Not just playing games: moving on from hobbies to digital jobs

Julian Sefton-Green shares insights from his research on young people’s interest in digital technologies and how their formal and informal learning journeys helped them transformed their passions into genuine creative and digital opportunities. Julian is an independent scholar working in education and the cultural and creative industries. He is currently principal research fellow at the Department of Media & Communication, LSE, a research associate at the University of Oslo and visiting professor at The Playful Learning Centre, University of Helsinki, Finland

Watch our new video about ‘the class’

The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age tells the story of a year in the lives of an ordinary class of 13 to 14-year olds in a suburban, multi-ethnic London school. In classic ethnographic form, the book follows them at home, at school and with their friends and shows how the young people negotiate the pressures, opportunities and constraints of these intersecting worlds

What is ‘play’ and ‘playfulness’, and what does it mean to join either term together with learning?

Julian Sefton-Green explores what play is and what play is not, and whether it truly is ‘the work of the child’. Julian is an independent scholar working in education and the cultural and creative industries. He is currently leading the project Preparing for Creative Labour and is a principal research fellow at the Department of Media & Communication, LSE, a research associate at the University of Oslo and visiting professor at The Playful Learning Centre, University of Helsinki

YouTube in the class

Most children love YouTube, but what do they love about it? Sonia Livingstone unpacks the individual stories behind the shared fascination. Together with Julian Sefton-Green, she followed a class of London teenagers for a year to find out more about how they are, or in some cases are not, connecting online. The book about this research project¹, The Class: living and learning in the digital age, just came out. Sonia is Professor of Social Psychology at LSE’s Department of Media and Communications and has more than 25 years of experience in media research with a particular focus on children and young people. Lead investigator of the Parenting for a Digital Future research project, she was recently asked to give a keynote lecture to the YouTube Conference 2016, and so wrote this post to capture some key points

Researching “learning lives” – a new agenda for learning, media and technology

In this article, we revisit the history of our interest in the term, ‘learning lives’ in order to explicate the meaning(s) of the phrase and to set up a series of challenges for research into young people’s learning. We suggest that a learning lives perspective depends on three areas for investigation. First of all is the challenge of how to capture, theorise and describe the travel and trajectories if researchers are truly to ‘follow’ learners through, around and in their learning across everyday life. Secondly, it means refusing what seems to be the most apparent levers of change, namely media and technology. And thirdly, learning lives approaches need to address the pedagogicization of everyday life and the schooled society. Learning lives approaches help us see the changing place of the meaning of education and institutional pedagogies across all the nooks and crannies of everyday life

Media activities in the class

Sonia Livingstone, together with Julian Sefton-Green, followed a class of London teenagers for a year to find out more about how they are, or in some cases are not, connecting online. In this post, Sonia discusses the diverse patterns of media use and digital engagement that counter the common narrative of screens simply dominating teenagers’ lives. The book about this research project, The Class: living and learning in the digital age, just came out. Sonia is Professor of Social Psychology at LSE’s Department of Media and Communications and has more than 25 years of experience in media research with a particular focus on children and young people. She is the lead investigator of the Parenting for a Digital Future research project

The seemingly ‘closed world’ of the class

What do children ‘do’ in school? Sonia Livingstone sheds some light on the ‘mysteries’ of the school day. Together with Julian Sefton-Green, she followed a class of London teenagers for a year to find out more about how they are, or in some cases are not, connecting online. The book about this research project, The Class: living and learning in the digital age, just came out. Sonia is Professor of Social Psychology at LSE’s Department of Media and Communications and has more than 25 years of experience in media research with a particular focus on children and young people. She is the lead investigator of the Parenting for a Digital Future research project

Researching the class: a multi-sited ethnographic exploration

Sonia Livingstone explores how school and learning, home and family, and peer groups impact and shape children’s use of digital media. Sonia, together with Julian Sefton-Green, followed a class of London teenagers for a year to find out more about how they are, or in some cases are not, connecting online. The book about this research project¹, The Class: living and learning in the digital age, just came out. Sonia is Professor of Social Psychology at LSE’s Department of Media and Communications and has more than 25 years of experience in media research with a particular focus on children and young people. She is the lead investigator of the Parenting for a Digital Future research project

Media and Information Education in the UK - A Report for the EU / COST: Transforming Audiences Project

This is a position paper on the capacity for media and information education in the UK in 2014 to facilitate media, digital and information literacy as defined by the European Commission (EC) and on the relationship between UK media/information education, regulation and law. Because the UK has a long tradition of media education within the formal curriculum (schools and colleges), the premise of this report is that the most tangible evidence of media literacy education is to be found in the teaching of Media Studies at GCSE and A-level and in higher education. Therefore the most substantive section of the report is analysis of the extent to which achievement in Media Studies can be mapped against the EC objectives for media literacy. For this purpose, media education in the mainstream curriculum is measured for its capacity to develop media literacy against a pragmatic working model derived from publications from the EC, COST/ANR, UNESCO and the UK regulator, Ofcom. Information education is currently a distinct category from media education in the UK, with a mandate for entitlement (in the case of e-safety) but without formal qualifications or assessment. The report demonstrates that the composite model of media literacy is too broad in scope and ambition for mainstream education to ‘deliver’. The model derived for this analysis, from EC, COST and Ofcom documents and reports, covers public sphere engagement and empowerment outcomes, a broad range of stakeholders, an equally broad range of media/information content/contexts and a pedagogic intention to combine cultural, critical and creative learning. This analysis of formal media education concludes that the performance criteria and assessment objectives of teaching specifications and awarding body marking materials, combined with the achievement rates in the A and A* grade boundaries, indicate that only a small percentage of people studying media in the curriculum can be said to acquire all the cultural, critical and creative learning. Furthermore, specifications, combined with teacher choices, cover a relatively narrow range of the media/information contexts included in the COST definition. Finally, topic choice means that public sphere engagement and citizen empowerment is difficult to relate to achievement in Media Studies. Therefore the great success of the UK in providing media education in the mainstream curriculum (currently threatened by curriculum reforms for 2016) is balanced by the lack of a coherent match between curriculum content, assessment modes and media literacy policy objectives. There is therefore a fundamental mismatch between the objectives of media literacy as articulated in policy and the capacity of education as the agent for its development in society. Related to this, media literacy/education is mistakenly burdened with responsibility for fixing access and engagement barriers that are media producer/design/regulation issues. The data and analysis in this report supports that view. The UK is currently very well placed to provide media literacy through media education, given the status of Media Studies as an established curriculum subject. However, to coherently match Media Studies to the policy objectives for media literacy expressed in EC, COST and Ofcom statements, funding (for teacher training), and government support and endorsement for Media Studies is essential. Given the uncertainty over the continuation of Media Studies in the formal curriculum in secondary and further education, this is unlikely to be supported within the UK. This report on the state of UK Media Education in 2014 is one of 28 reports mapping the state of Media Education in each of the EC member states. All reports can be found at www.translit.f