications may not accurately reflect
young peoples’ intensions and abilities: inequalities in some
teenagers’ digital information habituses meant that under-resourced sign-makers could not fully
express their curricular interests. In addition to missing social
information, inexperience with software also led to mis-identifiers misrepresenting
what youths wanted to express.
As a pathfinder project,
mine has opened up much to explore:
> How can the middle-class underpinnings of the initial pedagogy be adjusted to better accommodate all students?
> How do online portfolio styles change as youth become professionals or hobbyists?
> My research took place in relatively well-resourced English secondary schools, but what about other languages and resourcing?
> Digital portfolios increasingly serve to access tertiary education, but how are they assessed?
> How can the middle-class underpinnings of the initial pedagogy be adjusted to better accommodate all students?
> How do online portfolio styles change as youth become professionals or hobbyists?
> My research took place in relatively well-resourced English secondary schools, but what about other languages and resourcing?
> Digital portfolios increasingly serve to access tertiary education, but how are they assessed?
To close with a
speculative proposition; Bourdieu foregrounded disinterested aesthetic
dispositions as a key marker of Distinction in 1979. As prosumers increasingly make both their
tastes and work digitally visible, are we not witnessing an emergent form of
social distinction, a ‘Distinction 2.0’? Perhaps researching individuals’
distinctive curations of digital personas can provide as interesting insights
into Postmodern societies, as understanding French people’s contrasting
aesthetic dispositions once did in the Modern!
Labels:
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affinity spaces
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digital
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eportfolio
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habitus
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identity
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inequality
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multimodal
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research
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Location: Cape Town, Western Cape Province, RSA
Cape Town, South Africa
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