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¹Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, UK
²Futurelab


Correspondence address:
Keri Facer, Futurelab, 1 Canon's Road, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5UH, UK.


ABSTRACT

This paper explores young people's access to and use of computers in the home and at school. Drawing on a questionnaire survey, conducted in 2001 and 2003 with over 1800 children in the South-West of England, on group interviews in school with over 190 children and with visits to 11 families, the paper discusses: (1) children's current use of computers in the home and in school; 2) changing patterns of computer use in home and school between 2001 and 2003; (3) the impact of age, gender and socio-economic area on young people's computer use in home and school. The paper then goes on to discuss young people's perceptions of the differences between home and school use of computers and to address the question of whether young people's home and school use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) are really 'different worlds'. Through analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data, the paper proposes that the boundaries between home and school are less distinct in terms of young people's ICT use than has previously been proposed, in particular through young people's production of virtual social networks through the use of instant messenger that seem to mirror young people's social school contexts. The paper concludes by suggesting that effective home-school link strategies might be adopted through the exploration of the permeability of home/school boundaries.


BACKGROUND

The InterActive Education Project's central objective is to address the question of how information and communications technologies (ICTs) can be used to enhance teaching and learning. While the rest of the papers in this edition focus specifically on the practices, people and policies of the school as an educational institution, this paper focuses specifically on the relationship between the 'techno-popular cultures' (Green and Bigum 1993; Marsh and Millard 2003) that students bring into the school setting from their use of ICTs in the home, and students' experience of ICTs within the school setting.

Existing research in this area (Sefton-Green 1998; Downes 1999; Kerawalla and Crook 2002; Somekh et al 2002; Facer et al 2003; Holloway and Valentine 2003) points to clear differences between computer use in the home and in the school. These earlier projects have identified, for example, significantly higher frequencies of computer use in the home than in the school; different approaches to learning with computers in the home from those in the school; and an emphasis on different ICT-related activities in the home compared with the school. This early research has led many commentators to suggest that schools need to take into account, when attempting to enhance teaching and learning using ICT, students' expectations for quality of technical provision, for self-directed use of computers and their developing understanding of the potential of ICT through authentic uses of computers. It has also suggested that students' regular computer use in the home is leading them to expect to take on roles of expert and teacher with their peers, a role that may be challenging or problematic within the current organisation of teaching and learning in schools. Earlier studies also suggested that outside the school setting, there were a number of inequalities in respect of student access to and use of computers. Socio-economic status (Rudd 2002), social networks (Facer 2002), age (Colley and Comber 2003) and more prominently gender (Harris 1999; Volman and van Eck 2001; Rudd 2002, Colley et al 1994) have all been identified as key structuring elements through which young people's access to and use of computers is played out in the home.

This strand of the InterActive project was formulated specifically to draw on and to update this earlier work in order to identify the implications of students' current home use of ICTs for approaches to teaching and learning with ICTs in schools. It documents changing access to ICTs out of school and concomitant changes and development in young people's patterns of out of school use of ICTs. The project explores differences between home and school uses of ICTs and how the 'different worlds' of home and school use of ICTs overlap and interrelate. This project explores variables such as age, gender and socioeconomic status as possible structuring factors in haping ownership, access, and expectations of computer use in the home while retaining an awareness that individual interactions with the tools and resources available in the home setting may offer new ways of thinking and learning with digital technologies to young people.


METHODS

In order to understand the ways in which the wider patterns of age, gender and socio-economic status may structure young people's access to and use of computers, we have conducted two large-scale surveys of computer use in the home and school. However, as we recognise that these surveys describe only broad-brush patterns of behaviour, we have also conducted school-based peer group interviews and home-based interviews and observations with young people and their families. These are intended to provide access to the experiences of individual young people that might lie behind the patterns of behaviour identified in the questionnaire.


Data collection and analysis

The questionnaire

The questionnaire was designed drawing on an instrument previously used in the ScreenPlay Project Facer et al 2003) in 1998, which was altered to reflect categories of computer use that had emerged during the qualitative stages of that project. In total, the questionnaire comprises over 200 questions concerning young people's computer ownership, access and use in the home and school. It also consists of questions on Internet access (via multiple devices), mobile phone use and location of and access to ICTs in the home. The questionnaire was initially tested with colleagues and then the instrument and analysis were piloted in a local Bristol¹ primary school in May 2001.


¹City in the South-West of England.


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