[Xmca-l] Re: Gendered Access in Crafting and Electronics Practices
mike cole
mcole@ucsd.edu
Thu Oct 23 09:56:43 PDT 2014
Karen--- I am familiar of course with the notion of artifacts, but I am not
familiar with
Rowsell and Pahl's sedimented identities and artifactual literacies. Could
you provide a link or a reference? The phrase has me wondering what a
non-artifactual literacy would be.
mike
On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 7:03 PM, Karen Wohlwend <kwohlwen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Andy, thanks for these generative questions and comments! I'll defer to my
> co-authors to situate the focal case in the larger study but I'll address
> how we are considering relationships among gender, practices, and tools.
>
> We're conceptualizing tools as anchoring artifacts, that concretize and
> suggest particular uses and users accrued from cultural histories of
> access and use (following Holland and Cole's cultural artifacts, and more
> recently, Rowsell and Pahl's sedimented identities and artifactual
> literacies). Tools index shared histories of use, values, and expectations
> for who *should *be a user and for how practices *should *be conducted,
> practices which following Paechter are situated in communities of gendered
> practice that are multiple, local, and embodied.
>
> However, we would not say that a tool is gendered in any fixed or
> deterministic way. In any given moment of activity, tools signal multiple
> histories in many nexus of practice (following Ron Scollon, the tacit
> shared practices that members of a community expect of one another) that
> lead up to, enter in, and flow from that moment, in contradictory,
> confounding, and complementary ways, hence the ambiguity you've mentioned.
> How/whether social actors make use of particular histories in a specific
> context realizes foregrounds some histories while backgrounding others-- in
> ways that can reproduce, contest, or blur prevailing expectations for
> participation. In our analysis, we looked closely at the mediated actions
> in the handling of tools in the one nexus to understand in a very concrete
> way how girls were able to gain and maintain control over
> projects--contrary to histories and expectations for high levels of tool
> handling, participation, and trajectories of expertise for boys in
> electronics activity.
>
> Looking closely at the mediated action in this transformative moment
> reveals how changing the electronics tools from wires to needle and thread
> changes the nexus, activating a powerful perception/expectation for girls
> as appropriate tool users by signalling histories of sewing practices and
> feminine communities of practice.
>
> In regard to other situations, looking closely at mediated actions,
> material artifacts, and tacit expectations for participation in the
> relevant nexus of practice will likely also reveal how materials relate to
> stereotypical expectations, pointing to places ripe for rupture where
> changing something small in the local activity (e.g., an action, a tool, a
> material) in dominant nexus of practice can signal a different kind of user
> and potentially disrupt persistent and naturalized stereotypes.
>
> Looking forward to continuing the conversation,
> Karen
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 7:08 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> > Kylie & co.,
> > A fascinating study around a truly ingenious approach to the gendered
> > division of labour - giving school kids E-textiles to construct an
> > electronic device - total mixing up and confounding the gender
> stereotypes
> > about sewing and electronics, etc.
> >
> > Some of the results were quite startling. That the young boy should not
> > just abstain and demonstratively not pay attention, but pay active and
> > supportive attention to the girl making the circuit with her
> > needle-and-thread - an admired female-typical stance one would have
> thought
> > a young male incapable of adopting with a female workmate. And that the
> > gender-inscription of the sewing tools over-rode the greater experience
> > that in this case the young boy had in using them, with the boy deferring
> > to the less experienced girl in recognition of the gender-appropriateness
> > of her "taking charge" with the needle-and-thread. This does cause one to
> > think a little deeper into how we might conceptualise such gendered
> > behaviours.
> >
> > As you would know, MCA has a strong preference for qualitative research,
> > and studies with small sample sizes are not generally a problem, but so
> > much seemed to hinge on the study of just *one* boy-girl team, that I am
> > concerned about the capacity to generalise from such a base. There were
> > about 80 youth in the activity as a whole, so I can only hope and presume
> > that observation of the other 78 kids in some way guided the work focused
> > on just 2.
> >
> > I must say, the analysis of the video data is very sophisticated and
> > productive and you are to be congratulated on this aspect of the work. I
> > see that you approach the gendering of the activities through the idea of
> > the various *tools* being gendered, rather than the *practices*
> themselves.
> > This is something that was really necessary for you to be able to make
> > these observations, because the gendering of the activities is ambiguous,
> > but not it seems the gendering of the tools. Is this a result of the
> study,
> > or is it something you already knew or did you arrive at this by logic?
> >
> > Do you see any other opportunities for confounding gender stereotypes in
> > this way?
> >
> > And finally, does the experience of working in ambiguous, even inverted
> > gender-stereotyped activities like these have any outcome which carries
> > over into a world where the gender division of labour lacks ambiguity?
> >
> > Andy
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >
> >
> > Kylie Peppler wrote:
> >
> >> Thanks Andy! We're excited to discuss with the community and would
> >> welcome any comments/questions on this emerging line of research!
> >> Kylie
> >>
> >> ---
> >> Kylie A. Peppler
> >> Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences
> >> Indiana University | School of Education
> >> 1900 E 10th Street | Eigenmann 528 | Bloomington | IN | 47406 |
> >> 812.856.8381
> >>
> >>
> >> On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 10:52 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
> >> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
> >>
> >> Here's the article for discussion Artin is introducing:
> >> *Hands On, Hands Off: Gendered Access in Crafting and Electronics
> >> Practices*
> >> Beth Buchholz, Kate Shively, Kylie Peppler, and Karen Wohlwend.
> >> Indiana University.
> >>
> >> The Maker movement promotes hands-on making, including crafts,
> >> robotics, and computing. The movement’s potential to transform
> >> education rests in our ability to address notable gender
> >> disparities, particularly in science, technology, engineering,
> and
> >> mathematics fields. E-textiles - the first female-dominated
> >> computing community - provide inspiration for overcoming
> >> long-standing cultural divides in classrooms. Analysis of
> >> children’s
> >> use of e-textiles reveals that materials like needles, fabric,
> and
> >> conductive thread rupture traditional gender scripts around
> >> electronics and implicitly gives girls hands-on access and
> >> leadership roles. This reconceptualization of cultural divides as
> >> sets of tacitly accepted practices rooted in gendered histories
> has
> >> implications for reconceptualizing traditionally male-dominated
> >> areas of schooling.
> >>
> >> Andy
> >> (attached)
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> ------------
> >> *Andy Blunden*
> >> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
> >>
> >>
> >> Goncu, Artin wrote:
> >>
> >> Dear All,
> >>
> >> We are writing to let you know that the most recent issue of
> >> MCA is out.
> >> One of the articles published in this issue and being
> >> introduced here for
> >> discussion in referenced below. The authors of the article
> >> have kindly
> >> agreed to lead the discussion, and they are on xmca with us
> >> now. The free
> >> access to the article is possible through the links below. We
> >> are looking
> >> forward to hearing from you all. Best, ag
> >>
> >> Hands On, Hands Off: Gendered Access in Crafting
> >> and Electronics Practices
> >> Beth Buchholz, Kate Shively, Kylie Peppler, and Karen Wohlwend
> >>
> >> www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10749039.2014.939762
> >> <http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10749039.2014.939762>
> >>
> >> http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10749039.2014.
> >> 939762#.VEZ25Ra_4wI
> >>
> >> Artin Goncu, Ph.D
> >> Co-editor, Mind, Culture, and Activity:An International Journal
> >> Professor Emeritus,
> >> University of Illinois at Chicago
> >> College of Education M/C 147
> >> 1040 W. Harrison St.
> >> Chicago, IL 60607
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
> --
> Karen Wohlwend, Associate Professor
> Literacy, Culture, & Language Education
> Indiana University
> 201 N. Rose Avenue
> Bloomington, IN 47405
> Office: 812-856-8275
> Fax: 812-856-8287
> kwohlwen@indiana.edu
>
--
It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science with an
object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
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